Veillance
An audio-visual artwork generated in real time from the data its audience generates while browsing the internet in the exhibition space. The work subsequently reveals covert (data surveillance) conversations with which the public are unknowingly engaged through routine online activity.
Our digital devices regularly share information with government agencies and third party companies for both surveillance and commercial purposes. ‘Veillance’ is an interactive artwork which visualises information generated by its audience’s internet browsing on digital devices. Data is intercepted and reconfigured in real time to create an immersive audio-visual experience intended to raise awareness about this covert conversation with which we are unknowingly engaged.
In the exhibition situation, each audience member generates a colour coded browsing feed from which the system highlights words identified by global security services as ‘triggers’ for potential warnings and suspicious activity. These selections, which navigate around the space, are both alarming and inadvertently humorous as they deliver a contrasting view to the user’s (generally) benign activity. The work simultaneously creates a (DNS) list of all websites which are covertly communicating with audience devices, illustrating the constant data communication between the viewer and outside agencies.
To comply with data protection laws, the artwork only intercepts information from unencrypted websites.
Artist:
Ronan Devlin
Project Team:
Vian Bakir, Academic
Ant Dickinson, Sound
Carwyn Edwards, Software
Michael Flückiger, Visualisation https://www.michaelflueckiger.ch/
Gillian Jein, Academic https://www.ncl.ac.uk/sml/staff/profile/gillianjein.html
Andy McStay, Academic https://www.bangor.ac.uk/music-and-media/staff/andrew-mcstay/en
Exhibitions:
White Box, Pontio Innovation, Bangor University UK, 2016 https://www.bangor.ac.uk/about/pontio/pontio-innovation.php.en https://www.bangor.ac.uk
Build Your Own exhibition and workshop, FACT, Liverpool (prototype), 2015 https://www.fact.co.uk/
Commissioned by:
The Space (winner ‘Open Call 2’) https://www.thespace.org/
Supported by:
Arts Council of Wales https://arts.wales/
