(Een Nederlandse vertaling volgt later)
We feel uncomfortable when someone comes too close to us. This can be literally by requesting extra space in a visible bubble of personal space around you, as well as figuratively. Sometimes we have the unpleasant feeling that someone is looking at us. This feeling keeps us alert so that we are prepared for a possible confrontation.
There are a lot of eyes where we are not aware of, but how watched are we when walking around in the center of Zwolle? What about our privacy and the upcoming biometric recognition systems? How can we make people aware of them?
The five skins of Friedensreich Hundertwasser starts with the epidermis, this is our naked body, which is vulnerable and therefore it feels uncomfortable to walk around naked. This layer is followed by clothes, houses, identity and the earth, which I each see as ways to make ourselves feel comfortable. We can expand our personal space by creating a new layer in between our clothes and our surroundings. I did experiment this and walked around Schiphol with my visible bubble of personal space. This will take up a large space and can make you feel as a burden for others, especially when it comes to smaller spaces, such as on the train. Bystanders will nevertheless respect the visible bubble itself, they don’t invade, they wait for you to pass, which gives you a feeling of comfort.
However, because walking around with this visible bubble isn’t seen as normal, we provoke people to feel legitimate to stare at us, sometimes even a second time. Especially when they are in groups, they sometimes point out or talk about us, which also can feel uncomfortable and as an intrusion of our personal space.
We are also seen and viewed when walking trough the city, I am not talking about people watching us from benches or the terrace, but about these cameras hanging around. The municipality has placed many cameras in the city center of Zwolle to make the city safer, but research has shown that people do not demonstrably feel safer because of these cameras (van Heek, Ziefle, and Arning, 2016). Probably this has to do with the fact that they are not easily visible and we aren’t aware of them, the cameras are above eye-level and there is nothing to attract the attention of our eyes. Behind the camera are people monitoring our behavior and activities, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They control the camera, but the policeman on the street has access to these live video images as well. When we make people aware of this peek behind all of the cameras, there may arise uncomfortable feelings of being spied on.
I like to create a temporary awareness of the cameras in the center of Zwolle by adding different layers to the presence of the cameras. The first layer starts to make the cameras ‘alive’, giving them a visual voice. By placing the words, such as “I guard this place, for the safety of the artwork, but also for the environment and its users” the visibility and therefore awareness of the camera will be spread over the area. In this way, the camera will stand out with its message for the safety in his 360 degrees field of view.
A little further on, the cameras will tell more about our privacy with texts spread on the ground like “They have our memory as history of space” and "They can see us as a never-ending story until they close our eye”. Here, another layer will be added, the movable noise walls. We can take these walls that are on a rails with us to create noise, to be not recognizably visible on the video images.
In the last layer it will be about the biometry, there is already behavior recognition build. When unusual behavior is seen, they send a sign to have it checked. This recognition will probably be even more advanced in the future, they will not only be able to recognize us as just people, but as a person, as ourselves, someone vulnerable. This is something we should be aware of since, identification by biometrics is fundamentally different than passwords or account numbers. If your password or account number gets stolen, you can change it (Mann, 2019), whereas it is almost not possible to change for example gait or face. The last layer added will be a recognized biometric person, whose hand you can hold as a reflection of yourself and walk on together.
This all will be something temporary placed as a guerilla action to let the cameras tell their story to the people
“We hope you will be aware,
aware of us,
hanging around.
Aware of what we know,
what we see,
and aware,
about your privacy.“
aware of us,
hanging around.
Aware of what we know,
what we see,
and aware,
about your privacy.“
