 So the last are the best or something like that Our next speaker is here waiting for this massive crowd That will support him to go through his experience with the FBI. He's gonna share with us The way he informs the FBI about his behaviors so it's not just Like in cycling or other sports, but I don't know what sport you do Hassan But he's he's a sportsman in communication with the FBI. Please give a welcome applause Yes Last are the best That's sorry pointing to me that the arrow will start making sense Really, I mean how amazing has it been the last few days here, right? It's been this in amazingly intense Last few days and it's kind of you know, it's it's an honor to kind of wrap this up And I really appreciate you guys hanging out here till the very very very last time slot. Thank you. Thank you for coming This is it means a lot. I've been hearing a lot about this Congress for many years and this is my first time here and It's just you know, it's just telling some friends that I consider myself relatively tech literate and Then I come here and I feel like everyone's speaking a completely different foreign language that I have no idea what's happening And it's not because some of the talks are in German It's like literally like the some of the subject matter is so specific that it's so easy to be completely like what is being discussed So I'm gonna tell you what some things a little bit more, you know a little bit more of a story and Kind of tell you about what I've been doing so I'm an artist and I Get called all sorts of different things I get you know Sometimes I get lumped in with the media artists sometimes with the sculptor sometimes with photographers Sometimes I get called a con artist but so, you know, so it's kind of odd being in this being in this gatherings particularly after some of the other talks that I've been sitting in on but Let me tell you a little bit about how this thing came about this thing with the arrow By the way, I'm at Eli.org or Eli.umd.edu I'll show you some of my works, but mainly I'll be focusing on this one project Which is called tracking transients, which I started shortly after 9-eleven So let me just give you a live feed of what it looks like So this is this is it so you can go on the web and you could follow me at any given moment And there's this pixel this arrow that comes to you It's actually these days were so used to seeing ourselves as pixels on a map But this project was started 2002 and back then to see yourself as a pixel was just such an unusual thing. I mean these days we you know These days you're driving down the road and there's that little icon on the GPS that tells you exactly where you are or you know the I mean like you know like when was the last time you bought one of those maps at the gas station and you opened it up Do you remember that? I mean we don't I mean it's like it's like we just completely lost that We can we don't even know how to fold a map back up anymore, you know Because back in the old days you'd have to take out that map and you'd go We're here so you'd have to locate yourself to the geography Within that map these days you take out that magic phone And you press that little button and you become the center of your own map and you're the map resizes to you So the space of the so looking at yourself as a digital space versus a physical space You know, it's it's a totally different concept that we're running into now And for some reason this looks like this got caught up over here So let's give it another kick and hopefully it'll kick in again Okay, so that's that's so This is this is where I started so the project starts here And you know then this goes through the cycles of everything that I eat and you know Let's see what comes up after this so you know you can really you you can probably see where this place is You probably recognize that so these are all the meals that I've been cooking at home And I photograph all of them. It's just kind of interesting is now It's like it's so common on Instagram It's like, you know, people think that you know, well, why why else would you be using Instagram other than posting photos of your food? But I help out the FBI with this so I send this so this was a on Friday December 4th This was at the corner of Santa Clara and 11th in San Jose. I got I bought gas there This is at the Gime Airport in Busan. This is some tripe that I've cooked at home because I really like tripe This is this is actually the Barack Hussein Obama School in Jakarta, Indonesia March 1st. This is at this is Sorry, this is going so fast. So every few moments what I do is I take a photograph and I timestamp my life and I send it to the FBI and Well, you know, it's and it's also kind of interesting because these days the project means something so different When I first started this project people would be like, oh, no, no, don't show up at my house And now it's like, you know, it's now if like if you're don't if you're not on social media If you're not connected like people think of you're some some weirdo or something so what happens here is That this thing of like continuously continuously Monitoring myself and continuously checking in, you know, now a lot of people are like, I don't get this this looks up my Instagram feed What's the big deal? But then this concept of self-surveillance or this or this watching ourselves or Monitoring ourselves for the sake of someone else whether it be your Twitter followers or in my case the FBI This is something that's become so commonplace and each of us are creating our own archives So a lot of the shifts that's taking place culturally I think it's really important to to think about this because you know, it's like like this bed I mean, you're not really sure what happened in that bed You're not really sure who I was there with or you see these like random train stations They're always these empty spaces There's like, you know, no one's ever there and so and every now and then you might see some people But they just they just tend to be incidental to the image Which is kind of interesting when you look at like the no photography or the or ask permission of people that are in there Which is really amazing to think about that like how many cameras are there and they give them up Actually in this room right now There are at least twice as many cameras as there are people Because there's one camera in the front of your phone and another one in the back of your phone And who knows how many other cameras in in the all the other devices and everything else that are putting in So we can't really escape these cameras regardless of what we do And so all of these things these are all these bits and pieces that I'm that I'm archiving of my life So every few moments another photo gets put up and it gets tagged with the geo tag of where it was again This is something that's so common today, but 12 13 14 years ago. This was completely just like what are you doing? and why are you doing this and Sorry, so yeah, and then of course, there's all these toilets because My FBI agent really needs to know I figured the FBI that you know They want to know my business and I'm very open and I'm very sharing So I figured I'm gonna tell them every little bit of detail including the toilets that I use and how frequently and where I go You know, they need to know so Really what's happening, you know, and and what I'm really what I'm really doing is I'm it's it's a matter of telling you everything and telling you absolutely nothing simultaneously. It's a barrage of noise Look, I know that eventually, you know, machine and AI machine readers and AI is going to get so so sophisticated That at a certain point The this this idea of overwhelming the system. It's not going to be possible. This is a temporary fix and the reason I chose this fix is You know, obviously the FBI has a file on me By the way, the background story of this is I got reported as a terrorist The you know, I guess I should probably explain that on that a little bit. So Shortly after 9 11 my landlords that I had this I rented this storage space from Called the police and said that an Arab man had fled on September 12th. It was hoarding explosives Never mind. There were no explosives never mind. It wasn't an Arab man But you know that Arab man would be me even though I'm Bengali and we're actually not Arabs But it doesn't matter because as far as many people, you know, they're all the same over there They're all kind of you know, it's it's that mentality So I spent six months of my life with the FBI convincing them that I'm not a terrorist and After all that they said, okay, everything's great and you're fine and I said, okay wonderful Can I get a letter saying I'm fine? There's a little problem with that because have you ever tried to get something that says you're not guilty of something you never did So, you know, so ever since then I've been with my FBI just like hey, what do I do? I mean I travel a lot all we need is the next guy not to get the next memo and here we go all over again How do I avoid this? So at that moment he gave me a phone he says here's some phone numbers If you get to trouble give us a call we'll take care of it So ever since then I would call my FBI agent telling where I was going sending photos do all of these things And that's that's what this whole project started, you know I mean back then when I started this project shortly after 9-eleven I mean my phone was like those old remember those old Nokia 6600 It was like super chunky was me had to hit the buttons like a whole bunch of times I send like one text message across and we used to call them smartphones back then I mean they're really not that smart, but they're kind of smartphones anyway So this process of like sending all this information the FBI I started telling them everything and also at the same time By telling them everything I'm also telling them absolutely nothing because it's just a wall of noise and in that noise There is some signal and the ratio the signal-to-noise ratio is actually pretty skewed. It's pretty It's pretty out of sync in that sense because it's it's difficult for the for the viewer to know what they're looking at So if you don't said that the website it's it's it is an archaic website I mean it is completely obsolete technologically, but more importantly it's also one of these things It's it's intentionally user unfriendly. It's not you know information is not categorized in a way where you know Oh, I want to see this date at this time It's like it's just it just comes in at whichever way it the the algorithm these days feels like generating the the info So sometimes you might see a taco then you might see the next one from Mexico City Then Mexico City might go to like this place and because I took a flight from there to Houston so you might get some images from Houston next and then from Houston you might get some things from another city in The back-and-forth so it actually takes all these pathways various through it So in this process, I'm really you know, it's it's I'm telling you everything and nothing in this camouflage in This you know thing of like you know historic camouflage now the concept of camouflage particularly in digital identity is really important because Historically when you hear camouflage, it's usually meant for you know warfare battle soldiers and the reason We have The reason camouflage looks a certain way is because it was designed to break the silhouette of the body of the soldier in the battlefield in the landscape of warfare so This is why you know certain trees look certain colors and when you look in notes every place you go There's a different war each with each ward. There's a different pattern that's used Now if you look at the new camouflage that most troops are wearing particularly in the US where I live It's all pixeled. It's all pixelized You know, it's all and it's all this like weirdly grayish greenish color I don't know if you've noticed that color, but there's no trees that color anywhere It's because it's not meant for Blending into the landscape anymore. It's no longer meant So the soldier has to blend into the battlefield The reason it's pixelized and it's that grayish greenish color is because We no longer have a need for the soldier to blend in to the battlefield the physical battlefield But what we want is the soldier to be So the enemy cannot distinguish the physical body of the soldier in the noise in the night vision goggles That's why it's that color. That's why it's that grayish green So this is a huge step So we no longer it's no longer about the physical presence of the body in the in the war field in the in warfare But it's now about the it's now where the the digital body that the physical body is intentionally Camouflaged and mistaken for digital artifact. It's that pixelization that we've that we've forced Basically a warfare and a lot of work that I do with a lot of a lot of the art that I come up with comes out of warfare and such And I'll show you a little but this is a really important piece that I wanted to talk to you about Because this was taken from one of the earliest samples of what the US Army uses and It was done at the at the base at native which is the in outside of Boston This is where a lot of the camouflage in the US is designed It's the US Army's fashion design department though They would never call it the fashion design department But this is where they design all the camouflage and the and the outfits and so this sample was taken in at first It just looks like a modernist grid of various photographs and such But what they really are is I took the old sample and I blew it out and took out each pixel and Replaced each pixel with a photograph of a historic or current point of conflict So there's these two images right in the middle if you look The two blue images over there kind of in the middle to the bottom Those are in North Korea. Those are on north the 38th parallel They actually technically North the parallels you're actually in North Korea and territory, but there's but a Pamlin jump There's actually six buildings and three of and all six are built directly across the border and you know, it's kind of Unpractical to share half the building with another country So three of the buildings belong to South Korea three of them belong to North Korea So these are the South Korean buildings, but physically in North Korean territory Similarly like that plate of ham that you see right below it in a Spanish ham and being a good Muslim I really do enjoy my Spanish ham But this was this was photographed in Guernica the site of a brutal massacre Shortly, you know, so similarly so each of the every single one of these images. They might seem like these Generic or bland image, but they're all historic conflicts or current conflicts There's a there's an image in the in the upper right hand in the upper left-hand corner right there and it's of an office building with just a Flag with three stripes going across And this is like a quick world affairs quiz Which country has a flag that goes three horizontal stripes across the top and bottom are red and the middle one is green And he guesses on this country three stripes Red green red, but lots of confused looks, huh? It's it's a trick question the country doesn't exist It's it's Transnistria or at least the Russians call it pre-Nistrovia and It's a breakaway Republic of Moldova. It's a tiny little sliver of land between Moldova and Ukraine maybe about 20 30 kilometers wide and maybe about 200 kilometers long This tiny tiny tiny sliver No one they have by the way, they have their own military. They have their own passports They have their own currency. They have their own judicial system. They have their own everything like a country except No one recognizes them as a country But you need to go by 20 cases of AK-47s is the place to go So this is this tiny piece of land this tiny piece of land that no one recognizes is Really where a lot of the destabilization of the world comes from So I went over there and then of course I would tell my FBI agent This is where I was going just loitering maybe like what are you doing over there? It's like I'm just hanging out just seeing what's going on. Anyway So again all of the every single one of these images There's a bits and pieces of these types of source But I want to I want to go back to this thing of warfare and talk to you a little bit about that so I Live in the US and you know, it's we're you know currently at the war on terror actually the the real name is the global war on terror and this was a drawing that I did for a project a few years ago and There's a there's a congressional document. So there's this document that the US Congress Keeps and it's called the instances of use of United States armed forces abroad this time was 1798 to 2006 this gets updated every year and Interestingly enough when you look at this document, it's everything is just the facts everything is you know in 1838, you know Marines chased pirates onto a Caribbean island Well the one the Marines landed on that Caribbean island we invaded that country Anytime you send your troops on to another country soil without that country's permission you have invaded that country So everything from like, you know Marines chasing pirates to a Caribbean island all the way to World War one It's all just one everything's just listed as one instance Just straight down like and this and this just goes on for pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and You know so and then you look at it like wait when when did when did the US invade Florida? Well, that was when it was Spanish territory. This was You know before that became part of the United States similarly You know so when you look at it all the white X's are all the invasions that the US has Undertaken between 1776 which was the year of the independence to World War one All the gray X's are World War one to Vietnam and All the black X's are Vietnam to today The number of invasions that the US troops have undertaken between 1776 in World War one roughly equate the same amount as World War one to Vietnam and the number of invasions From from 1776 of Vietnam roughly equate Vietnam to today In the last 100 year in the last 117 years since since 1900 There's only been five years where the US has not been at war Interestingly enough we've only declared war 11 times in history Since independence of the country the US is only formally declared war 11 times yet of The all the years that we've ever been an independent country Like there's only like 20 or 30 years that we haven't been at war and most of those are pre-1800 And then and then so since 1900 There's only been five years and you could see all of these dots So one of the reasons that I wanted to create this document is that I had this proposal that I wanted to do for this this museum in Spain and I was talking to the curator and I said hey, you know, it would be really great What if we set up a wall of like bulletproof glass and in the gallery? So we'll just do it like as people are going around the museum We'll just set up a huge bulletproof huge sheet of bulletproof glass We'll have a real faint drawing of the world and we'll have got we'll have a guy I want the rifle in the back and he'll shoot bullets at the audience but but because there's bulletproof glass it'll stop and I mean, I knew that there was just no way they would go for it But to my surprise they said let us talk to some our security people and we'll get back to you about this and I was really surprised so in the meantime we did some ballistics tests. So check this out. Look at look at I mean like that's That's what it looks like. I mean, it's just beautiful when I mean just the way like when when when Basically when bullets hit bulletproof glass, it's not really glass. It's just very dense plastic and The heat of the bullet comes in at such such velocity That the plastic melts just ever so slightly and then just swallows the bullet back up and it freezes back up So it slightly liquefies and then solidifies This is what happens inside your body when you get shot Except your body doesn't just you know absorb the bullet and just refreeze together It's just like this really scary looking thing of just looking at that blunt trauma that that immediate point of when that bullet hits This is what happens So we did some ballistics tests and we went through some ideas and then and then of course as I expected They said no, you're crazy. There's no way we're doing this but they were willing to send this out to to a off-site and We built this in a in a these fabricators built this off-site and of course then there was these other problems of You know if we build this in the US and send it to the museum I mean, you know when it comes into Europe does it get imported as artwork or does it get imported as well Possibly firearms because there's actual real gunpowder in it There's a lot of problems. So in order to deal with the the The customs issues of it. We figured you know what let's let's just ship it Let's just have it built in in Spain and then as we're about to build this we realized there was a little pesky Spanish law That requires you to be at least 25 meters away from the intended target You can't discharge a weapon in less than 25 meters of its intended target now Of course, I wanted this piece to be gigantic and then you could only imagine the price of the bulletproof glasses It gets larger and larger and larger So we eventually agreed that it'll be four meters by two meters Except at that scale each of these dots each of these both each of these targets then become like Three millimeters or four millimeters in diameter Now, I don't know how many of you do shooting or target practice or any of that, but try to hit 330 dots that are about three to four millimeters in diameter from 25 meters away one after another without missing them That's actually practically impossible So I was like, how do we do this and then the museum fortunately hired three former Olympians to do this And it was just unbelievable watching these guys at of the 330 bullets that are there 326 of them were exactly on center the four that were off were no more than five five millimeters And I'm convinced I just drew them wrong those four. I mean, it's just it's just unbelievable But you but you can see what happens. So in the middle over here, this is Central America We have hit we have invaded Central America so many times that as you keep hitting these bullets these physical These bullets just eventually the bulletproof glass just shatters and gives away. I Mean, it's it causes a literal wreck So it's kind of interesting looking at this this very abstract concept of of these invasion of these political These types of political policies that we have and what the physical manifestation of that what that does in a map But what does that do it to the physical geography? So I'm really interested in this idea of geography body data body This physicality and the virtuality and how these two come together in this So similarly, I've been I've been doing a lot of these things about warfare and such and I want to show you this project This is a project that I've been working on in in Hawaii recently and you know Hawaii I mean who's gonna turn down a job in Hawaii It was pretty unbelievable getting getting a chance to do this project and So When you go to when you win when you're going to Hawaii is a really interesting at least an American policy and American political and cultural Perspectives Hawaii is a very unique place because Hawaii is the ultimate manifestation or the ultimate like embodiment What we in the in the US we have this term called manifest destiny Which was a term from the early seventeen hundred were actually from the late seventeen hundreds from the early history of America Where we decided to start in the east and the Atlantic and expand all the way across the Manifest the country and the whole land will be become ours. So this is the birth of cut of the US This is the idea of how the country was was given birth to Now Hawaii is a really interesting Situation in this perspective because Now, you know, we've started on the Atlantic coast. We've we've conquered conquered conquered conquered got went all the way to the end We've gone to the Pacific Ocean and now we've crossed the Pacific Ocean And now we've gone to this middle of this this rock in the middle of the of the ocean and now we're at the top of the Mountain so we've actually like, you know, like all that then the interesting thing is Hawaiian culture when you go to the peaks of each of the mountains every every of the mountain peaks are sacred Interestingly enough when you go to each of these mountaintops, they're all Well, they're almost always US military or some sort of government or some sort of science But of course for many and now granted there is some amazing stuff being done, but there is a lot of also Very shady, you know, like military stuff being done And it's also this thing of like going up and then now with these surveillance devices these telescopes at the top of each of these Monitoring and surveying and measuring everything out in the West and out in the sky And you know, so we've gone through the West which is also a really interesting thing about The history of landscape in America. Let me show you let me show you a couple of these images of The top of this place, which is just it's just beautiful going up there I mean it looks like Mars and a lot of the Mars tests were actually done up there because It's I mean, it's it's just amazing like you're looking down at the sky and there's these like satellites everywhere I mean it really does look like a Martian landscape So I'm really interested in this. Okay, so let me show you this project So I've been really interested in watching the watchers of this thing of like and and What happens when you aestheticize surveillance? I mean, obviously this is a major issue for a lot of us and a lot of the Conference topics here talks about privacy and what to do and how to stop mass mass surveillance and things of that type But when you hear the word surveillance imagery, what do you think of? What are you thinking? Just imagine to picture surveillance imagery. What does it look like to you? And for most of us we generally probably think of like, you know, like what CCTV or surveillance camera images look like Usually grainy pixely, you know gritty sometimes black and white You know with this audience, we already know data storage is cheap. I mean this data storage I mean you could buy a terabyte drive for like 30 bucks So data, you know, it's and it gets cheaper and cheaper every day in the capacity gets larger and larger So it's not necessarily an economic issue But it's actually more of a cultural issue and and and I'm proposing the fact that when you hyper aestheticize a surveillance image Your brain no longer reads as surveillance Your brain rejects the image when it's too aesthetically pleasing You read it as landscape or you read it as you read his landscape photography and And many in the case of landscape photography many of it is the history of it is based on landscape painting So it's really that that gritty grainiest that that actually gives us the the Emotional attachment that this is a surveillance image Because when it becomes when it doesn't have those characteristics when it doesn't have those qualities it becomes a photo or a video So in this case, I just I was really interested in what happens when when you hyper aestheticize that and imagine if you had X-ray vision imagine if you had X-ray vision, you could see right through this wall What would you see on the other side of this wall? well this image which actually looks like a window pane and they're actually six very large monitors and This is this functions as a as a see-through wall So you could actually see through this wall and just so it just so happened that on the other side of the Of the wall from this exhibition space was the Baltimore Police Department So I love the idea of being able to watch the police watching me watching them And then you notice that there's that next to the blue light. There's a little surveillance camera on top of their dumpster Which really doesn't make any sense to me why they would need a surveillance camera over their dumpster But I just love this image of just this constant reflecting back and forth and watching and watching and watching back And then the image you couldn't tell you know whether it was whether you're looking at a photograph Or whether you're looking at a video or whether you're you know It's just every now and you see some blurry lights moved by or some of these figures But really you know if you look at a lot of what machine vision a lot of the software I mean you know like you know you see those things on the on the TV with all those people looking at those monitors And that's no that's that's like the movies or that's like they use for like fundraising The real stuff is all machines looking at this stuff and it doesn't actually look that sexy at all so I love this idea of actually taking this image and You know seeing what what can what happened when it's when it's a set of size now Similarly, you know what happens when the form is a set of sized This is the the very similar project at another location, but this is what you would see through the wall And when you see this I mean Your brain completely rejects this as a surveillance image But this is exactly what happens right on the other side over there so thinking about the idea of aesthetics and What surveillance looks like and at least you know growing up in in the in an American context You know so a lot of the history of American photography comes from American painting or landscape painting and The history of a lot of our landscape painting comes from the Hudson River School Which is the Northeast and you know up north of New York City and up the Hudson River these gorgeous grand vistas Often of these really large, you know wide viewpoints of these Very like subliminal very like spiritual type of imagery It's very godlike imagery, which is kind of interesting because in the way it is like trying to replicate this I of God Or if you want to look at it from the perspective of surveillance in which we generally tend to think of surveillance As a very post 9-11 or a very 21st century concept. I mean most of us did not use the word surveillance Say, you know 20 years ago 30 years ago the word was not as common It certainly has become incredible common in our vocabulary very recently But even though we tend to think of surveillance as a very post Very 21st century concept This is something that's been embedded in our history in our brains for thousands of years Particularly when you look at those early paintings and then God as the original surveillance camera You behaved because God was watching So it was very easy to replace this being above with a camera above and that becomes so normalized in our daily lives I mean think about it. How does Santa Claus know everything about you? I? Mean we're taught this since we're at such an early point in life We've so this is normalization of surveillance this normalization and also this you know And you know we don't think that we never use the word surveillance when we're talking about God Again, you know this aesthetic as they the hyper aestheticization or maybe if you want to call I mean, this is not exactly a statistician But you know I in the idea of thinking about it so Again this relationship between the watched and watcher and you know another similar project of what it looks like when When you break that frame of looking at of the format of surveillance And when you aestheticize the format not only the imagery of surveillance, but also the format and how the surveillance is presented I mean we rarely we would never we wouldn't even think of this as a surveillance camera image But that is exactly what this is It's another similar piece. I just want to show you the context of this one because I want to show you But let's talk a little bit about the project that's going on on the right and this image is So they look like these landmines, but they also look like satellites I'm really interested in this idea of like circumnavigation. I'm really interested in these things of you know, it conceptually This this project is telling you earlier about this is about telling you everything and nothing simultaneously But in a similar way, I'm also really interested in this concept of Magellan and circumnavigation Where you go far enough to this side you end up in the other you circle around the whole thing Does that make sense in a little bit? So, you know, sometimes some people are so far to the left that they're actually very much to the right and vice versa So there's this this the circular reasoning that keeps coming back and forth And I'm really interested in this thing of this could this could be a landmine, but this could also be a satellite It's there's these types and then also at the same time like this was this is an earlier project But how they also look like selfie sticks But then there's these like all these things coming out of these like these monitors sticking out of each of this Is pretty iPad actually this installation was done later, but I mean now it's like these tablets are like so common And they're so everywhere but with these are 72 monitors and all the images that I've shared with the FBI and said to my FBI agent These are all being shown on all these monitors simultaneously and you could get the idea of what you're looking at so in the same sense This project was this is only a part of this one. This one's this one's about It's about 28 feet. So that's To put this about eight meters eight and a half meters tall this piece And it's basically every photo that I photo that I photographed and shared But they're all printed in these huge pieces in these huge vinyl banners and the actual photos each photo is about this little But you know, there's like thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of them So when you look from the back all you see is these vertical color stripes Interestingly enough. Well what they the other thing that I don't necessarily disclose this in public and that means But you're really looking at all the images shot on Sunday all the ones Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday and so on with the seven days But what's also happening is you know the the color bars the test bars for color calibration of monitors You know, it's like so one of the things that would happen. I'm sure you must have had I'm sure you must have had this in Germany But in the u.s. We used to have a thing called the emergency broadcast system and The television show would stop and you would go The tone would come out and these color bars would come on the screen And it would say this is a test of the emergency broadcast system had this been a real emergency You would have been instructed on what to do So this thing of impending doom this thing of something is something bad is about to happen Or something bad could happen and because something like that could happen We need to be ready and we need to be prepared this thing of like, you know being ready for these things So I'm really interested in that and this idea of like what happens when you when you use that tone or when you use that color Or when you borrow that thing, but at the same time, it's the very same System that broadcasters use to calibrate signal So this thing of signal, you know, and if you think about it on a on a daily basis We generate so much digital information how much of it can be how do we calibrate that? So so in a way of giving a nod to that that's where this piece comes out of So and then this one led to the next one Which this has been making the rounds throughout the place. So this was at ZKM In a couple of years ago here and then now this has been floating around Eastern Europe And these are you know, they look really small on the in the photograph, but this is the same piece But lit up from the back I'll show you another photo of it so you can get a better idea of this piece So, you know, you're seeing every little bit of pieces and all of these things coming together So they're about three meters tall each of these slabs and and and they and they lit up from the back So and and then this is a body of work that I've been dealing with so this thing of like, you know Libraries or archives and we all have them. We all create personal archives I mean if you look at every single photo you've ever shot, I mean, would you probably have a record of? You know, so when you have all these so what you know So we're all keeping our own private archives, you know, I have my own private archive that I'm doing as a parallel archive to the FBI But you know, it doesn't have to be for the FBI. I mean we all mean maybe in this room I'm sure everybody here has been watched by the government at this and there's probably a few people from from the shady Organizations in this room right here anyway or certainly at the conference, but what you're looking at here is every every Maybe one of those images and then there's this gritty grainy black and white image on top And it looks like every other industrial rooftop It looks like it's a rooftop of a building and you could see that the fans and the exhaust and the vents and then a little lower right there's these like golf ball looking things and Most buildings don't have those This happens to be the rooftop of the NSA This is this is so so really you know and I kind of look at it's like the NSA and and you know us We're kind of in the same business. We're kind of all in the information business Except you know, they like to keep theirs to themselves and I like to like give it out to everybody So, you know, we we operate a little differently in our business, but we're kind of in the same business so I decided to put this piece out and Really this thing of like, you know, so in a lot of ways they're kind of like selfies But they're not really selfies because when I photograph these things. So let's go back to this for now So, you know when I'm photographing this I mean I could I could have taken the camera and I could have photographed you right now But instead there's this very anonymous looking thing I mean like, you know, if you've been in this room if you've been in this room, you know that this could we know where that is But in the same way, there's these like really like you know So the camera is not pointing towards me, but the camera is pointing outward and that's what's really important here And there's thousands and thousands and thousands of these I know so the selfies it's become a common thing and it's no shame in In you know saying you like the selfies. I mean here's a president Obama Trying to make the look a selfie stick and selfies look pretty respectable. I can't use the new guy I can't I can't just bear to see him. So I have to go with this guy. I have to go with Obama Because you know, it's important But you know, he's he's making that so when he's taking that image what happens now When you look at the image, this is what this is this is the image that we're seeing That's that's up on my website right now and as soon as I leave this room There'll be a new image that'll pop up and then when I get to my hotel You'll see another image and then when I get to you know, wherever I go eat tonight You'll see another image. But anyway, so you know every few moments I time stamp to change it So when we're seeing this image But really this is what the this is what the computer is seeing sense and this some of you and I'm sure you know about this But for those that are not aware of it I mean, you know when you look at the XF data I use a Koradoko which is an X of reader to extract what my images are with the data that's behind it So you can see what the image is that was shot right there In in that location we know that because that's how our apps know what you like to check in from here That's how it knows the location so location services That's pretty simple and that's all the metadata that's going but here's where it gets really interesting The fact that when you look at the the altitude of this image the the altitude is one eighty six point zero six one six four three Rough sounds about right for lights for this area hundred eighty six meters of altitude. Yes. No I mean, I'm assuming it's correct because that's what the phone is telling me But similarly what's really interesting is when you look at the image direction So, I mean, we know the latitude and longitude. That's a given the altitude That's a new one because an image taken on the on C level at the ground level Will look very different than an image shot on the 20th or 30th floor of a building Because the barometric sensor inside the phone will put a different altitude number in there So we know that this image can only so if I were to shoot this image from the roof Looking down that image probably will be about a hundred and eighty eight hundred eighty nine hundred ninety meters Because of the distance of this The other part that's really interesting is the image direction The camera was tilted at a hundred and sixty three degrees from north zero being north ninety east 180 south to 70 west so slightly south the cameras pointed slightly south ish Which is exactly what that camera is pointing now Why does this matter? It was only a few years ago that we were thinking you mean Google is going to drive up and down every single road and Record every single street Yes Basically the only thing that's holding them back in certain places is the country's laws or the local things Aside from that not only they drive up and down every single road in every single city in every single country that they can They do this repeatedly year after year after year after year after year after year Some places they'll still put you know like in Venice They'll have like a someone on a boat that goes through uncertain pedestrian only islands They'll be someone carrying a backpack of those Google cameras around so it wasn't that long ago that this concept that Google would Catalog every possible outdoor space was seen so far-fetched It's only a matter of time before we collectively photograph every indoor space and we catalog every single indoor space and we photograph all of it and Sooner or later this database We through this database of every indoor image with all the metadata we can restitch every interior space We could recreate every interior space similarly, you know, then you know when you look at your frequent locations I mean, you know, do you look at me? That's like, you know exactly what moment you've come on You know what's minute you walked into a place what minute you've walked out of a place. I Mean, you know, how does your phone know that you've taken? You know, 8,934 steps today. I mean, it's counting every single one of them It knows you went three, you know, you've done five flight flights today because it knows that your altitude change from here to here To here and it knows every second you've done all this. I mean, this is this is kind of crazy So you know you cross reference all of this data. I mean and short of basically giving up our phones I mean this data is being collected and it's gonna happen. It's going to get archived I mean, you know, there's plenty of you that you know that These cat that these phones are just like it's inevitable. I mean, we're not gonna give up our lives without them So you cross reference all of these and we very quickly it creates a complete picture of the owner of that device Now back in the old days, you know, you'd have to you know Intelligence agencies would waste all of this energy to follow people around. I mean, you know, it wasn't that long ago It happened right here. I mean you'd have people following other people around you'd have databases and you have archives on other archives This record-keeping this massive amount of analog record-keeping was not no This is not far-fetched. This happened very recently Now why should why should they go around doing that today when they can just go to one of the companies and say hey You know, why don't you give it to now? We know, you know, of course, here's a you know, Tim Cook saying no, no No, we don't we don't give our information to the NSA. We don't do that We know a little differently. You know, I mean remember these these are from Snowden I mean, this is obvious and look it doesn't say when we it does not say when the NSA Intercepted each of these dates when prism collection began for each provider. They're being called providers here The reason they're being called providers is because these are the companies that are providing the information to the NSA So while Tim Cook can say that he doesn't you know, well while he can say While he can say all he wants about he doesn't you know that that they don't involve themselves We know otherwise we this is proof so, you know, so my whole thing is like hey, you know if If the tech companies if these organizations if these large Multinational tech companies can provide this information. Why can't we do this for ourselves? Why can't we just put this out there and why and why not just put everything out there whether it's relevant or not? And why not just mud up the whole system? So, you know, I'm really interested in this idea of like creating our own archives Do you know this building? This is the AT&T data center in San Francisco at the corner of second and Folsom This is a project that they call Hawkeye, which is actually AT&T's internal codename for this data center and Shortly before 2007 about a little over 10 years ago. There were there was a whistleblower though with the that came forward It was in room 641a of this building Which basically what happened is the NSA approached 16 telecom companies in the US and said we'd like to copy your data stream and 15 of the 16 said sure help yourself You know make yourself at home. There's only one company that said, you know We're not really sure of the legalities of this. Can you come back with a warrant and tell us what you're looking for? And we will we will provide it to you if you can tell us what you want But but you know, you had you had 15 of the 16 just say yeah, go ahead So what basically what happened in in 2007 not, you know, like who knows what it is now But in 2007 it was estimated that there was a 213 terabytes of phone records in this building Every phone record of every domestic call in the US Was was archived and then of course there's multiple data centers. This is just one of many now Who does that phone call belong to? You know when you call in grandma does that phone called does that information in that phone call does that belong to you? Does that belong to grandma or does that belong to the phone company and they're licensing you a one-time use of it? We don't I mean again with this who actually owns this data So it's really interested in this and keeping it record So I know in a while ATT is keeping records, which is my my my mobile phone provider in the US Similarly, I'm keeping my own records and this is all my this is my log files of all the people that come by on my website And you can see all of the plugs. Let me show you a little bit cleaner version You can see all the all the lovely happy people that come by like the terrorist screening center or the central intelligence agency or the You know the national geospatial intelligence age. I don't know why they come by I mean, I'm glad that they like art. I'm glad we have patrons of the arts in in these organizations Because you know, I mean like they come by frequently enough. I'm not really sure what they're doing But I'm glad I'm glad they like what I do But so I really have to thank one particular person for making my art career possible and that would be Dick Cheney Because if it was not for Dick Cheney, I would not be here talking to you. None of this would be possible without Dick Cheney I mean really, I mean, you know, he's he's really responsible for a lot of things that have happened recently So thank you Dick Cheney if you're if you're listening which you probably are because you know everything and you are You know, you have your people. Anyway, so a few years ago I What about 2010 I moved to the I started I took a job at the University of Maryland Which is in College Park and when I say Maryland most people assume we're in Baltimore because that's the main city in Maryland But we're actually close to Washington DC. So you can see so there's College Park. That's that's where I work This is the FBI headquarters. This is the CIA. This is the NSA You triangulate the three it ends up on my campus So it's only appropriate, you know, it's and plus, you know, we have this budget problem in the US right now So I'm like helping them out. It's like, you know, guys, can I help you got can I help you up? I'm moving in like right next to you. So you don't have to waste your resources By the way, vice comm ranked us the most militarized University in America. We're number one and then we're not number one A football or anything it takes a while for that sort of stuff, but most militarized. That's pretty easy We can do that. Let me show you a little bit around. So it's an amazing place So DC is Washington DC is a great place to be Problem is real estate is really really really expensive like housing is really, you know, it's a company town I mean like why else would you need to live there unless, you know, you're working in government? So while, you know, real estate prices in other parts of the country go up and down Washington just keeps going up and up and up and up and up. So, you know, it's been good But then I found this piece of land In St. Michael's now if you look over here, it says the average listing price in the zip code Which is the postal code in that area is 797 303 dollars. This was back in 2010 You know, it's 800,000 dollars that time average and then I found this piece of land for only 74,000 bucks I was like, I want this. I want this. I want this. I'm gonna you know It's like I need to do something and it's about an hour and a half away from work, which is a little bit But you know, it's possible Anyway, so this is where the house is over there goes further up. So it says piece of land It's a beautiful place. I mean you see the nature and all that. It's that weird oblong shape over there And you see that little driveway with that with nice trees at that house in the water That belongs to this guy So and let me take you around the neighborhood for a little bit. So this is this is his his gate This is his driveway. He drives up this way He he has a five car garage two of those garages go back pretty deep This is a swimming pool. We're gonna hang out here over the summers hang out You know, we're gonna throw some parties. This is his front room This is his kitchen this is where he sleeps and This is where we're gonna plot world domination. We're gonna hang out and eat yellow cake up there So this is the place I'm hoping to build this This is what I was trying to build but the listing just kind of disappeared It literally just disappeared and I'm convinced it's so you know, it's like he kind of does that to people too I'm glad he just did it to the listing and not to me, but you know, it wasn't withdrawn It wasn't sold it just like disappeared. So these days has become like this really conceptual project where I'm actually Painting them and then I'm photographing the paintings. So this is what I'm actually showing. So, you know, it's it's so okay. Here's my thing. So look Here's a man Dick Cheney with not only you're dealing with the former vice president You're dealing with the former you deal with a former CEO of Halliburton like every this man has every Motivation to be secret. This man money is no object and yet if I can show you where he sleeps and where he eats and Where he swims I mean, what can you know about us? I mean, I'm completely self-trained in this. I'm not even I'm I'm not even like, you know I'm not even like that that tech savvy in this I mean, I just kind of just like duct tape things together to find things whatever I needed but What do entire companies and corporations and countries? That really have the motivation to dig through our information. What can they get about us? So I'd like to leave you with this that you know We really need to come up with a different idea and a different interpretation and a different meaning of what privacy in The 21st century means this is no longer We can't we can no longer afford to use the same definitions of privacy that we use 50 years ago or 100 years ago or 200 years ago or even just five years or even just last week We need to have a much more Adaptive and open idea what this means to us and for each of us this will meet mean something differently So I want to leave you with that and thank you very much, and I'm happy to take some questions Thank you. How's that? Thank you It's a fantastic adventure to be always on the run and at the same time actually Yeah, they are running for you now a little bit they come by you know, I try to be friends with them You know, they're they're actually not that They're not very they don't like they don't like to be friends. They just like they just like to watch from a distance You think that the chainie? Will allow parties at your house because you're trying yeah, we're gonna have a shooting range in the back like it's good Yeah, yeah, it'll be it'll be a lot of fun Do you have a question? Thanks for the talk you mentioned Art kind of anticipated things that now we kind of take being very common Is there any way in which your art practice has evolved or responded to having a Newer younger generation of students year-over-year in your classes for whom Instagram or selfie sticks might be just second nature to them. Yeah, you know, I think it's it's really interesting watching how People of different generations react to this Because you know, I think a lot of it also has to do with the way we communicate I mean there was a very specific generation that would write a letter and then you had a generation that would write You know that would call and then you have text and then you have people that write you over email And you have people that will only text you I mean we were seeing them We're and and we're actually living in that right now because we actually deal with certain different types of people that only deal with different modes Of communication, so I really think in that it's the interesting thing is though that time is compressed Because we've only had people that would communicate a writing for hundreds of years Then we would have people that only communicated in phone for maybe 30 to 50 Maybe a little longer and then now we only have that like in the last five years We've had this and then now down to like one year So who knows what the next method will be but I really think a lot of it has to do with this adaptation I think a lot of things really interesting is this idea of like Like migration and you know in the whole immigration topics It's a real hot topic politically right now But I think we also need to think about this from a from a digital perspective because you know We turn we tend to use the word digital native a lot, but we never actually use the word digital immigrant But yet that's all of us in some way. I mean very few of us I mean there yes, there there are certain there is a certain generation that is a hundred percent digital from day one But for most of us at least of a certain age we were all digital immigrants And I think that that that type of shift. I think that type of understanding of it I think it has an impact and particularly in terms of in terms of Dealing with learning and dealing with education, you know at what point is it a natively learned skill versus a naturalized a migratory type of a The action So yeah, hopefully that answers you're talking about. Yeah Do we have another question? Yeah No, no, there's no log is talking too much because if there was a log is talking too much would all be in trouble But you know, but this is interesting because they're very much about There it's very much a one-way direction They're they're not about they don't editorialize. They don't provide opinion They only take information. They ask you questions and they take information So you could answer them with one word or you could answer them with millions And I've just decided that I'm gonna keep keep talk to keep talking to them Yeah, I'm a relatively, you know, I think a cooperative person. I Like to be helpful, but really what it is. It's really it's it's defiance through compliance It's it's it's this level of aggressive compliance and at a certain point I try to be so helpful that I'm completely not helpful at all So, thank you. Thank you for the question Is there is there oh there's a question from the internet. No. Oh, no, okay anybody else. Okay, great Is there an FBI agent? Yeah, you know, you have a drink. Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah. Yeah, why not? Yeah Yeah, so this under us. I'm sure I'm sure there's people from some some government organization at this place So, you know, let's get a drink later together. Okay. Let's have one. Thank you very much Thank you so much. Don't forget to help us all to clean this all up. Thank you