 And so it's really funny because now I have the other Anna in my adult life. But this is the other Anna who will be leading this wonderful salon for all of us. For those of you whose first time it is at Culture Hub, we are the Art and Technology Center at LaMama. We were founded in a partnership between LaMama and the Seoul Institute of the Arts in 2009. We have education programs, art and technology programs, research initiatives, global community programs, and our annual festival where you are right now. If you have not signed our mailing list, I really strongly encourage you to do so. We don't share it with anyone and we have a lot of really exciting programs coming up. And I think that is all I have to say. So thank you so much for coming and I will hand it over to the Anna. Thank you. How's everybody doing? Good. I was just saying I was so busy getting people to come upstairs that I actually didn't even think about what I wanted to say. But yeah, tonight's going to be fun. So we have about four different people and also organizations that are going to be presenting and discussing their work. And it's all sort of commentary on surveillance sort of technologies, examining what surveillance sort of means in our lives. And I'm very excited. They're going to be some great performances. So thank you all for coming. And so unfortunately, well, not unfortunately, our first presenters are going to be my students, but unfortunately one of them has bronchitis. And so she was not able to come tonight. So I'm actually going to present a couple pictures that she sent along about her project in particular. So my students who are here at Paulette and Travis and Bianca is the one who can't be here tonight. They're doing an amazing project that's documenting public space and looking at particularly the relationship between public space and the health and wellness of our communities. And Bianca's project is looking at, it's called NYPD Get Off of Me. And it's looking at police brutality and documenting sites of police brutality specifically in communities of color in New York City. So do we have those photos available to take a look at? Yeah, okay, great. Okay, so the site, all of the students are documenting five public spaces in New York City. And the site that Bianca chose to share with you all today is the site where Amadou Diallo was murdered. And so what they're looking at in the photos is they're taking pictures of the surrounding community to get an idea of who is living there, who's using the spaces. We can go to the next photo. And this is actually the building in Amadou Diallo was shot in front of this building. Can keep going. Is that, that's your photo, isn't it? I think maybe go to the next photo. That's her photo as well. Hold on one second. Yeah, that third one. That's all right. So Bianca, what she chose to do to sort of commemorate the sites of where police brutality happened was she used, so she is using an adinkra symbol. And what she's doing is taking photos with people holding the symbol in front of the site where the police brutality has happened. And so this was, I believe, this is her friend who came along with her to help document the site. And so then what happens after the sites have been documented is we're creating sort of an online media archive of all of these particular sites. So people will be able to, like, virtually look on a map where these sites are and then see the corresponding pictures to the sites. So that is, Bianca would have done a much better job presenting her project. But that's the overview of her project. And do we have one more photo for her, Esso? Well, I think that's a repeat. That's fine. We can move on. We can move on to the next one. So Bianca can't be here. Those are her photos. But we will turn it over now to Paulette. Hello. You could just flip through my photos. They're just on the building. I don't have a specific thing to say for each one. Well, I'll talk about my project. I'm basically documenting abandoning school buildings in New York City. The purpose of documenting these spaces is to explore the relationships between the abandoned buildings and the surrounding communities. My objective is to provide comprehensive information about the demographics of these communities and how it affects the public resources available, as well as to demonstrate the importance of community surveillance in protecting public goods and services. The pictures that were up is of PSY-86 in Hamilton Heights on 145th Street. The school was built in 1901 and was closed in 1975. It was bought by the Boys and Girls Club in the 1980s, but they just started doing renovations on it this fall. And I didn't even know about it until I went to take the pictures that I saw, the cranes and the construction workers. What was interesting in me documenting these spaces is that there's almost no information available. When I was trying to find the official reason the school was closed, it was more hearsay. Oh, there was violent attacks or problems with the building code, but I thought it was interesting that I couldn't find a real reason. In researching the reasons of the school and why they remained empty so long, I found more questions than answers, and I just thought there should be a way to make the information more accessible to the public. You're playing with public funds, so you should have public information. The common link between all the schools, that was just one in Hamilton Heights, another one also in Harlem, and one in Grand Concourse in the Bronx. The common link in all the schools is the demographics. They're all predominant minority communities and low income. The questions I came up with that actually need to be answered is how do we empower the public communities to take actions in protecting public goods and services? Why are all these schools, why are all these abandoned schools located in minority communities? How can the public afford to have an empty school building for 39 years? With issues of overcrowding, it just didn't make any sense to me. And two of the five schools that are being renovated, well, none of them, the two that are being renovated are the schools. They're turning it into affordable housing. So where are these children going to go to school? Yeah. So that's basically it. I just have one question because I am looking for another space because it's hard to find the abandoned building does not list for the school. Does anyone have any abandoned school buildings in their community that they know of? Thank you. Okay. That would be great. That would be great. And that's about it. One of my interests is education and equity in education. And again, finding information on the statistics, I realized it's heavily politicized. So I wasn't getting any straight answers and I'm like, how am I going to present information that is basically just hearsay and conflicting statistics? And so I thought, well, abandoned school buildings will be easier and it wasn't. It's the same issue of basically information. So, yes, definitely. Yes, exactly. Well, the name of the class is New Media Activism, but I'm actually a film production major. So, I don't know. It's a part of a grant. Kind of both or neither. I don't know how to answer that. Okay. A lot of schools get graded through the DOE and so if they get a bad enough grade, they're closed down. And I don't know if that goes as far back as some of these buildings, but that would be an interesting thing and maybe if... I don't know how much the Freedom of Information Act can get you, but if you can look at DOE records or... Yeah, I... It's very strange. I went to the City Hall Library and I didn't have any information before... Well, after 1960. And so they were telling me to go to community boards, which is great, but that's... I'll take way more time than I have in the semester to do. So, I'm still kind of seeing what information I can find, but it's been difficult. And I'm going to... Travis. Hello, hello. Good afternoon. I'm Travis and I'm a student at SUNY Empire State College. My project revolves around the loss of culture in New York City in recent years. And the channel I'm going through to explore this topic is New York City's parks and how many of them get a lot of attention by means of lowering crime rate and opening programs for students and adults, keeping them open beyond regular business hours or bigger programs, just to keep the interest alive and to keep people using these green spaces. So, as I discussed this, I'd like you to keep in mind the question, how would you define green space? This is a picture that's posted in almost every New York City park. Basically, it's rules telling you what you can, can't do, you can't barbecue. The parks are open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. And this one in particular is posted on Rupert Park, which is on the Upper East Side. Down the block from another park that didn't have a sign posted, I guess it was ripped down, but both parks are within two blocks of each other. You can go on to the next photo if you can. You can keep scrolling. So, these two parks are very, they're small in size, nothing like Riverbank State Park and nothing like Central Park. However, one of them gets more attention than the other by means of cleanliness, by means of New York City Police patrol, and Rupert Park actually gets community patrol. So, parents who live in the area are able to take turns. It's kind of like a neighborhood watch. The other park down the block the other park down the block doesn't get the same amount of attention. However, that park, this is the picture that I need. Thank you. That park has never really seen crimes in the last two or three years. It could be that its placement is near a hospital. It could just be where it's placed. However, Rupert Park with all of the attention that it gets, it has seen a crime, and actually two days ago there was a shooting right outside of the park which is right across the street from the 96th Street train station on the 6th train line. So, my project basically what I tried to do is I tried to explore by doing research on organizations like the New York City Restoration Project which is run by Bette Midler. I think it was started a couple of years ago. It keeps in mind how we can keep parks restored and what programs we can offer to keep people interested in utilizing the green spaces so that way they're not offered up to land developers and that is another big issue that we're facing now in 2014 the loss of green spaces to developers from the Midwest and countries like China and many countries in Europe. Another project for public spaces they work to save the establishment however, as much as they try to bring awareness through social media forums and small community developments like little programs, little student films that have been created to just keep interest alive not much gets done because after all money trumps in many areas. In building on this project I looked for inspiration and I found inspiration in a project that was started that revolved around AIDS, the AIDS epidemic in 1986 in the city and how that changed a lot of residential areas and the woman who started this project goes by the name of Dr. Mindy Thompson Fully Love she wrote a book called Root Shock and basically explores how major changes in small city neighborhoods even if it's the shutting down of a park or school or any other small business affects the city as a whole and with many, many parks that are in New York City there are hundreds any one of them being shut down can affect the community and then that starts a domino effect and so some of the spaces outside of Rupert Park and the other park that I'm looking at Riverbank State Park and Van Cortland Park who now currently host many programs like horseback riding Central Park offers weddings on weekends and things of that nature but now there are limited resources and there's limited chances to get permits to do many programs at these parks I know that last year at Riverbank State Park there was a performance that was scheduled and proper permits were acquired and the police shut it down five minutes after it began it was a music festival an urban music festival that's how it was labeled online and so that's my project those are the places that I'm looking at and the reason why I asked you guys in the beginning to keep in mind what green space means to you is because this is the question that gets asked often when research is done on these places what does it mean to you to be attacked do you ever think about how it would affect the community if it didn't exist anymore and if not perhaps this is the best time to start thinking about it so thank you give this to someone thank you Travis alright so we're gonna move on to Jonathan Federico and Carmel Pryor who Jonathan graduated from new school media studies program and they're gonna be talking about their project called Surveillance Selfie and I'll let you guys take it from here okay hi I'm Carmel hi I'm Jonathan and we actually we were lucky enough to be interviewed on BK Live last week which was awesome because our Surveillance Selfie project which is mainly on Instagram you can hashtag Surveillance Selfie we'll explain more later smartphones and if you have Instagram or Facebook you can search the hashtag and you can see literally what the project is all about so we thought that instead of you know standing up here and doing like a formal presentation that we would actually show you it's like about 10 minutes show you our interview on BK Live because we think that it was a really good way to introduce the project to you and also to give BK Live a shout out because it's public access media in Brooklyn so and we love that so we'll show that and then we'll do some Q&A and maybe even do some like participatory surveillance selfies together so roll it please thanks Esso cameras, computer pixelation invasion of privacy, control statistics privacy, security freedom darkness of mass I think of global, I think of CIA Edward Snowden, NSA stuff like that comes to mind web, internet hackers passwords username more recently I just think about I'm Muslim so I think about what's been coming up in terms of really Islamic communities neighborhoods, I think of surveillance in a way that phone conversations are being monitored segregation discrimination security insecurity mistrust mistrust or distrust those two people observing mirrors carefulness well selfie is undoubtedly one of those words that will define this moment in human history but can the selfie be political? an online movement called hashtag surveyly let's try that again, thank you that's why we have a co-host called hashtag surveillance selfie wants to spark debate over the implications of mass surveillance in the 21st century they believe the act of using a snap one's reflection in a surveillance camera or image on surveillance footage provides people the opportunity to watch the watcher and think critically about this new age of data collection, data exhaustion and mass surveillance so two New York City based artists are the minds behind hashtag surveillance selfie which will be exhibited at Refest 2014 an arts installation celebrating the convergence of new and old media it can be seen from November 21 to 23 at Culture Hub to talk about how this project affects you and why you need to participate we have Jonathan Frederico thank you for being here with Carmel Pryor, thank you for being here joining us on BK Live so this whole surveillance thing, I'm just shy of being a conspiracy theorist it feels very 1984 you Google something next thing you know you've got ads yes 1984 the novel George Orwell, thank you we did graduated from college right so that is how it feels so tell us why you guys thought that this project was important right okay so we felt that in the 21st century right now it's a very important moment for us to think about surveillance and it's a very pop culture issue as well I remember Snowden came out and he leaked government documents that said that the NSA is watching us in ways like never before you know we all our antennas kind of popped up like what's going on and so Jonathan and I were trying to figure out a way to bring people into the conversation you know we all can't leak government documents but there are other ways that we can think about surveillance on a daily basis not just the government corporations and also surveillance of each other and so that's why we came up with this really cool project so Jonathan we just saw you peeping yourself there doing a selfie in a bodega that was actually that was in Astro Place in Kmart okay yeah so it goes back to that target aisle thing so that being said we think when we hear selfie our media connection is like some Kim Kardashian with the like puckered lips and all that stuff but you guys really how do you bring out the politics of that intersection between surveillance and the selfie well I think you know what's interesting about the selfie right is it's essentially just a self portrait you know it's become something much different in pop culture and it's become popularized via pop culture but all it really is is a self portrait so if you take away Kim Kardashian and you take away obnoxious people at bars taking pictures of themselves with their polytons and you take it at face value all it really is is a self portrait and it's a way of bringing in yourself in conjunction with a place which I think in terms of surveillance is really really really important so I started taking selfies of myself in surveillance cameras and admittedly it started out as something that was somewhat narcissistic it's like picture in picture and I'm on TV it can be meta it can go to a lot of different places it's fun to play with reflections and things like that so at face value it's actually fun and it's interesting and if you're interested in media and photography photography it's a whole it's an entry point to a lot of really interesting creative stuff but then in doing it I became aware and then certainly with a lot of the people that I worked with via the new school and what I had been studying there we all started discussing and conversing on the topic and it brought up a lot of issues of surveillance and it tapped into a lot of the moods and feelings we were having at the time so do you think that the average person out there though really has a good idea of how much they're being watched I don't think so so the video clip that you showed were just some like six interviews that we've done and most of them said that they don't really think about it on a daily basis and that's kind of the point of surveillance it's hidden it's seamless and I think what was important with the selfie as well is the smart phone component so even the smart phone can be seen as a surveillance camera of sorts you know like it's tracking your data if you have your GPS on when you are uploading things on Facebook or Twitter you know that is also a way where your data is being surveilled as well and sold to corporations and you know the ads that are up on Google and so most people don't but then we also had a really interesting interview with a young woman who is Muslim and for her in New York and the surveillance of Muslims in New York it was very present for her and it was something that she thought about more so than maybe others so it kind of depends on who you are but I think our project is also a playful way for people to think about it doesn't necessarily always have to be so serious in a way where you can create a poster and put that in the image and you can play within the frame of the photo that you're taking you can think about digital surveillance in a way that's different so it's kind of an invitation to do something you guys have had this thinking about this now so I wonder what separates the person who and if it's the question is, is it possible to not participate in this sort of surveillance culture have you bumped into any people outside of putting like aluminum foil on their heads to keep people from talking to them are opting out of this thing and like is there a way to stay off the grid surveillance wise? That's a really good question I think if you live in a big city like New York it's going to be really difficult to do that because our streets are constantly being surveyed if not by DOT and by surveillance that a private building puts up for example in front of their doorway so if you truly want to live in a situation where you are not at all being surveilled you certainly cannot go online and I think living in a major metropolis like New York or really any American city is probably not going to be advantageous to achieving that like a born style you know if you pay with cash and those are always my favorite movies when the guy comes out of the subway and he's in Times Square and you see him and five seconds later they're just enveloped and you just become a part of that human wave like a mass I think even if you did you'd have to be really sci-fi about it and you've got like some alternate online existence or rather you know persona but you're hiding yourself I think it's almost impossible it is almost impossible and like what Jonathan was saying especially in this urban environment where there are surveillance cameras everywhere and if you want if you're an artist and you want to do anything to promote yourself or your work you have to be online Facebook, Twitter you know all of those things you have to you know be on so I think what Surveillance Selfie does as well is it creates an opportunity for people to reimagine what they can do with the surveillance and the data they're contributing you know there's a lot of fun things that people are doing where they're kind of hacking Facebook where like for a week or so they'll put something completely like anti to who they really are as a person on Facebook as their status for example and they will start following maybe companies that they would never follow just to see what would happen using the tools of the master to tear down his own empire I don't know because you can't really do that so wait is it a problem then or is it just a condition of the modern life if it's so ubiquitous and you can't escape it it can't be a problem we're all here right well I think that's a really good point I think it's really difficult to look at an issue like surveillance and identify it as good or bad as a problem or not or a solution I think the the way that we generally and really doing this project I really started to pull myself back because you know you have a tendency to want to go to this place like and they're watching you and they're doing this you know what I mean and you want to get all like this is what I want to say and rightly so because there are instances where it's gone too far where it has hurt I think people and societies and communities and in many ways but I think at the same time we also have to realize that it can be a tool for positive and for good and so let's look at the whole situation let's think about what surveillance is but then also too in the digital space let's kind of realize what's happening I think a little bit more and realize there are two places that we exist in the world the digital and in the physical and what do you look like and how you act and how far are we able to take what we interpret from this footage and from this data how do we interpret it that's really where the crux of the problem is I think it's really about thinking critically about what is online about you I remember we were talking about something where there was a 19 year old and an article who talked about how she smoked so much marijuana and we were like she will never get a job because when people Google her that article is going to come up going forward in the future so I think that we've all gotten very comfortable with being super duper open so much sharing possibly over sharing I think for me what I see and I want to know what your future plans are for this project of course but I feel like it'll just make people think more critically is that what you wanted? I would say that's probably our main goal is to just create awareness about what you are contributing yourself in terms of what you were saying the 19 year old and smoking weed probably don't want to put that online but even it has larger implications as well in terms of our place in society and how much do we want to be monitored or not you know part of it is about safety but then part of it is also about privacy and so you know what are we willing to give up and not give up and I think for us it's like it's a really interesting project to think critically but it's also for play and for protest at the same time I love the fact that we're all dying for playing for protest hashtag playing I'm tweeting that expression immediately Last 45 seconds so I want you to let folks know how they can participate in hashtag surveillance selfie and how I can say it How you can participate I challenge we all challenge people to get out there with your smart phone and really anytime you feel like you're being surveyed whether that's online or in the physical world take a picture and try to invoke that feeling into the picture or take a screenshot you know on your computer or on your phone simply upload it to Instagram or Facebook or both and hashtag it surveillance selfie and that's how you can that's easy I don't have to download anything you don't have to download anything but they won't be tracking us and if you can do it by tomorrow we'll try to include you in our exhibit at Refest so we're gonna leave you with some food for thought before you gotta hear it doesn't that turn you guys into the people who are surveilling the people who are noting the surveillance that was the goal it was just to make us powerful you figured them out Brian what can I say doctors evil we are subverting what surveillance was meant for now we are turning it around on you that's what it is thank you so much for joining us guys I'm really excited about your project indeed indeed so as you saw in the video it's pretty simple you just look on your iPhone smartphone computer whatever search the hashtag surveillance selfie and you can see what we've started and what we've created and it's been really amazing experience I started taking pictures friends with us who are in the graduate program at the new school started taking pictures in surveillance cameras we've had people from Ethiopia Brazil all over the world continue and take pictures and it's important I think on two levels number one this is a public art project we used in some of our surveillance selfies in artists work his name is James Bridal and they can show you they'll bring up a thing of James Bridal's work in just a second but we took pictures in surveillance cameras in a Rorsch map that's what he created and we were able to take selfies in those and yes there it is here we are James Bridal's Rorsch map served as a basis of what we did it's a public art project that builds on other public art projects and conversations about surveillance yeah just quickly because I think this would be really fun for you guys to do even tonight when we go and see the projection that Anna's going to do later outside so this is Rorsch map dot com backslash NYC obviously and this is live New York City Department of Transportation footage right now so that's the corner of Halston and Broadway and this is oh they're both Halston and Broadway I also wanted Halston and Lafayette but anyway if you go to Rorsch map dot com there are over a hundred different cross streets that you could look up in all of the boroughs so if you're standing somewhere and you're like I wonder if there's a traffic camera here you could just go to that website on your phone look it up and you could just take a snapshot on your phone of you in the image so we actually took some really cool photos one day he wore bright blue I wore bright red we went into the middle of the street and we stood there and like made really big it was pretty cool and so that was another really interesting way to kind of make art and make it playful the surveillance of ourselves yeah I don't know do you know how many surveillance cameras there are in New York City both I guess I actually don't know off the top of my head I don't think that we could know and if you include your smartphone how many does that add without the smartphone without the smartphone well I don't know I honestly don't know the answer to that question I feel like if I gave you I feel like I could probably Google it right now and I feel I kind of feel like it would be a lie I don't think it would be the true number so I think that's another important reason why we need to start to talk about it I think we need to encourage those who are doing the surveilling to be more open and transparent about it it doesn't have to be a bad thing if you saw in the interview a lot of the people that were we asked about surveillance they were giving contradictory statements security, invasion of privacy but you know safety those are things that are opposite of one another so people have conflicting feelings about surveillance I think they see it as something that's necessary in society but at the same time they're afraid of it and they're nervous and they don't understand why we even had people and we're going to do more with more of the interviews they were fascinating and they go on for a really long time but we even talked about people who wanted to participate in the project who felt almost as if that they were wrong in trying to take a snapshot of the surveillance footage and the exhaust that was given off by them when they did catch a camera of themselves in it they felt like oh no I don't know if I should be doing this what do you mean it's you, you're there they're taking pictures of you you have every right to be able to do it but why does that feeling come up and we want people to explore that as well and hopefully in doing that we understand that there really isn't a reason why we should be afraid perhaps the reason that people have that feeling or that sentiment is that there are situations where that would actually create issues for example at an airport right so surveilling the surveillance systems in those locations actually have a different implication yeah it feels scary I mean we had a friend of ours that came last night to the exhibit and she just gave a short anecdote about how she was I think in her place of business she works at a corporation and she just wanted to take one in a simple surveillance camera by the elevator and as soon as she was getting ready to do it she's like oh my gosh what will this mean will I be pulled over by security in the building will my boss find out what does this mean so I definitely it's it can feel very dangerous but I think that's good because like Jonathan was saying it's your image and so part of our project is about taking back some kind of semblance of control of how much you're being monitored in physical and digital space and you know kind of recognizing watching the watcher and saying hey I see you watching me what's up and you know I think people also in our interviews were talking about how they would change their behavior once they realized they were being watched in physical space and you know like when you walk into a CVS or Dwayne Reid I personally feel this because they have the TV like as soon as you walk through the doors and the TV is there and you're like oh yeah that's me oh wait am I actually going to steal something I don't know I don't know I guess it just kind of makes me feel like well maybe I was going to steal something why are they watching me oh my god and I think that translates into the digital space too you know are we really our authentic sales sales on Facebook and Twitter probably not that even mean so I think it's not just big brother surveillance it's also surveillance of one another online and knowing that you're being watched by people and you know maybe how that kind of puts your identity in distress too yeah so and I think that's what makes our project kind of ironic is you know we're asking you to post your surveillance selfie on Instagram on social media use those platforms I think one of the things that I noticed too and I don't know has anybody here on their phone ever received a message like I was like on abcnews.com once and they said ABC news would like to know your current location and I got like a pop up and I'm like okay why does ABC news want to know if you must know I'm on the can you know but why do you need to know my current location moments like that the moment not so much the image itself and how artistic it was was important to me it was that moment that question concerned me because I was like are you gonna now send me stories based on where I live and what I know well if you must know I have two nieces they're Muslim American as much as they are Italian American and I am very interested in Muslim issues via them I may not search those stories I may not live in a Muslim country I may not be Muslim but I do care about that but does that mean you're gonna my news based on what I'm searching for based on you watching me you watching me is not necessarily giving you the right information so those moments those surveillance selfie moments where your digital self is giving information to somebody and they're using it to do something or to feed you something or to give you information it's just as important as anything else yeah just sort of the duality of the use of the data which is I think there's a little bit of sort of a double standard when it comes to things like that in other words when you do get a pop up from some source that you don't necessarily want to interact with it's an annoyance it's a little bit it's a little bit unnerving that some device knows where you are without your interaction however there is a part of it for example I landed here in New York City this morning and immediately went to my weather app to see what the weather was going to be like and having that location service be able to immediately feed me the New York City weather was a convenience so there's some duality to the annoyance and convenience some duality to sort of the use of the information versus kind of being surveyed or watched when you don't feel as though that you deserve to be kind of tracked and have you guys looked at how and where there's where it's okay I guess and then where where we delineate between where it's okay and a convenience and where it's not and it becomes more of an invasion because I know we have to wrap up okay so I don't think I personally want to trade my convenience for like the invasion of my privacy or like larger implications of terms of freedom and liberty but again it's hard because the smart phone device itself it helps and it hurts you know it's an extension of ourselves but then it's also it can invade our privacy and it can work against us which is why it was really important for us to actually use the smart phone as a way to get into the conversation so I mean it's not I think just like the interviews it's not we don't necessarily want to condemn all of surveillance because we do see you know some of the benefits but we also don't want to be on the other end of the spectrum either so I kind of feel like I'm being very diplomatic and President Obama right now because he's really good at that so yeah I don't really know the specific answer I don't know a few I think there is a convenience to it there is I think you know highlighting that highlighting the convenience and taking those pictures in a playful way would be what I would think would be a great way to show that through our project play in protest is a wonderful thing that Carmell came off the top of her head during that interview because it is about play in protest and certainly that may not serve to play but it certainly does because there is like a nice okay well I don't have to think about you know what the weather is going to be our change my thing it just knows that to capture that convenience certainly is a positive thing and I think it's a positive thing of being surveilled and it definitely fits within the realm of our project but again we hand this over to you this is a public art project it is not we don't own it it's it was meant for all of you and if you look on the hashtag the people that contributed some we know some we don't and that's what's so awesome about it so we're jumping into the collective conscience so we encourage you all to do so Thank you Thanks guys I think also an important thing I mean there's so much to talk about with surveillance but I mean one thing we didn't get into is also like privilege you know and depending surveillance and how we are surveilled is influenced a lot by certain kinds of social cultural economic racial privilege so and always taking that into consideration when we're talking about surveillance is super important alright so we're going to change from a sort of a traditional presentation format to a performance by a very good friend of mine her name is Una Aya Asato aka Exotic Other from Brown Girls Berlesque and she's going to be doing a piece from her show and you're all in for a treat she's an amazing wonderful performer so we're going to get ready for that ladies and alright so the last presenters that I am going to bring up tonight are we are very very fortunate to have the illuminator crew with us here tonight and so they are going to come up and talk to you about their work and also show you some examples as well so we have to use the mic because we're live streaming is that the story hello hello that's the word is this work there's two it feels like a little overkill it's a small group we'll amplify it what the heck so I think Grayson is going to pull up some photographs so that you can get a sense of the illuminator project I was going to just give a brief intro and there's two short clips of video to talk about a couple of different projects we've been working on recently the illuminator grew out, emerged out of Occupy Wall Street movement there was a bunch of projections on the Verizon building on November 17th 2011 the Occupy Bat signal was born there about 20,000 people were streaming over the pedestrian walkway and some messages and some call and response happened on the bridge walkway and that kind of went out very broadly we used a big projector, a cinema projector 12,000 lumens projector that sort of flat gray building for that and after that in the aftermath of that came up with the idea of having a mobile intervention unit or spectacularization machine which is a 40 conaligned van which you can't see here but maybe we can see it somewhere I don't know click through some images and yeah sure scroll scroll around, this has been our tumbler for the last well 2011 so three years we've been doing this at this point that's the van there we go so it's a 40 conaligned van it's been hacked, we worked with the Madagascar Institute to sort of hack the van and put in a scoping platform that has a bunch of gear in there and we can kind of swing it around and do these interventions in public space and obviously there are interventions in the public space itself and they live on social media some of the images and videos go travel fairly far so they'll be seen by five, six hundred thousand people or a million people and they've been aired on television so they propagate it it's a way of intervening I think as I see it in the terrain of the dominant media spectacle that we see all the time and how do you use or leverage limited resources to get messages out that are otherwise ignored or perspectives that are otherwise hidden from view including climate change as something that isn't talked about in the context that I think we would want to talk about it in terms of a challenge to the entire social and economic order really so we try to do this kind of work and we've been doing it for three years I think that's about all I have I would have to say about the overall set up of the project and that sets us up to watch a video from Montreal, is that cued up or excellent so we'll watch this and then Grayson we'll talk a little bit about the process that went into this in Montreal over the summer and then we'll look at another briefly some video from a more recent project which is directly about Surveillance State which is more of a theme for this evening we'll watch this and then let Grayson talk okay yeah there we go so actually could you cut the volume sorry about that cool thank you yeah so just to contextualize what's going on here last summer we teamed up with the Hemispheric Institute and I embedded myself in Quebec for a month and worked with student activists so what had happened there was there were all the student movement protests around 2012 sort of around the same time as Occupy Wall Street and the government was trying to raise tuition and then the students and the people of Montreal mobilized in this amazing way like a quarter of the city was involved at one point and the end result was that they told them they were gonna like not raise tuition but then they implemented this law P6 and P6 mandates that you can't protest with more than 50 people at one time without a permit from the police and you have to send a map of where you're going you have to give them a list of the names of the people involved these kind of things and if you don't do that you are in direct violation you have to pay like a $500 fine so in this case we thought it would be interesting to try and circumvent this law using new media technology so what we did was we went there and we recorded a bunch of the student activists on a green screen sort of recreating these moments and we captured their signage and turned it into a video and we sort of like as you saw maybe in the beginning compiled it so that there's this virtual protest being staged back in the architectural realm of Montreal back in actually like very close to where this is and throughout the city so it was a way for us to get around this law while still bringing like the spectacular attention to it and it was really interesting we almost got deported by the Montreal Police Department and this here is out in front of UQAM which is the University of Quebec in Montreal and it was really interesting to get people's perspectives it was really great opportunity all around and so that's sort of a piece of what we do one of many interventions and I guess do you want to say anything more about that before we move on to the oracle thing okay cool so then and you're going to talk about the oracles present okay cool so we have one more video that we'd like to show and you can see this like virtual protest taking place oh and on a blue casein call means we are more than 50 so this isn't sort of direct antagonism with the p6 law cool so we'll show the video you want to talk over it or go first start with the first actually on the show today ideas around privacy what's been taken and what we've actually given so in Utah in a place called bluffdale it's about 20 miles south of Salt Lake City there's a building and it's sole purpose is to store secrets anyway that data center in Utah well we have a better idea of what might be stored there thanks to Edward Snowden and his trove of classified data from the national security agency and what we do know is that it's the first data storage facility in the world designed to store a yadda bite so to put this into perspective if your personal computer has like 60 gigabytes of storage a yadda bite is 16 trillion personal computers I think you can lower the volume keep maybe the soundtrack going less such a good soundtrack huh my name is chris awesome illuminator and this was a project we did for art not places at the new school collectively as a group we're all quite interested in our security online and a lot of the revelations that Edward Snowden made recently in 2013 so we wanted to make a project around that issue because this festival with new school which is putting art in the public place was around the theme of free so the idea for this project was like we want to think about the information the very private information sometimes that we give away for free when we sign on to the internet and social media so in order to do that what we did was use actually the same tools as the evil doers in this case like the NSA which is we sort of read people's apis or sweep their information on 14th street and then projected that into the into the public sphere which is what essentially what they're doing already depending on what their security settings are but if we could find all that information through Google searches and Facebook then basically it's already made public we were just making it very public and we do that as an intervention in the hopes that like people will be like well wait a second what am I doing think about where your information is going or how much information we can access by just carrying a smartphone and keeping your wifi on it's connecting to other servers and stuff that people can actually access and use so that's essentially the project and we wanted to show today because this project is very much still work in progress this video actually is more of assembly and it's just kind of b-roll going forward at this point so we love to hear a little bit more perspectives on what other people think about intervening with people using this kind of method or approach I would just add a couple of things to that one is not only to freak people out but beyond that to provide them with some information about how they can protect their privacy which we were also distributing that information on the flyers and on the landing page of the site that you guys created as well so that there's links to steps that you can take to kind of protect yourself a little bit that is as much about calling out a problem but also positing some kind of remedy and simple things that you can actually take so that and they also these guys were taking snapshots of what they were projecting and tweeting it to the people who they would get their twitter handle and tweet it at them and then people were tweeting back like what the fuck are you doing it was kind of an interesting intervention in that way so we would love to hear perspectives on the ethics of that I guess or what people think about all that oh yeah we were what they were doing as I understand it was that they could geographically scrape an entire area like who and find out who was tweeting or posting an instagram within a sort of radius and then once they had a name we had a couple of people in the back of the van just like google searching and finding anything they could very quickly and then posting it which was the actual goal which was never met was to get somebody in the space to see themselves projected but it's kind of it's pretty hard to do that actually we got pretty close but we kind of think that on 14th Street they're just like jumping into the subway or something and missing that so then we thought oh we can tweet it at them like at least they'll see a projection of their information back at them and that was really interesting and weird but yeah any ideas be projecting some a drone video art project here and you can take a look at the van and like you know scope our equipment and ask us more stuff there too if that sounds interesting to you right around the corner yeah I was just wondering like personally how the project is amazing and like personally what are the risks that you're taking when you do this kind of have there been surveillance or harassment of you all and yeah why don't you handle that one we it's kind of a funny dance with the authorities because it's it is actually explicitly illegal to project the amount of light that we project but it's a law that's a little bit a little bit buried your average cop doesn't know about these kind of laws it's not like a they do now right great hello and my PD but so we kind of do this dance we all wear like uniforms when we do this we I forgot to bring mine yeah it's kind of like union look we're operating out of a commercial vehicle a lot of distraction tactics say we're art students we're doing a project we're doing this and that we did there's been I guess three instances where people like there was the first the Verizon building action like no no people on the roof were rested or something the only two times that illuminator crew members were specifically rested were for once we projected on Bloomberg's private residence and that ended in an arrest the second time was two months ago little over two months ago Grayson and I and someone else were rested for projecting on the Metropolitan Museum of Art we were jamming I guess it was a fundraiser right for yeah David Coke had it was a gala yeah so David H. Coke gave the Metropolitan Museum of Art $65 million to build a new plaza in front of the museum and that's now named the David H. Coke Plaza and has his name chiseled in stone in various you know it's there's a lot of in my opinion ethical concerns around that issue and so we were aiding and on the ground protest was happening with light and were rested and so we're now they actually impounded our projector for over two months two months ten days we just got that back three days ago and we are still kind of wrapped in a lawsuit around that it's interesting but yeah I guess like I don't know I'm kind of going on for a while about that but it's we generally don't have problems you know it's kind of this more like who's in office also like if we're aiding if we're aiding a protest seems to be more of a situation right but it's really hard to tell like yeah it's protected speech I mean as our understanding is that there's a couple statues that are on the books one is like if you're shining in someone's window that's an act of trespass and two is if you're advertising that's illegal you can't post illegal advertisements which is what they were charged with and it was dismissed because we weren't advertising so those are the two statues that are actually operative and otherwise we're yeah that would be well that interfering with commerce I don't think that that's ever come up our lawyers have researched it and they've written us letters and this is what they understand it to be protected speech you know it is subject to a permitting regime which we're not getting permits for it so we're in violation of a permitting regime that's different than being involved in a crime it's a violation not a crime like a parking ticket anyway technically that's sort of what's going on I'm curious as to how you determine which projects you want to be involved with and if there are certain projects that maybe you have declined to give your aid to why you decided that you didn't want to be involved so we collectively decide I guess at our meetings talk about you know sometimes it comes up through email first and we just kind of all respond yeah sounds great let's do it if it's something that needs more discussion then we'll talk about it at a meeting let's see in terms of things that we've declined as far as I know I'm a newer member and as far as I know the only times we've declined this year have mostly been because we've been already booked we've been really busy doing lots of things and sometimes people are asking us to help out when we're already doing something else but you guys maybe can talk about other that's yeah funny story so funny story involving Woody Harrelson and his bad play bullet for Adolf he made a play called bullet for Adolf he was doing it on Broadway or off Broadway and we do work the way we're able to sustain this is we do work for hire we've done work for Greenpeace and Sierra Club and we also do work like what we showed you which is just our own work and we do collectively so we kind of like run this gamut and this fine line between a worker-owned cooperative business and an activist art collective and we kind of operate on both of these modalities and as part of that we've done we were contacted I was contacted through Woody Harrelson's people he's been an activist and he's like hung a banner from the Golden Gate Bridge about climate change and kind of earth-firsty actions he's a super stoner I know people that work with him but he contacted us he was like hey I got this idea I really want you to like promote our play it's called bullet for Adolf what I really want you guys to do is roll around town for a few nights and project Hitler is coming in various locations and he actually said this is Slander I could get sued for this but I actually did say this he was like you know you should go places where like a lot of Jewish people hang out like Lincoln Center and like go project Hitler is coming and we declined you're going to mention what's going on next is that cool thank you guys so much okay so there is going to be a projection that happens in about maybe 10 to 15 minutes and these the fabulous illuminator crew is going to go get that set up and so what you're going to see is it's kind of it's like raising awareness it's commentary on use of drones and specifically the MQ-1 Predator drone which is currently the most commonly used drone in combat missions and so you're going to be seeing a split screen and on the left side of the screen is actually an amazing project by Shobun Bale who's actually here tonight and incorrect me if I'm wrong or you want to add anything else but so his project is actually looking at photos that have been uploaded from drone strike locations and it's specifically looking at the digital interfaces I want to actually read your description so that I don't mess this up so the project stems from the living under drones report of 2012 as well as reports on the marked increase in the usage of anti-anxiety and antidepressant medications in regions where US military drones first showed their presence and so he's been interested in looking at the engaging in the mundane everyday action of scrolling through images on flicker and so the project extended into how people and communities are represented through our colonial interfaces from a drone's eye peering at the architecture of one's home to an iPhone fluidly sliding their family's photos past us each interface reiterating itself as a mode of remote colonialism so that's on the left hand side of the screen and then on the right hand side of the screen is actually footage from predator drone strikes and so it's putting you know it's trying to demystify sort of like the idea of drones because we hear about them a lot but we don't actually ever see their shape and then we actually very rarely are kind of put in direct contact with folks that are living in under the kind of threat of everyday drone strikes so that's sort of a brief overview of what you're going to see you guys want to head down to the gallery I think there's another talk starting at 7 is that right awesome yeah so we can stick around here you can head down to the gallery and then when the projection is ready we'll make an announcement if folks want to come out and take a look at that so thank you guys so much