 So hi everyone, thank you so much for stopping by and coming to this workshop. We'd like to introduce Dr. Brenda Neil, the Dean of the FPA. So I'm going to read her bio, but Brenda Neil was a point. Sorry. No. I got sent your bio. I know it's always the most awkward thing. So Brenda Neil was appointed as Dean of the Faculty of Public Affairs in October on October 1, 2020. She also holds a position as professor in the Department of Political Science. Her research addresses several topics, including political behavior and gender and politics, focused largely on Canada. Her most recent research has examined gender and party leadership and the role of feminist identification and shaping support for sovereignty among women in Quebec. She has held several short grants and recently held the Thelma Margaret Hort Fellowship in Women and Society at the University of Calgary. Between 2017 to 2020 she served as English language editor of the Canadian Journal of Political Science. Thank you so much for being here and introducing us. Thank you, Professor McKnight, but I'm going to call you Steffi. Yes. Thanks to you and to Julia Chan for all your hard work in bringing this important event together. I think it's a, it's a pleasure for me to be asked to welcome everyone today to the, to the workshop. Before I begin, though, I just want to take a moment to acknowledge that Carleton University is located on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Nation. Although I think we might be attending from different locations. I think it nevertheless remains important for us to recognize the traditional indigenous lands on which we reside. So the topic for today's workshop is inspiring in its innovativeness. I mean, research creation combines creative and academic research practices. The artistic expression in a variety of art forms were able to further our understanding of interdisciplinary scholarly work. And I think this is, as I said, this is so innovative. Through performances, satirical videos and a podcast, Cam Hunters seeks to reveal and interrogate the presence of surveillance in all its forms in our lives. Artists slash scholars offer a unique way to look at the increasing presence of that surveillance in Airbnb is in particular, but in other forms including individual citizens recording events on their smartphones for social media. This practice based research allows for a new way of sharing and increasing knowledge using art practice theoretical concepts and scholarly research. It's this merging of these two elements that I find so innovative. Research, then are not always separate entities and together, Steffi McKnight and Julia Chan engage scholars and I think the public alike in on key ethical political social cultural issues like really important issues in today's world. And these research connections are made in between media technology, art and culture. So I think this, this research creation has such a significant potential in the Academy. And it's for this reason that the Dean's office in the Faculty of Public Affairs has lent its support to this particular research project. Professor McKnight has also created Proto hive, a Carlton hub for communication, where creative researchers are able to share their ideas their insights and resources to ask questions about research ethics, and to come together to discuss their work so embedded in all of this is this sort of form of communication. Today's event is part of the research series and ongoing celebration of the diversity of research that's produced in the Faculty of Public Affairs. We have a whole set of events taking place this month. This week we have the FPA research excellence award public lecture by political science professor Bill Cross, William Cross, he'd be talking about who is the political party in trying to understand the complexity of the actors involved in political parties and their different roles. So you can visit Carlton.ca slash FPA slash events to get more information about these different events. And thank you to Stephanie Knight and Julia Chan and your research into surveillance that's presented today's workshop to cam hunters. Your research is important and integral to the mission of the Faculty of Public Affairs, which is big, and yet I think important to help build better societies and stronger democracies to address regional and global challenges and to enhance and inform public communication. So thank you for inviting me to introduce you today and to welcome everybody to the workshop. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, now I'm going to share my screen. So thanks so much for inviting us to speak and for that lovely introduction. I'm just going to run quickly through the structure of today's workshop. First we're going to start with some introductions we started with that already and then Stephanie and I are going to introduce ourselves and talk a little bit about what camp hunters is. And then we're going to show our first video, which is nine minutes long. And then we're going to talk about some of our other projects, including a podcast will play a little snippet from that, and another snippet from another video that we made. This concept of disruptive exhibitionism that we've kind of come up with is as a way to kind of think through what we're doing. We'll talk about some critical tools that we're making and then we will go through some ways for you to incorporate research creation into your own, your own practice. And then we're going to ask you to hold all your questions until the end, or put your questions into the chat. And we will, we will come to them at the end of the session so we don't run out of time. Okay, so I'm up first. So my name is Julia champ. And I am a mixed race settler living in Toronto, also known as Toronto. I have long dark hair and light skin and I'm wearing glasses, and I'm also wearing a hat. It's a, it's a black baseball cap with this little logo that Stephanie designed for cam hunters and it's a, it's a cameras. It's a camera. What's what's the word for the shutter in crosshairs. So goes with our with the name of our project cam hunters. So currently I am a postdoctoral fellow here at Carlton University in the Institute of criminology and criminal justice, and I'm also a course instructor I'm currently teaching a course on images crime and I recently completed a my first postdoctoral fellowship at York University in cinema and media studies. My research is broadly concerned with image based sexual abuse and its relationship to cinematic and surveillance cultures. And current my current research project here at Carlton is examining discourses around the, the looker or the perpetrator of image based sexual abuse and the implications of that discourse for policy and legal responses. My name is Stephanie McKnight. I go by Steffi. I am a white settler artist scholar based in Cataraqui Kingston, the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe and the Honoshone, and I have long dark brown hair. I'm also wearing the same hat as Julia described a black baseball cap with the camp hunters logo. I am also I am white skinned, I am wearing glasses and my background is purple with many different picture frames of Pokemon cards and a plant. I have a PhD in cultural studies where alongside Julia that's how we met and my work explores surveillance as a contemporary form of colonialism in Canada. It's actually quite broad I look at surveillance in rural area specifically in Northern Ontario, but my research is rooted in research creation as a methodology for knowledge production so as Dr. O'Neill has already alluded to, I focus mainly on research creation as a research practice and I use it to talk about contemporary events such as surveillance, a queerness and policies and political events that we may be familiar with. I also am a rural camp specialist part of our duos so we have we'll talk about this a little bit later what our specialties are, and I am super excited to be here that's pretty much everything that's really excited about me oh I'm an assistant professor in the Bachelor of Media Production Design that's the that's the key important when I was trying to remember my job my day job what do I do. I'm in camp hunters mode I'm only thinking camp hunters. That's our. Right. So, what is camp hunters camp hunters is a collaborative art media performance and research creation project between me and Steffi camp hunters seeks to reveal and interrogate the increasing presence of surveillance in all its forms in our lives. We use through a range of projects such as performances, creating satirical videos, recording a podcast and offering critical tools, and we are available for consultations performances and exhibitions. And as you can see, down at the bottom, our slogan is vigilance is the new black. Initially it began as one collaborative satirical video that Steffi and I made together and then it slowly kind of brew into a larger collaboration with multiple projects, each of which will run through briefly today. And it started with a kind of mutual interest in surveillance, both Steffi and I, during our doctorates had studied surveillance in different ways, and we also had our own creative practices and we always kind of wanted to find a way to work together. So, we ended up coming together to create this first video, which came out of my research on image based sexual abuse. As I was researching I found, I kept finding articles about how to protect yourself from hidden cameras in Airbnb's. So, in the last few years there had been reports of people in many different countries finding hidden cameras, or surveillance cameras that they were not initially aware of inside the properties that they were renting that weren't initially disclosed to them. And some of these cameras were found in common areas like living rooms and were meant to be for ostensibly for security reasons and some of them were more private spaces like bathrooms and bedrooms and, you know, clearly were for more prurient reasons. So Airbnb did develop a policy on this, stating that owners or renters, I forget what hosts, that's it, hosts need to disclose any cameras they have on the property whether they're turned on or not. And guests also need to disclose whether or not they're putting cameras inside, like using cameras inside, and Airbnb encouraged users to use their messaging feature to ask hosts about the presence of cameras. We came across all these articles with tips on how to protect yourself from these cameras and it just struck us that there was this very strange and absurd tension between, you know, being ostensibly you know you're on vacation it's a pleasurable time and this need to kind of protect yourself from invasive camera technologies. Some articles posited this as this new normal right that it's just a given now that you should sweep your Airbnb rental for cameras. So some of the tips ran from like very simple things like checking, you know, things that look odd. It appeared to be out of place, testing for one way mirrors, to more involved things like downloading apps that that claim to be able to detect cameras, Wi Fi cameras, and even hiring a professional to sweep your, your property before you kind of move in. And we were also really struck by this kind of the sort of neoliberal bent of the articles right so this the sense of having to download the management of this risk of being surveilled onto the individual, and then tasking them with having to root these cameras out in order to enjoy yourself fully So we kind of, you know, we're talking about this and this like came up with this idea of cam hunters you know people you might hire to sweep your space for a camera, and we thought about making this sort of satirical how to video based on some of these suggestions. So I'm going to show that video now. And I apologize there are no subtitles. I'm just going to stop sharing for a moment. I think if we watch it off. Oh yeah we mentioned Vimeo would have bad quality but we could. I'm going to show the actual actual file. It's nine minutes long. So we just entered one of the cutest airbnbs I have ever been to you've got these bells on the door this little plant. So what we're looking at are the ways that airbnb property owners may install surveillance cameras in their properties in their homes and in their bedrooms to surveil their renters either for damages theft or for whatever other creepy reasons. They're not out there, but I have full confidence in this couple they have great reviews, they're super host. That's one of the most important things they have great communications with me. But, you know, you can never be too careful. One of the biggest recommendations that news and media outlets as well as experts and we suggest following is that you do a lot of research in the airbnb and the location and what you're thinking of renting in. I'm thinking about the host. Are they super host they have great reviews they have bad reviews has somebody commented that they found a camera in the past. Are there news articles circulating about incidences where people have found cameras in their airbnbs around that area. If you have questions, ask others if they've stayed there and be familiar with the place and have communication with the host before you do a rent. These will promote some of these conversations before getting into the space. So there was a reporting that there were cameras found in alarm clocks and specifically a couple in Toronto. So we have this alarm clock here. And actually it doesn't look like it's working, but we take it apart. There's batteries batteries are just dead. Yeah, it doesn't really seem like there's any way to have a camera that is apparent looks like a pretty cheap alarm clock. And one of the other recommendations is to shine your cell phone flashlight. And if there's anything sparkling in the darkness, be able to find it but my cell phone, I can't record and take. And at the same time so there's a flashlight here that as they left. Pretty bright so let's see if there's any like reflection. There's anything sparkly. I'm more aware of shining in our little places. This little weird looking elephant over here. Anything hidden within this television. So one of the things that we found is that if you put your finger on to a mirror to check if it's a double sided mirror and that there's someone watching on their side that if you put your finger on the mirror and you see us that there is no space and your two are touching so the reflection and you're touching and that means that there is a potential of another person or another room on the other hand to the space. There is a nice little bathroom. Very cute, cute little window set up shower. There's some, you know, hidden areas to hide things in really nothing. You have these hot lights, they're a little bit inaccessible to get to so I'm not sure how to find anything in there. I'm not quite sure what else I should be looking for in here so this place looks pretty legit. Back to my share. So we shot and edited that in 2018. And some of the footage we shot separately and some of it we shot together, and we wanted to we use we filmed it exclusively on our phones because we wanted that kind of gritty DIY amateur kind of aesthetic, in part because that kind of aesthetic really well I think it's a suggestive of like sort of hidden camera and lateral surveillance you know that idea of the rougher the image, the more authentic or real it is. So that's that project and now I'm going to hand it over to Steffi to talk about a couple of our next. Every time I watch that video I just think of how amateur it really is. And how we purposely aimed it for that, just because of the, the reality like Julia just said about going out and looking with cameras because most people who are traveling don't have like massive technology so that they can do that work so it's it's actually really funny to say that I just had my mic off and I just keep laughing because it's kind of embarrassing, but it's cute. So in terms of disruptive exhibitionism. This is a theme, an idea, a methodology that Julia and I discussed during a writing retreat, a couple years ago we were just sitting in this beautiful cabin, throwing around ideas I was writing a chapter of her dissertation and she was as well and we were, we're both really interested in the idea of empowering exhibitionism by Healy Cascala, and this is really well known in surveillance studies and the, the general premise of it is that people use video surveillance mechanisms like reality television, mobile phones, apps to reclaim empowerment and that they're not using it necessarily for threat or that they're using it to surveil but they're actually using it as a form of counter surveillance on to themselves so they can feel empowered and reclaim their bodies in a surveillance state, but one of the issues that we've seen with that text is that they don't actually talk much about the complexities of race, BIPOC and queer bodies within the idea of empowering exhibitionism and it was mostly centered towards reality television stars which happened to be white when the article was published in 2004. So here's the idea of counter exhibitionism, which is something very that has been shared by Mirzov and the idea of counter visualization as using images and text to reclaim again power either by BIPOC people who would like to use protest images or cameras so that they can feel empowered so there was an interesting example here between two similar methodologies that didn't necessarily speak to one another but also could work well together. And while I was writing my dissertation, I was using the theory of countervisuality but I was using it in retrospect to an article created by Tord Monahan that was written about surveillance art specifically by white producers who were trying to countervisuality but couldn't fully because their work still privileged the white bodies. And in that article he explains that there are ways in which as white people could create that work and the examples that he was giving was being an ally or going to protest and it really was hard for me to hear because I realized that although it tried to challenge privilege it didn't get to the full extent that I as a white person can decide which protest I attend that I can't claim to be an ally. Allyship is not something that can be self possessed, you can't just claim that you're an ally and that you are that your work has to be recognized or that it actually is done and it's possible that you might be an ally in one regard but that you're not fully an ally in the other so for myself at least as a white scholar I found that these two types of theories, although we're getting at a little bit of the crux of the importance of trying to be disruptive when it comes to surveillance that it didn't fully get to that point that there wasn't a guideline for white artists to produce work that would disrupt surveillance in a way that also acknowledged the complexities and the marginalization of BIPOC folk. And I think further to that one of the things that I always thought about is how do white people create artwork or research creation that doesn't necessarily center their privilege if that's even possible. How do the objects we create are in themselves colonial objects because we have the institutions and privilege to create them. So, that was really where disruptive exhibitionism came to be it was the merging of those two theories, in a way that really got to the point of how do we talk about surveillance as not only an event but also as a methodology, the power of surveillance and the ways in which we can use surveillance to be to not only complicate events but also think about ourselves as being embedded in surveillance. How do I myself as a white person what does it mean for me to be in a world where surveillance benefits me, and how do I actually engage and participate in different forms of policing, just being out in the world, and by creating and by making objects that get circulated and have privilege in the cities in which they're circulated. So, that was really where we came up with that idea. And that really led I would say to our probably a more critical work that led to the podcast. And as Julia will talk about later the tools that we were really, we've started by the satirical kind of Airbnb is look at everything everybody can be a victim of Airbnb surveillance. And then, became a lot more aware and complicated what it is to be an actual agent in the surveillance world and also participated in. So, I'm going to show a little clip, we're going to just listen to a little clip of the podcast, the first there's eight there's a season. And let me just grab it up here. The season has, as I mentioned eight episodes and then one introductory episodes where there's technically nine. And the first real episode that we did was on coven 19 life on camera so this was actually pretty much at, I think it came out this podcast maybe an I'm going to say like April or May. So it was pretty much at the point where coven was still fairly new and really impacting labor specifically labor of sex workers in Canada. So I'm going to play a few minutes of this podcast for all of you, I will have to share my screen. You should be able to hear the sound as well. So, as coven hunters, we want to take this opportunity to express our solidarity with the black lives matter protests that have been occurring around the world, and also to encourage our list. Sorry about that I think it's picking up on my. I should, I need to. I think if you're muted we can't hear around the world, including black lives matter.ca, the Toronto protest or bail fund, Justice for Regis, the George Floyd Memorial Fund, the black legal action center, the black health alliance and the black artists network and dialogue. We will include these and more links on our website on the podcast page cam hunters.org slash podcast. Welcome back. This is the first episode of cam hunters the podcast. I'm Steffi and I'm Julia. And I think we're going to get right into it. Julia is going to start off today with a great story for all of you. So, I came across a really interesting website post called a guide to coping with quarantine as a survivor of digital violence. The post was on a law firm's website. The law firm is called see a Goldberg and the lawyer, the head lawyer or what's the name of what do you call a lawyer, who's like the head of the firm. There's a term for that. Anyway, any fans of any what's that lawyer show that everybody watches suits. Yeah, the Harvey of the of the place. Okay. Anyway, the main the head lawyer, Kerry Goldberg specializes in helping victim survivors of digital violence and she herself is actually a victim survivor as well. And her story is told in a really interesting documentary from 2018 called netizens which I encourage. You to check out if you're interested. So the subtitle of the of the web. The web post is the question, how do you cope with being forced to move your entire world onto a device when your device was a vehicle for abuse. So in other words, how does one cope with having to be or or or being more being expected to be more online and more on camera than ever before. And so we're recording this podcast episode in the middle of the COVID-19 global pandemic, where many of us are are currently living in lockdown and if we're lucky doing our jobs from home. And so a lot of us are being asked or even required to spend a lot of time on platforms like zoom or Skype or FaceTime. So much time. Yeah. And I mean, whether it's for work or with your friends or family. This is one of the main ways that we are now communicating. But if you've been traumatized as a result of being recorded or imaged against your will or if you've had recordings or images of yourself circulated publicly against your will. How do you navigate what everybody is now calling this new normal. I see image based sexual abuse as a form of surveillance. So this was my dissertation work. And so if we define surveillance as a kind of concentrated watching with the intent to somehow affect the person that you're watching. I would argue that image based abuse certainly falls into that category because essentially you're watching or using some kind of concentrated attention on images as a way to inflict inflict pain or abuse on somebody else. So it makes perfect sense that people have been or people who have experienced this kind of abuse may not want to be on camera may not want to be recorded. They may feel as if the sense of like a lack of control that they could be made public against their will. And so being asked to be constantly on camera can be triggering or even re traumatizing. So the post and we'll include the link to the post in our show notes. So I'll just give some tips for dealing with this new normal and what really caught my attention in the list of tips was the final tip which was get camera consent. So I'll read from that paragraph. It says practice affirmative camera consent. If you feel comfortable with being on video then by all means do it. Know that you have a choice right now and feel free to exercise that choice with your employer and all the ways the world is asking you to connect. If they feel comfortable with being on video so we don't feel like we always have to bring it up. Also people like to take pictures of virtual meetings happening and post them on social media. Ask the people on your video calls for their consent before even if we're on video with you do not assume we are giving you consent to take our picture or record us. If I didn't tell you it's okay do not assume it is. So I googled the phrase affirmative camera consent, because I'd never heard that before, and I was curious to see if this, if it was a term that people were now kind of using. And the main two sources I found with this article that I'm quoting and various quotations from a therapist named Francesca Rossi who specializes in digital violence. And so I find this idea really interesting because even before this pandemic there had been this creeping sense, at least from my perspective of everything being recorded so you go to talks and the recording with a video camera or an audio quarter. You go to a party or a gathering and someone's taking pictures and putting them up on Facebook, or you're on the street and a cyclist passes you with a camera on their helmet or cars go by with dashboard cams. And of course, you know, CCTV cameras which are everywhere as well so it. So I'm going to stop it there. And I'm going to stop sharing. But that was essentially a clip of what it looks like we have, we have eight episodes they're all available on SoundCloud and Apple iTunes. The goal of the podcast really is to juxtapose the creation element and the theory and surveillance studies, but also it was at a time where Julia and I, you know we just got into lockdown and we're thinking about how do we collaborate as research scientists from two separate cities that we can actually be in the same space so this is an example of ways that we can get scholars from across different geographies to come together and do something creative. So that was really what the podcast aim to do. In terms of the other projects that we had on the go. So Julia started an unboxing video kind of stream we haven't done very many of them because the unboxing video that we worked on Julia was at my place for a weekend, and literally the day she left coven pretty much ended the weekend, or started the ending. So they're all locked down, pretty much the weekend after she left. So that was the last time that Julia and I have been in a space together and able to work so the uses of creative tools that she's going to talk about and the podcast where a way that we can still keep going and do this important work, but from a distance. So, Julia, do you want to play the unboxing video from your camera or from your base. Yes, I will. Yeah, we're only going to show a little bit of it. There all all of these are available on our website at camp hunters.org so if you want to see anything at listen to the podcast fully or watch this video fully. It's pretty much where we update everything as it comes along. I'll show a few minutes from the beginning and then I'll skip to a little bit later and a few minutes of that and then I'll get back to you there. You're laughing. Okay, so I'm just going to interrupt to say in case you're not familiar with what unboxing videos are they are a genre on YouTube, which is where somebody received something or buys something. And they open it up for the first time on camera and and kind of talk their way through their the reaction. So I wish I'd have said that at the beginning. Welcome to the first unboxing episode of camp hunters. My name is Julia and Steffi Steffi, and we, we have a spy school sneaky surveillance kit. Julia got this for me for my birthday. Yes. So we thought this was a very interesting piece of So if you're watching and you want to tweet about it as you're watching you can use the hashtag spy school sneaky surveillance because that's provided on the box for YouTube and Facebook links so if you would like to follow what other people are doing. It's a eight plus is just a plus yes. There's 11 pieces. It's made by smart lab. I came across this in a in a store it was like a store that had mostly like stationary and art supplies but there's also like a fairly large section of toys for kids. I saw this and I immediately was struck by it because I just, I don't, I never really thought about surveillance as a toy before. But, you know, clearly it is or can be. I'm going to skip forward a little bit. I guess that we can talk about this practice as again like getting them ready and used to the current surveillance culture, the ways in which it's ubiquitously situated in our lives. We at Breck Industries have had our eye on you for a long time now, your second grade teacher, the crossing guard, your dentist. They're all Breck agents skilled at identifying kids who have what it takes to join the ranks of Breck. Our goal at Breck is to create a force of spies who will use their talents to help the world. Okay, okay, so this is, you know, meant to be used for good. Breck Industries spy schools are a way of developing new spies like you. This is giving me chills. This book is your introduction to spy craft in its pages you will find tips tricks and missions all designed to train you to become the best and the most good spy you can be the best and the most good. Are they trying to sort of say like you'd be the best spy but you're also a good spy. I don't know, I mean I guess that's a question like who you're spying on and who's the surveillance like. Who are you spying on and why? Well I was just recently rereading 1984. There is like the spies right and the spies are children. And they're like a group they're like, so it's almost like the scouts right. So children are trained to spy on adults and to be ready to report or denounce them at any time. And so, and this is held up as an important value right that to be a good spy is an important skill to have and everybody's in sort of constant fear of being reported by the spies. All Breck agents follow the Breck code. If you don't know who we are, find a mirror, look yourself squarely in the eye, and repeat the code. Oh my goodness. I, state your name, promise to spy for good, never to harm or embarrass anyone. As a Breck agent, I will uphold the highest principles of honesty, honor, and wholesomeness. Gracie, that's like this idea of, you know, you're looking at like ceases like the case intelligence services and it's like a building that has all of these windows. And you think that because of the windows that there's this idea of transparency and we're doing things for good, you know we're fighting you but you will never get in that building. Who is it who writes about the idea that certain buildings were fighting. You can only see it so much right because depending on the type of the day the weather you're actually going to get to see in those buildings. So there's false idea of transparency, and that that's working through this idea of honesty and of trust, but you never really know what's happening and how much information. That's reflected and because we know for research but it's not always the most ethical so it's like it's a really interesting idea here. Yeah, it's like ethics. Yeah, well what is for good sense of that. So what I really like about the unboxing video is that we've used a method that were a very popular method that is now over YouTube. The unboxing the getting to know the product the showing of the product, but at the same time juxtaposing theory and actual scholarly input. And I think that that's what a really great example of what research creation does is it allows you to take methodologies from popular culture popular ideas, social media, YouTube, etc. Not only to disseminate information but also to create new knowledge in itself as we're using it so as you saw through that video. Julie and I were going through the book we were reading quotes but also because of our backgrounds knew quite a bit about the academic or the scholarly implications of that. We're able to talk about something as mundane as a child's toy in the same way as people may write theoretical papers critiquing an object or a text or a toy, but we just were able to do it in a more creative method that also lends itself to this culture of unboxing that is happening so that's really the point of that with the unboxing. It also lends itself to movements towards merchandising and certification and authenticity so we also and all again all of this is supposed to be performative and kind of like not a joke but also just they're supposed to be some some lightness to this really heavy important work. So we created a certification system, and essentially what it is is you can email us and get a certificate that says that this Airbnb has been camp hunters approved as safe. So if you were to put that certificate on your wall, ideally people would be able to see it and think okay so there's no cameras here. Obviously these aren't real certifications they don't hold any weight, but it's a way in which people who are familiar with us could see that as a form of this this place being safe for and safe of voyeurism, but also you know if you were to be safe with cameras and that certification being up then you could say well hey you told me that there are no cameras and now you're using it so it kind of empowers I viewer, or that user also. And it also fits within the logo and merge so we designed this logo, as Julia has already explained and then we put it on society six where people can buy merchandise. So funny. Finally, the weird part is that the logo resolution was never big enough to actually put it on t shirts and such and I'm in the process of fixing that but the only stuff that the logo where it was able to fit on work, things that you would buy for your work, so things as mundane as like a cutting board, or a serving tray, a bath mat coasters these really ridiculous things that you probably would never care for the camp hunters logo to be on. But then we thought wouldn't it be hilarious if somebody who had an Airbnb and just bought all of those things and had our logo all over the Airbnb. And it would become the space this, the safety space because they would know that that host would support camp hunters who is really trying to dismantle this voyeurism. Another way of showing trust to those people who are going to be using those Airbnb is again these are all like supposed to be just some fun light hearted the ways of thinking about it, but it actually could, could actually be really different to people who have been victims or who know about this form of surveillance in these domestic private semi private public spaces. So Julia will have the next section. Yes. Critical tools. So, as you heard from that podcast that bit with the pandemic came these questions of, you know what does it mean to live your life more and more on camera. And again, as, as part of my research on image based abuse, as I mentioned in the podcast I came across that article about camera consent. I'm using expectation that people need to be available on zoom and other video conferencing platforms and how that could affect people who have survived digital violence involving cameras and imaging. So, we also began thinking about well how, how can this, you know, help ourselves and our colleagues navigate this kind of, you know, new, you know, new normal in a thoughtful and an ethical way like thinking about how to, how might this affect people from different, you know, with different life experiences and different positionalities. And so stuff he created suggested the creation of a statement that people could use and adapt either for their syllabi or for their meetings. And so we created the statement called the statement on declining online imaging, and basically, and it's available on our website if you're interested in looking at it and or adapting it and using it yourself. And basically it's just a way of, of indicating to people that they don't necessarily need to, you know, appear on camera if they are uncomfortable with it for whatever reason you know whether they're a member of a highly surveilled group, whether they've survived abuse, or you know, home is not always a safe space for everyone right so all of these thoughts have kind of gone into making the statement and some of the, and we've included sort of a discussion as well in the PDFs available online about the sort of thinking that went on, that thinking that went on behind it, as well as some ways of thinking about how to, to be thoughtful with when working with people online and students especially so when you're in a position of power it makes quite a difference. And then finally, we are starting work on a book project, we're both really interested in this idea of surveillance and pleasure. So I wanted to create an edited collection that would bring together academic thinkers but also artists people who work in surveillance studies to think about surveillance as a form of empowering exhibitionism as we talked about earlier in the Oskala's concept of empowering exhibitionism surveillance as desire and surveillance as entertainment. So examples could be like in our unboxing video surveillance toys for children could be social media applications could be reality television. All these different ways that surveillance is part of our life and can be used in pleasurable ways. So, one of the main ideas that stuff he's going to talk about now is surveillance as a methodology and a practice. So rather than thinking about surveillance as only an event that happens. We can think maybe of surveillance more as a way of being in the world as has been argued by someone whose name I forget oh my gosh, I'm so upset with myself. Anyway, that that's not my idea. All right, I'm going to pass it on to stuffy. I want to include this talk and kind of a workshop this is more of the workshop and component and they're more suggestions and that we can talk about them in the q&a but I want to end this off with Julia to talk about how to include research creation and research, because I think that there is still although research creation is not new it's been in Canada for about 15 years it's internationally known for several years. It's a practice that I think is still very difficult to grasp because institutions have yet to really implement it as a consistent methodology so we're seeing it come up in certain programs and in certain departments but it's not something that is used universally. And part of that is because research creation is often, if not mostly used by artists, media producers, musicians, people in drama or theater, media production people in computer sciences so people who do more of the creative or very production based research, and some of the ways in which so I wrote a paper. It was published I believe in the beginning of 2020 in the surveillance society journal surveillance society sorry my dog is currently at my door scratching to come in. So, one of the things that I've outlined in that paper was how to create artwork that don't only talk about research or don't only talk about surveillance but in themselves are surveillance and use artwork as Julia said as methodology or surveillance as methodology. So some of that artwork includes incorporating cameras surveillance cameras as the actual way of documenting things and then editing them. So using drones hunting cameras are as actual medium rather than just using them for what they were initially So what this paper outlines are two of the three examples that I've given here to include research creation and surveillance studies but that these can be applied to any discipline so some of the most use disciplines that are not art based that use research creation are geography, sociology has been doing a lot of this community based research so any place that uses community based research. There's a lot of different forms of research creation in indigenous studies specifically with different ways of sharing knowledge so oral traditions and walking and mapping. The three suggestions that I have for you moving forward after this talk is to think about collaboration as your first so when I think about collaboration and when I've talked about collaboration in my paper. Collaboration isn't only between artists or between humans and scholars that collaboration can be between non human animals it can be between human and technology human and land. And any form of transdisciplinary fields of study so this might seem at surface value a little bit odd. But ideas of collaboration between human and non human animals are human and land is actually very much rooted from indigenous methodologies so we see a lot of artists who create indigenous artists who create work for the land or work that speaks to the land or with the land. And the point here is not to appropriate those methodologies but to include to acknowledge them as forms of knowledge production as well so that we're not discounting collaboration as a form of knowledge production because research research creation is not actually traditional. It often fights tradition in the academy. The second is function creep methodologies and ideas so this is borrowing specifically from surveillance studies, communication studies, law and computer and sciences a function creep at surface value is usually when you take an object or a technology. And you creep it or you change its use for something beyond its original intent. So an example of function creep that I always give to people is when you're thinking about your driver's license initially a driver's license was created specifically so that people knew that you have the ability to drive and that you were licensed to drive with time it's become our primary method of ID so if you're going to go to purchase alcohol if you're going to go to a bar or if you're going to go. Take out a loan or a credit card you need your driver's license that is your primary method of ID. And that's an example of function creeping its original intent of creation. So some of the ways in which research creation this might use function creep is using. As I mentioned technologies like hunting cameras that have a very specific purpose to capture animals for art production or using any type of found object and twisting it on its head so if you're thinking about critiquing an object and its usage. Using research creation allows you to take that object do something creative with it that still critiques its function but will critique it by doing something different than what it was originally intended for. And then it's to manipulate those objects to make new objects and new knowledges out of it. Finally for those of you who might be more interested in geography or in space or in any form of storytelling mapping spaces and research is very much embedded in research creation as well. I'm thinking a lot of this as I mentioned in geography people using Esri and Argus as story map telling so using community based research grabbing that knowledge from communities and using community collaboration to put stories online through maps or to start mapping very specific areas of knowledge so we're seeing more and more maps today of communities mapping out trees trees that have been impacted by the emerald ash borer or invasive species and you'll see these maps on on city sites that have all the locations of those infected trees and that's a way of including research with creative methodologies like mapping so these are some of the suggestions that I suggest if you were to include research creation in your practice, but also acknowledging that research creation is very much heavily rooted in the fine arts and in art so it's not something that I would suggest that you just go out and do but that you also incorporate artists in your produce in your production and you start collaborating with people who you may not have considered academics before and these are not only artists in academia but also artists who might do community based research on their own in the world or in their communities and collaborating with people who may not be in the institution and may not have the privilege to be in the institution so again at its core it's really trying to dismantle neoliberal additional fields of knowledge production to include people and objects and entities that may not have access to these spaces. So that's pretty much how I want to conclude that kind of section Julia do you have any thoughts before we open to questions. You're muted. Sorry about that. I don't have anything to add that's great thank you and but I did remember the name of the scholar whose name I couldn't remember Jonathan Finn. The article is seeing surveillance so if any of you are interested in this idea of seeing the world through surveillance as a kind of way of living or way of seeing then that's an interesting article to read. It's a great book on capturing the mugshot. So also looking at criminology of surveillance as well and the ways in which we can see people just through their faces and the ways in which we capture people's identities. Okay so I will stop sharing. Are there any questions. Any thoughts any comments. Any ideas you want to workshop. You can unmute yourself if you like, or you can put it in the butcher question or comment in the chat. I do encourage you to go to our website cam hunters.org. So, if you're interested for example in that statement, you're welcome to download it and use it. I also have some more, you know information on there and our podcast. Is there a specific so this is from Stephanie is there a specific type of flashlight you need to locate a camera can I use the flash on my phone. Yeah. So some of the articles we've read have, you know said just use your, your camera, you know, there's a flashlight function on most phones now. You can just shine them into spaces and if you see a kind of reflection back it could, it could be a camera lens. You're very welcome. One question that we always get is like, is this actually happening and it is happening and I think that a lot of the examples that Julian and I found are actually within Toronto or in Ontario. And I think we often think about these things happening elsewhere or outside of Canada or just in bigger cities but to know that it's so close to home is is really scary to me. I would say that. Well, Stephanie knows my research has made me very paranoid. Other questions on that note from Stephanie again, I am from Scotland. Do you have any data reflecting this happening there. I don't know I mean as far as I know to be honest with you there haven't been any studies like sort of empirical studies looking at the sort of rate of incidents of this kind of thing. But I mean, you know, the fact is that there is, you know, it's very easy to get surveillance equipment like very small cameras and, you know, can order them on Amazon. So, I mean it is, you know something that can happen I think has happened in many places. You know and I think it's important to think about like these questions these things like this happening bring up questions of, you know, what is privacy questions of why, why do certain aspects of our why are certain aspects of our lives considered more private than others. And or you know why is there. Why are we afraid to be seen. So for example, like in my research on image based sexual abuse, some scholars have asked why are we afraid to be seen in a sexual light like why is that considered so shameful. So, you know, separate from the question of you know having you know your privacy breached or, or someone betray your trust is the question of why is it. Why is it so awful to be seen sexually, or why is it so often to be seen on the toilet, you know, these are kind of social social standards I guess that we set for ourselves. And that are you know in theory at least changeable right we don't have to, we don't have to all agree that it is shameful to be seen sexually, for example. Anyway, I went on a bit of a tangent, but I think there's also a conundrum that's currently happening specifically in Airbnb is where in the video, we didn't talk much about this but in the video that we showed at the beginning, there's this I mean, Julia actually talked briefly about how the fact that Airbnb says that you can have cameras in Airbnb so as long as you're upfront about it, which is mimicking the urban expectation. If you have cameras in your store or something there needs to be a sign that's that's just legal within Canada. The conundrum is that then we think about is the privacy of the user who is pay or not the user sorry but the person who's paying to use that that renter paying for the Airbnb is that, you know, more important than the person the host who's installing a camera because they actually feel there's a threat because of their property being stolen or damaged, and that's very different than putting a camera and not saying anything for voyeuristic or like the more creepy reasons. There's this kind of uncertainty of how to navigate those and I think a lot of us would say well obviously don't put a camera because the people who are paying to be in that space or should be paying for privacy. But in the same argument, Airbnb places eventually I guess kind of become this public space it's like a semi private semi public space because it's a business at the same point and somebody's home so there's no clear outline of what that looks like internationally at this point. We have a question from Shanice. Okay, I can read it out loud. Thank you very much for your presentation I'm excited to listen to the other podcast episodes I come from Concordia University and hold a master's degree in media studies. My thesis explored heritage and kinship through research creation. When I saw this event I was excited by the possibility of spaces to have conversations around research creation as a methodology at Carlton University. Are there spaces where I can, where these conversations are taking place that I can join. Thank you Shanice. That's a great question because as Dr. O'Neill has said I'm currently in the stages of creating a research creation hub called Proto Hive. So it would be an Institute of Research Creation for Canada. So one of the things that you probably are feeling is that there are so many centers for research creation across Canada. And there's no one space to come together and talk about it because the projects that are happening are always basically attached to some very specific theoretical component. My goal with this project is to have a hub in Canada where all of these institutes all of these students can come together, have these conversations, and share resources like funding applications and even share examples or ask questions about things that perhaps are in research creation right now so there's not one complete definition that has been shared across all institutions. So there will be a space at Carlton. I've currently, I'm just waiting on notification from a short grant, but regardless of that happening. There will be at least starting things virtually in the next five this summer. So there will be a website up that will have a space ask questions the goal of the short grant was to have a symposium to have people come in so we can change some policies at the academic level and the Canada Council level and such and start creating these networks because I would love for there to be a place where we can all discuss the second thing and I want to be really I just want to be quick about this so that we can get to other questions but I've been hosting annual roundtables at the University Art Association of Canada so UAC research or UAC art history conference and they've been research creation based and this is where the idea of proto hive has come out of because we don't have a space to talk for longer than a couple hours really so if you want I'm usually going to be there and I would encourage you to participate and apply to speak there and to engage with us at that capacity and then hopefully I can share some information with you about the Carlton hub in the next couple months. Stephanie's question is sorry if this is answered already but if you find a camera that was not disclosed what should you do next leave the rental confront the landlord hide and unplug the cameras call the authorities a combination of some of these. Right so Airbnb does have some policies up on their website which you can you know read ahead of time. Again I don't know that there is any kind of one way of going about it and it kind of depends I guess on what where you found the camera and that kind of thing and what jurisdiction so for example in some jurisdictions that may be illegal to for someone to hide a camera in a bathroom and not tell you. And so, I mean, some people have called the authorities. You might also check to see if in the rental agreement however it works on Airbnb I haven't used it in so long I can't remember whether or not that camera was already disclosed or for example if there was a camera in the living room for example and you didn't know that it was there you might check to see if it was disclosed and you just didn't know. Some people have. Yeah, left the rental contacted Airbnb and said I want another rental. I think if, if you suspect that it is a criminal case that you probably don't want to unplug the cameras or touch them you would just want to call the authorities, maybe take a photograph of it. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not giving you any legal advice here. But yeah, all of those ideas are things that people have done. I don't know if that's helpful. Essentially whatever to you makes you feel safe in that capacity. I don't think there's right or wrong answers. I think as Julia has alluded there's been so many different ways in which it's happened. In some cases I believe it was is it in Australia. There was a person who found like a ton like a dozen cameras in his Airbnb, and he basically just documented him finding them, and then posted and I think it went viral or something like he documented the cameras he found. I think that if you can document it, whatever to make you feel as safe as possible definitely call the authorities. One of the things I find so outrageous and Julia mentioned this at the beginning is that one of the suggestions that we keep finding in the media is to hire a professional investigator to check your Airbnb's before. I think one of the things that camp hunters has been striving to do is try to think about not only the safest but the most economical way of doing this work because I get the sense that if you're renting an Airbnb you probably don't have money or the extra funds to hire a professional investigator to come check out your Airbnb, especially if it's overseas or something it just seems absurd to me that that is a recommendation, but I mean, maybe people have that access I definitely do not have access. I'm aware of the media and checking out what is going on. I think the example that we gave about looking for if that it's happened remotely or around your community is really important because one of the things that we're seeing with the market of the current market with that a lot of hosts actually own more than one property. So they don't just own one anymore and sometimes it's not their house it's the rental unit. Sometimes they have multiple rooms in one house. So just being aware of looking at what's happening around, around these cases. And I mean to be fair to Airbnb. I think, you know, it's not, it's not necessarily something that only happens in Airbnb is like this could happen technically anywhere. You know, they're, they're in South Korea, for example, there was a has been an ongoing problem with spy cameras and public washrooms and things like that. So it's not, you know, it's not just an Airbnb issue. It is kind of a larger question of how, you know, the availability of surveillance technologies and on ethical uses of them. One of the things that we talk about in one of the podcast episodes and the title of it is check the lamps is this rise of accessible surveillance technologies that look like mundane objects and how it's becoming increasingly easy for people to buy them for their homes for whatever purpose, either it's very Airbnb or just for their general protection. And one of the examples that Julia gives us this lamp from Samsung. Is it Samsung? It's Panasonic. It's a large company. It's a large company. It looks like just a regular lamp with a camera in it. And it's just if you Google surveillance technologies, or if you just go on Amazon and say like surveillance cameras for home, the amount of cameras in everyday objects that you can now purchase is incredible. So it's like check everything because you have no idea that lamp is very deceiving. Yes, it's very odd camera, camera adjacent products on the market that we've discovered in our research. And this is very different, a different conversation than smart technology and smart cities and how people are now buying smart technologies for their home for their own, you know usage. One of the things that I've seen lately it's the Samsung refrigerator. It has this massive screen on it that's like bigger than an iPad and you can do whatever you want and talk to it and stuff and that can end up good. What is the screen for? Like it's just an internet connection? Yeah, it's basically a kind of download apps and stuff. You can browse the internet. You can ask it to put in reminders. You can pull up recipes. We're currently looking just a personal side note. We're actually looking for appliances because we're doing renovations and I spent like 15 minutes in Home Depot playing around with this huge, really fancy. And they're not cheap refrigerator. You can do everything with it. It's like people who put their iPads on there. We do this at home. Like for recipes, we put iPads on our counter when we're doing recipes and stuff. Essentially you don't need to do that anymore because it's all on your, you can watch TV and Netflix from your refrigerator. I guess I could kind of see how that would be nice, but I don't know how much I'd be willing to pay for that. I could just bring my iPad into the kitchen. Yeah. And if it breaks, then you have to spend a lot of money fixing it. That is neither here nor there. Any other questions? Comments? Suggestions? Anything you'd like us to cover in our podcast, for example? Yeah, that's a great question. I'm going to put our email in the chat. And then you can ask us questions. You can check out our website. I've also put that on in the chat, but I'm going to put it up again. And you can follow us on Instagram at camhunters. And yeah, check out the podcast. It's on Apple podcast, but also on SoundCloud. We'll start it up again for season two. If you have any suggestions or anything you would like, any resources, articles, just reach out. Great. Well, thank you very much for coming and for your questions and your attention. Yeah, thank you so much for being here.