Project Proposal

Project Proposal: ‘MyDataFlows’

I am going to be making a ‘sousveillance’/ self-surveillance websites that invite the gaze in, in which I subject myself for a month towards using different social networking tools and attempting to show aspects of myself in the public gaze. This is in a sense a social networking media project in which through my use of those technologies available on the web I promote the idea that these social networking tools encourage transparency, whereby the private becomes part of the public. The point of this project is to show how my physical-digital lifestyle can be projected onto the internet, in which my use of these social networking tools, as well as GPS location tools create new systems in which we self-govern our own identity. We are no longer in a situation where the CCTV camera track you, but rather how we use self-surveillance tools to track ourselves and how we govern ourselves through those technologies. In a similar fashion to Hasan Elahi I hope to show how by re-appropriating different social networking tools (Twitter, Flikr and Facebook), as well as tools freely available on the internet  that utilize things like google maps (like blogloc) are all forms of self-surveillance.  But more than this epitomises this change to controll societies whereby we now live in a transparent society, being encouraged to share our lives and sense of identity on the internet.

I will combine all the following elements:

1. ·         Status Updates from Twitter
2. ·         Images from my Flikr Account
3. ·         A GPS Signal Map
4. ·         An Image Track (displaying all the places I have been)
5. ·         Facebook updates (I have not found a way to implement this yet)

These will all be combined into a website to show how these new technologies create new conditions in which we subject ourselves to external gazing, by uploading our thoughts, our location and our images onto the web. For that month you will be able to track me, watch me and see my thoughts.

I have built an initial prototype showing how I have used RSS feeds and different plug-ins to link to my external social networking sites as well as my own GPS location. This is an experiment in which I show how by using these different tools I invite the gaze in, tracking me, watching what I do, and what I am thinking at any point in time ; you have access to my inner thoughts, images and GPS location. Although I imagine the final website being more of a fractured, multi-layered website, but this still illustrates how I will grab data from all of these social networking sites. (see Interface diagrams)

The title ‘MyDataFlows’ is used to illustrate how flows of your data are projected and uploaded onto the internet and can be used to create a complete picture of my life, a transparent 'gateway' into how I use these different technolgies.

Through these tools I hope to show how we have moved from a disciplinary society where we are conditioned by our environment (the nursery, the school, the barracks, the university) by top-down surveillance, towards a situation whereby control mechanisms are transformed into consumer products (such as Twitter and Flikr, and even BlogLoc) whereby we subject ourselves to external gazing and illustrate how we have moves towards a transparent society. All in, I hope through the act of participating with these new technologies I show how the nature of information sharing has changed whereby we live in a participatory culture where we subject ourselves to external gazing.

Interface diagrams to follow....