Our digital devices regularly share information with government agencies and third party companies for both surveillance and commercial purposes. ‘Veillance’ is an interactive artwork which visualises information generated by its audience's internet browsing on digital devices. Data is intercepted and reconfigured in real time to create an immersive audio-visual experience intended to raise awareness about this covert conversation with which we are unknowingly engaged.
In the exhibition situation, each audience member generates a colour coded browsing feed from which the system highlights words identified by global security services as ‘triggers’ for potential warnings and suspicious activity. These selections, which navigate around the space, are both alarming and inadvertently humorous as they deliver a contrasting view to the user's (generally) benign activity. The work simultaneously creates a (DNS) list of all websites which are covertly communicating with audience devices, illustrating the constant data communication between the viewer and outside agencies.
To comply with data protection laws, the artwork only intercepts information from unencrypted websites.
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Artist:
Ronan Devlin
Project Team:
Vian Bakir (Academic)
Ant Dickinson (Sound)
Carwyn Edwards (Software)
Michael Flueckiger (Visualisation)
Gillian Jein (Academic)
Andy McStay (Academic)
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veillance.info
Twitter: @veillanceinfo
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Commissioned by: The Space
Supported by: Arts Council of Wales & Arloesi Pontio Innovation
