Orwellian self-surveillance by Hasan Elahi

Tracking Transience: The Orwell Project, 2007



Tracking Transience: The Orwell Project is derived from a six month long FBI investigation after the artist was erroneously reported as a terrorist. This experience led him to voluntarily develop a network device, which opens just about every aspect of his life to the public.

Throughout the FBI investigation, he actively decided to cooperate with them to a point of compliance to where the current work now borders on a collaboration with them, albeit unauthorized. The network device generates a database of imagery and locative information that combined with a web-enabled companion tracks him and his points of transit in real-time.

Since the development of this device, his FBI agent (along with everyone else) has been able to track him online. This video installation is created from the thousands of images captured and compiled by his mobile network device along with other information in the database.

Elahi is an interdisciplinary artist whose work examines issues of surveillance, simulated time, transport systems, borders and frontiers. His work has been presented at the Venice Biennale; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Kulturbahnhof, Kassel, Germany; The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia; and The Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center in New York, among others.

Elahi has one foot in art and one in science. His media is databases and all sorts of electronic information, essentially tracking himself as spies would. He explores the border between society and technology, attempting to bridge the human and the virtual worlds. He analyzes the way technology is packaged to be perceived as desirable and essential by people. Elahi’s process results in translations and mistranslations between the physical and the virtual, between the body politic and the singular citizen.

Tracking Transience: The Orwell Project Website: http:/trackingtransience.net

Artist Website: http://elahi.rutgers.edu/

via: http://www.sundance.org

Posted on April 12, 2008 at 10:46 AM   |   Previous Entry   |   Next Entry   |   Entry List   |   Email Entry   |    Digg

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