Exhibits at The Glass Room London

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David Mirzoeff 2017

…provocative artworks that play with the use and abuse of data in our world

Hyperallergic — Glass Room London


What is personal data in an age where data is everything but personal? The Glass Room is a space for reflection, experimentation and play that provides different ways of understanding how technologies and data are changing our lives. The Glass Room puts big data on display in ways that make it tangible and less abstract.

What does your data say about you, and how is it being used to define you? What do you give up in exchange? How are data and technology changing the personal, professional and social fabric of all of our lives? The Data Detox Bar is where you can get one-to-one advice and simple tips and tricks on how to protect your privacy online and reclaim your digital self. Our staff of Ingeniuses are on hand to answer your questions about the exhibits, talk to you about the issues they raise, and give you practical advice to help you make informed choices about what you do with your data.

The Glass Room is presented by Mozilla and curated by Tactical Tech. Mozilla is the not-for-profit behind the Firefox web browser and uses technology, products and advocacy to make the internet healthier so it’s easy to access, safe to use, and empowers everyone, everywhere.

Tactical Tech is a Berlin-based non-profit organisation working at the intersection of technology, human rights and civil liberties. Tactical Tech provides trainings, conducts research and creates cultural interventions that contribute to the wider socio-political debate around digital security, privacy and the fair use of data.

The Glass Room unfolds in four thematic sections, each of which explores a different aspect of our digital world.

Something to hide

What does it mean when we say we have ‘nothing to hide’? Our most intimate data, when it is aggregated into data sets and mined for patterns, is also tech companies’ most valuable asset. We want to discover and broadcast what makes us unique individuals when we share our likes and dislikes, our daily habits and activities, our tastes and interests, but the companies harvesting our data would rather turn us into types and profiles to be traded and learned from. The projects displayed here present more speculative and playful ways of visualising the uses and misuses of our data. You are invited to experiment and reconsider the idea that even if we think we might have nothing to hide, we should at least understand what we’re not hiding.

Even if you think your password is unique, according to a 2019 survey by the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, “123456” is the most commonly use...
Is that you? MegaPixels uses a custom built facial recognition system to search for your face amongst the millions of images used for training faci...
Social media platforms can use technology to turn your interactions into valuable data that can help boost their profits. Data Production Labor ask...
Who are you really working for when you work out? The information your Fitbit collects about you is not only valuable to you alone. Your doctor or ...
Your phone can keep your memories much better and for much longer than you can. From June 2010 to April 2011 James Bridle, and anyone else with an ...
What do you think about an online shopping service that sends products to your home before you have even ordered them? In 2014, Amazon was granted ...
What does your data sound like? Our smartphones, laptops and tablets are constantly openly broadcasting their unique identification signals to near...
Tired of endlessly swiping through no-matches on dating apps? Are you over the back-and-forth messaging that leads nowhere? Smell Dating is a new k...

We know you

Initially branded as disruptive upstarts, the five companies that have come to be known as GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft) have become some of the biggest companies in the world and have amassed the largest shares of our data. These tech giants have made themselves indispensable in our lives, providing services that are as valuable as basic utilities. Collectively, they now wield an unprecedented level of power and influence that stretches across all aspects of our lives, from work to home to leisure. How many of their services do you rely on? And how much do these companies know about you? Each of the exhibits at this table explores a different way in which tech companies and the people who run them have become engrained in our lives. They know us, but how much do we really know about them?

When we think about the slogan, ‘One account. All of Google’, just how much information is in that ‘One account’. What exactly constitutes ‘All of ...
How can companies like Amazon continue to satisfy our love affair with online shopping? The models displayed here are based on Amazon patent applic...
Remote-control birth control may be the wave of the future. In 2012, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave a grant of nearly £8 million to Mic...
In 2010, Mark Zuckerberg – the founder of Facebook – claimed the age of privacy was over. A couple of years later, Zuckerberg paid over $40 million...
This year, Apple Inc. became number 3 on the Fortune 500 behind only Exxon Mobil and Walmart. This 3D infographic contrasts its wealth accumulated ...
What do satellites see? Ingrid Burrington’s lenticular prints show data centres, air force bases and other politically sensitive sites as they are ...
: Julian Olivier Danja Vasiljev 
Do your friends and colleagues complain that media coverage is too boring/depressing/celebrity-laden/happy? With the Newstweek, you can be a master...
Do you want to see deeper inside the web? Visit the dark net, courtesy of !Mediengruppe Bitnik. You don’t have to install anything, just connect to...
: Vladan Joler Andrej Petrovski Jan Krasni Katarzyna Szymielewicz Share Lab @ShareDataLab
This graph is based on Share Lab‘s ongoing investigations into the machinations of the world‘s largest social network. From left to right, it maps ...
: Jamie Perera @jamiepereramuso
Data Elephant is an evolving commentary on personal data, permission and exploitation. The soundscape creates a warm texture of corporate invitatio...

Big mother

We often hear the ominous phrase ‘Big Brother is watching you’, but what about when the state is keeping track of your actions under the guise of a more nurturing figure, more akin to ‘Big Mother’ looking after your well-being? When governments use tracking technology to provide aid to refugees or when companies promote constant surveillance to ensure that your elderly relatives are receiving proper care, how do we weigh the risks versus the rewards of these technological solutions? These digital technologies promise to make our lives more efficient; at the same time, they normalise the use of surveillance in our everyday lives – we risk becoming both the surveilled and the surveyors. When methods of tracking are not transparent or visible, how can we ‘opt out’? What are the trade-offs when we give up our privacy or autonomy for safety and efficiency? How can we regain some agency to act independently in a world where we are increasingly and indiscriminately being monitored?

With a growing elderly population and strained resources to care for them, technology companies are trying to fill the gap. Silver Mother™ is a pro...
: CHOICE Australia 
When you buy a new digital service, do you read the terms and conditions before clicking ‘I agree’? How long do you think it would it take if you d...
: UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency 
This promotional video illustrates how the UNHCR and the private company IrisGuard have collaborated to implement iris scanning – the unique identi...
: 23andMe 
For £149 and a vial of your saliva, 23andMe will analyse your DNA and send you a full report about your family history and your risk of developing ...
: Lenddo 
Would you be willing to trade access to your social media and browsing history in exchange for a credit score? In order to assign credit scores to ...
: Tapad 
Have you ever wondered how the ads that pop up on your devices seem to read your mind? That’s because marketing companies are constantly using your...
: Cubic Corporation 
Do you want the data about your daily Tube ride to be collected by a company that is also a major contractor for the United States’ armed services?...
: Lockheed Martin 
The F-117A Night Hawk – also known as the ‘Stealth Fighter’ for its ability to evade radar detection – was built by the secretive Skunk Works divis...
What if you could help fight crime from your computer at home? Texas Virtual BorderWatch was a public-private partnership between the start-up Blue...

Data Detox Bar

At the Data Detox Bar, you are invited to explore the inside of the online world. Visit the Alternative App Centre to get open-source tools and services for improved privacy. Let our staff of Ingeniuses help you trace your digital footprints, and pick up a Data Detox Kit for an 8-day programme of practical tips on how to manage your digital life.

At the Data Detox Bar, you are invited to explore the inside of the online world. Visit the Alternative App Centre to get open-source tools and ser...

Open the box

Have you ever wondered what your data looks like from the other side–what cellphone providers, internet providers or websites can see about you andy our preferences and habits as you use their services? If so, take a look at these short, soundless animations showing a bird’s eye view of what data is collected, by who and how. Some of the animations look at the data traces we leave behind when we use digital devices moving around the city or a physical space, some look at how our work and life patterns can be seen from our online data traces as we browse the web,send emails or use social media sites, and others look at how our data is bought, sold, analyzed and utilized and how it begins to shape the societies we live within.

Every time you go online, you are connected through servers in different countries and jurisdictions. These virtual journeys are tracked, and your ...
How many times have companies claimed that they will anonymise your data? The suggestion of anonymisation is that it will promise us privacy if we ...
IC WatchMany of us use social networking sites to find new jobs, get new clients or build new business relationships. In doing so, we share a lot o...
We often hear about metadata – that is, data about data. Apart from the content of your communications, metadata can reveal what we are doing, with...
‘Algorithm’ is a buzzword that is used to explain everything from big data to machine learning. This animation unpicks why we should care about alg...
: Open Data City Tactical Tech @Info_Activism
Whenever we can, we join free WiFi networks to get online when we are on the move. This animation – based on data gathered from a conference held i...
If you use a smartphone, you have on online profile. Do you have one or many? Are you in control of your profile? Is it based on information you ar...
: Open Data City Tactical Tech @Info_Activism
As we go about our daily lives, we generate all kinds of information through our smart phones, all of which can disclose insights into our actions,...
From Dave Eggers’ The Circle to Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror, fiction writers are beginning to paint a nightmarish scenario for us of the ‘scorin...
Whenever you browse a website, someone is looking over your shoulder. Almost every site visit is tracked by a third-party that shares and sometimes...
How can our data be used by political parties to influence us? Even information we think of as anonymous - like what magazine we subscribe to or wh...
The algorithms that control the devices that make up the Internet of Things - in our homes and our cities - need to be trained to ‘understand‘ us. ...
The algorithms that control the devices that make up the Internet of Things - in our homes and our cities - need to be trained to ‘understand‘ us. ...
When you join a dating website or download a dating app, you volunteer information about yourself in hopes of finding a good match. But all these i...