The purpose of this project is to question how data profiling is changing the way both our physical, and digital space is ordered. Asking what “tactics” can be implemented in order to affect this system, and what are the effects of doing so? In our brief it speaks about how we as people navigate our way through new streets or spaces, drawing upon: images; sounds; textures; smells; and tastes which can be related back to our past experiences of places. By using this historical data of experience and memory we are able to instantly form an opinion, or perception, of a place. In addition to our memories of actual places, we also correlate images from cinema, sequences from narratives, and sounds from music collections. Subsequently, places as we know can be interpreted in many ways according to how we ‘read’ them.

Initially, I was interested in this idea of how every individual reads a space differently and how this in turn creates a unique perception of a place. After reading the extracts “time – space compression and the postmodern condition” by David Harvey, and Rob Shields’ “Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity”, in particularly from the Lefebvre section, I began to take a particular interest in “the threefold dialectics of space”, whilst focusing on the theory and meaning behind a “Brand”. I wanted to use brands as a way of analysing people’s perceptions, and how they have the ability to drastically vary. I studied how a brand had the ability to affect people’s perception of value, and how this influenced their movements in space and time through various bombardments of stimuli. I questioned whether branding was changing the way in which I perceived spaces, and if it was affecting my movements around the city. If so, surely this meant I was seeing a different world to that of my neighbour, and we are both in fact living it different worlds relative to our personal historical data, which informs our perceptions. I wanted to ask “to what extent we are in control of our perceptions?” Looking as how we manipulate the data we receive and how this can change the way we move. Modern technology, and data profiling has brought a whole new dimension to the world of data.

After reading Nigel Thrifts “Driving in the City”, I found the way he uses “the car” to explain how the city has changed as a direct impact of modern technologies very interesting. He describes auto-mobility as being something that has now sunk into our “technological subconscious” and this has changed the way space is ordered.

Examples of how modern technologies have the ability to change spaces can be seen most simply at the domestic scale. Televisions are now a fraction of the thickness they used to be but are much better quality, desktop computers have been replaced with laptops or further still ipads, and books are no longer something you place on your bookshelves but something your store on your kindle. These interventions have all had an impact on how spaces is ordered, and they also influences the way in which we move, communicate, advertise, work, and learn. Thrift talks about “the changing nature of driving”, describing how the driving experience has since changed from its origins of being something that can get your from A to B, to what is now something which wants to be a luxury experience, through personalising the car to the specific needs of the user. The system is able to Transubstantiated relative to the user, in other words, it has the ability to change or transfer data to create the best experience dependant on the user in the car at that specific time, using a knowledge that the system (or car) has stored. Thrift describes this sophistication as “a studied extension of the spatial practices of the human which consists of the production of quite new material surfaces which are akin to life, not object, and thereby new means of bodying forth: new forms of material intelligence producing a new, more fluid transubstantiation”. He then goes on to describe how the experience of driving a car is now being enhanced through the introduction of further modern technologies, “Almost every element of the modern automobile is becoming either shadowed by software or software has become the pivotal component” and this is all being combined with the “human factors” (anatomy, physiology, psychology, and ergonomics) defined by Thrift as a “hybridization”. This can be said about most situations where technology has been integrated but now long until these new technologies stop being recognised as new, and simply become another element of our “technological subconscious”, which will subconsciously affect how space is ordered. Thrifts “Driving in the City” made me question what other spaces are adapting as a result of hybridization. The answer is practically everywhere. Any “thing” or place that wants to grow and evolve needs to incorporate an element of technology somewhere, and at the current time this is often in the form of software. Generally, this software has been built to interact with humans. It is something that has been designed based on human activity. In order to create the most seamless hybridization between technology and humans the gathering of data has been required to constantly update human trends. An obvious example is the gathering of data through eye tracking software, which is something that is arguably both a conscious and subconscious act. By using this data we have since influenced the way in which we design our shops and website interfaces, and it has been our eyes that have been influential in changing the way these spaces have been ordered!

Thrift describes this as ”prefiguring a real historical change in which large parts of what were considered non-representational embodied practice begin to be represented as they are brought into a kind of writing, the writing of software.”

 

Whilst researching different technologies that interacted with humans instantaneously, there was a particular artist who caught my eye, Chris O’Shea. He produces a variety of work that brings technology to life and allows humans to interest with it. The technology reacts relative to the individual and it is through this interaction that changes the way in which people move in the space.

 

Personal Theory
I wanted to use Chris O’Shea’s “Audience” installation as a representation of an ever-changing system that is able to adapt relative to an individual’s data profile. Using this as a metaphor, I wanted to express the constantly changing spaces that we now inhabit both physically and electronically, as a result of data profiling and tracking. Data profiling makes connections between people and “things”, but what happens when a profiling system has the ability to analyse its own data? The system can be seen as a metaphor to describe how Facebook uses data as a means of profiling to shape a user’s digital space, changing the content on the screen relative to that user. Every user has an individual data profile and this is used to order their digital space, and this data changes the way in which a user perceive things and move in both their digital, but also physical world. I wanted to use “Audience” as a framework to explore what happens when we try and “cheat the system” by using a series of tactics to prevent this perpetual tracking. Exploring how the software is only effective when doing the job it was initially written for, and expose its inabilities to cope when overloaded with data. Although technology is very advanced, and has the ability to see much more than the human eye, it struggles to adapt or change and this reveals its inability to overcome confusion.

 

Although I do not necessarily mind the gathering of data in order to profile my spaces I do feel it is important to remain in control. I question who is writing the rules, or code, which determines how “my” space is ordered.

By being able to disrupt the perpetual data profiling systems we can use this as a way to break down the individual worlds we are creating for ourselves. Although we are bridging the gap between humans and technologies through the developments of hybridization using data gathering, this means every individual is beginning to form their own world relative to their own data profile. This is affecting people’s perceptions of places and their movements in space as a result of the stimuli that they are exposing themselves to. By creating these tactics we can not only confuse the tracking systems, but begin to muddle up the data gathered and allows for the opportunity to see into other peoples worlds. Broadening our horizons and allow for the continuation of development instead of running the risk of becoming stagnated.

 

“This century is the century of data.
Last century was the century of electricity!“
Luke Dubois