Exhibits at The Glass Room San Francisco

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David Mirzoeff 2017

The Glass Room has five thematic areas bringing to life the hidden aspects of digital technologies: Deeply Personal which looks into the dark side of personal data; Invisible Labor which examines the human and environmental processes behind technologies; Trust in Us which features works on Big Tech; Big Mother which looks at the risks and rewards of technology; and Open the Box which examines the journeys that our personal data takes.

Deeply personal

Just as we are unpredictable and imperfect, so is our personal data. The information you give when you sign up for an app or browse the web might confirm you are ‘you’, but that personal data doesn’t say everything about you. Nevertheless, that data can still be used to suggest you a date, deny you access to a bar or to a loan, target you with a political ad, or determine if you’re fit for a job.

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...
The US Army, together with several universities and companies, is funding research into the Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT), a project that a...
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...
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...
Wherever large amounts of data are collected, there are often empty spaces where no data live. Mimi Onuoha’s ongoing research project identifies th...
Have you ever wished you could hide traces of your digital self that are left online? Deletion Process_Only you can see my history exposes artist K...
Everyone is afraid of what they might be missing on the internet, but few of us know what’s missing from the internet. Blacklistsis an encyclopedia...
Have you ever jaywalked? Or maybe you’re the type who shoots a look at someone crossing the street illegally. Belgian artist Dries Depoorter’s Jayw...
If you wish you had more followers on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube, Quick Fix lets you buy followers or likes in just a few seconds. C...
Maybe you don’t think twice when you hand over your driver’s license to be scanned. But you might have a different view if you knew what was behind...
Emotion recognition, psychometric profiling, and sentiment analysis are increasingly being used by companies, social media platforms, and others to...
By now, Siri and Alexa have become household names. We share both mundane and sensitive information with them. Have you considered the depth of you...
Networked Optimization is a series of three crowdsourced versions of popular self-help books: How to Win Friends & Influence People, The 5 Lov...
As you make your way around the city each day you are constantly emitting data from your devices and being filmed on closed circuit TV (CCTV). The ...

Invisible labor

You probably open your laptop or swipe your phone several times a day, if not per hour. How often do you think about where the device was made, who assembled it, how long it took? Technologies are fundamentally built on material resources, human labor, and large amounts of our data. We don’t normally see how those resources are extracted, how they are put to use, or the impact they have on the environment. Alongside the low-cost or outsourced labor behind the manufacturing of technologies, there is another invisible workforce supporting big tech: As users and customers, we are also workers in the digital economy. The valuable data we provide to tech companies helps them build, maintain, and improve their products – and their business models. Behind our screens, there are millions of invisible actions required to assemble, maintain, train, and optimize the technology we use. When it comes to the data economy, who is working for whom?

Think about the commercials or advertisements you see for the newest phone or laptop. How often do you see the people – other than the designers – ...
If you happened to be looking for romance outside of your marriage pre-2015, the website Ashley Madison offered millions of users the chance to cha...
Earlier this year, the artist Joana Moll purchased a biography of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on Amazon. She discovered that the website sent her thr...
Social media platforms can use technology to turn your interactions into valuable data that can help boost their profits. Data Production Labor ask...
Rare Earthenware is the product of a journey by Unknown Fields to trace the origins of the materials inside our technological devices. In collabora...
Paolo Cirio has documented over 20,000 patents for technological inventions submitted to the U.S. Patent Office. On the project’s website, Socialit...
In 2018, artist James Bridle traveled to Cyprus, to film at Limassol Salt Lake, home to an air base and surveillance station jointly run by the NSA...

Trust in us

The exhibits at this table explore the true cost of ‘free’ technologies. They suggest the impact of Big Tech’s business models and the way their innovations and working cultures impact users, consumers, employees, and society at large. As these companies have become subject to increased scrutiny, public trust has shifted and the conversation has turned to what kind of social contract we can demand from them. How can the powerful tech giants be held accountable when they “move fast and break things”?

As tech companies have grown and expanded their global reach, there has been increasingly visible backlash and resistance against their practices f...
In 2016, a research paper caused an uproar when it revealed that Amazon had patented a mobile cage for warehouse workers. Although the cage patent ...
How would your week look without Google? When journalist Kashmir Hill gave up Google’s products and services for a week, she had to start by blocki...
Mark Zuckerberg’s history of public apologies stretches from the launch of his first product, Facemash, in 2003 to the apology tour that followed t...
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...

Big mother

We often hear the ominous phrase “Big Brother is watching you.” But what about when you are kept track of by a more nurturing figure, more like a “Big Mother” looking after your wellbeing? When public institutions and private companies use biometrics, tracking, scoring, and profiling technologies to make our lives safer and more efficient, or to provide aid and care to vulnerable populations, how do we weigh the risks versus the rewards? There is a growing market for technologies that promise increased control, security, and protection from harm. At the same time, they can normalize surveillance at a macro and micro level – from the shape of a child’s ear to satellite images of acres of farmland. Often, those who need the most support may have the least control over how or when their data is being used. Who gains control and who loses it as we strive to reduce risks and provide more care for individuals, communities, and the environment?

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...
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More than 10 million women worldwide use Ovia’s fertility and pregnancy tracking apps to receive personalized advice and information by inputting d...
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Individual biometric data – that is, our unique facial features, iris patterns, fingerprints, or voice – is being increasingly collected to verify ...
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Like many other anti-fraud and identity-verification technologies, NuDetect aims to “identify the unique digital human behind the device,” through...
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As the “feedback society” spreads from restaurants and workplaces into homes and schools, children are given new metrics for success or failure. Li...
The news is full of reports about where violent crimes have taken place, but we rarely hear about which neighborhoods are experiencing the most tax...
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We are increasingly familiar with the idea that facial recognition is used to track humans, but what about tracking fish? The Norwegian fish-farmin...
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Tomorrow’s global food supply is threatened by climate change, population growth, and limited resources. The Climate Corporation was started by for...
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As more people worldwide live alone, technology companies are proposing solutions from chatbots to empathy robots. Gatebox has designed an automate...
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...

Open the box

The artists’ projects and visual stories in this section reveal a variety of invisible ‘data journeys’ your information can take. Hands-on tools and short videos give you ways to see what your data looks like and how it is used on the ‘other side’ of the screen. Animations and interactive tools demystify digital processes, showing you what social media platforms and websites can infer about you. Why do you see one kind of ad in your feed while your friend sees another? Can you tell the difference between a fake or real tech product?

During Tactical Tech’s research into the Influence Industry, we found over 300 companies around the world who use data to give political parties in...
: Tactical Tech @info_activismKlaas Diersman 
Animations that explore different data themes including data and dating, profiling and scoring. You can see the videos here.
In the Fake or Real game, visitors are presented with different Internet of Things technologies which they must decide are fake or real.
In May 2017 Tactical Tech and artist Joana Moll purchased 1 million online dating profiles for 136€ from USDate, a supposedly US-based company that...
: Manuel Beltrán @BeltrandroidNayantara Ranganathan @neintara
ad.watch breaks open the machine of political advertisements on Facebook and Instagram with data of more than 300 parties in 35 countries. Through ...
Stealing Ur Feelings is an augmented reality experience that reveals how your favorite apps can use facial emotion recognition technology to make d...
"Oli Frost is offering a once in a lifetime promotion – refer a friend to be his friend, and you'll both get $20." - https://olifro.st/refer

Other works

Vending Private Network offers you four different ways to surf the internet securely and privately. The virtual private network (VPN) you select wi...
Technologies like eye-tracking and mouse-tracking are increasingly being embedded in our interactions with devices, whether we realize it or not. A...
Open Flame is a re-imagined version of a Wi-Fi router, which pairs a network with a candle. To bring up its signal, the candle must be lit. When it...
This diagram visualizes the life cycle of a single AI-powered device: from birth on the left, to life, to death on the right. At the top of the map...
Sometimes you need to re-charge your phone battery – and your own battery. Meditation Charging Station asks you to do both at once. Plug your phone...
Do you agree? A Data-Day in San Francisco reveals segments of the terms and conditions that we accept when we click 'I agree'. Starting with wake u...
This poster looks into the most common design tricks used in technology, posing the question: Who is responsible for the way we interact with techn...
This poster looks at what goes on behind your 'selfie', delving into the world of facial recognition technologies, and the points of your face that...