This week Shir and I did some field research, speaking with several engineers, scientists, and software developers about the viability of some of the ideas we had for our anti-surveillance biometric kit.

We first spoke with Nasir Memon, a professor at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering who specializes in biometrics. He had some ideas for the kit, including some kind of wearable (a hat?) that would hold infrared LEDs that would shield the face from facial recognition while remaining imperceptible to the human eye. Upon his suggestion, we then spoke with three NYU engineering students about the viability of this idea and got some real feedback (some of which was positive, some of which presented more challenges).

We talked to Eric Rosenthal, a scientist and professor at ITP, about some of the work he’s done with IR lights and biometric identity verification while at Disney. Shir also spoke to Lior Ben-Kereth, a partner at the facial recognition company acquired by Facebook.

We decided to move forward with the infrared LED wearable idea, but first we needed to ensure that a range of different kinds of cameras do indeed pick up the infrared light. We connected a cluster of IR LEDs and pointed them at our iPhone camera, FaceTime, Snapchat, and a range of IP surveillance cameras – including three different kinds that are in use at ITP.

You can see the result of our test below:

This week, Shir and I have been discussing the biometric anti-surveillance kit that we will be building for our midterm project.

What is biometric data? 

Biometrics are the measurable, distinct characteristics that are used to verify the identity of individuals, including groups that are under surveillance. Biometric data includes fingerprints, DNA, face recognition, retina scans, palm veins, hand geometry, iris recognition, voice, and gait.

Problem area

Biometric data is extremely sensitive. If your data is compromised, it’s not replaceable (unlike password tokens). The widespread collection of personal, biometric data raises questions about the sharing of such data between government agencies or private companies. Many of us use the Apple Touch ID on a daily basis and yet we don’t think about the fact that Apple now has access to a snapshot of our fingerprint. In addition, biometric data is most often collected by the state about populations that are already vulnerable, including criminals, travelers, and immigrants.

Proposed project

We intend to put together a biometric resistance kit, a toolkit of wearable objects aimed at masking and altering user’s personal biometric identity. The aim of the project is to prototype non-intrusive objects that can be worn by anybody to protect their biometric identity in public spaces.

Contents of the kit

We had several ideas of what the kit could contain.

Relevant projects

We researched what had been done in the past and found several other artists and engineers experimenting with anti-surveillance materials.

Identity is a project by Mian-Wei that uses a band-aid made of silicon and fibers to trick the Apple Touch ID into thinking it’s a real fingerprint. The solution is simple and effective, something we would like to achieve with our project.

Biononymous Guide is a series of DIY guides for masking your biometric identity (specifically, DNA and fitness trackers). We loved the format of the website – the mix of printed materials, physical objects, and how-to videos match the kind of kit we’re hoping to build.

Adam Harvey is an artist whose anti-surveillance work includes Stealth Wear, a line of Islamic-inspired clothing to shield against drone attacks & thermal cameras, and CV Dazzle, a makeup guide that beats facial recognition algorithms. We loved how he tried to work with styles that people would actually want to wear. This will likely be a major concern in the development of our project.

Field research and interviews

We’ve spoken with a few experts in the field of biometrics, surveillance, and facial recognition algorithms and are planning to continue these conversations.

First, we spoke to Nasir Memon, a computer science professor and biometrics expert at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering. He had some ideas for the kit, including a hat with infrared lights that would beat facial recognition algorithms. We also spoke to NYU engineering students who are researching surveillance, machine learning, and biometrics. They gave us additional technical guidance about what in our kit would be most viable. We also have set up meetings with artist Adam Harvey and NYU professor Eric Rosenthal to discuss our project idea.

User personas

Shir and I have had many conversations about who this kit would affect. We realized that for the time being, there is no reasonable way to combat the fingerprinting that occurs for immigrants, foreign visitors, criminals, or people who are required to scan their fingerprints for work. Instead, we realized that this kit would be best suited for people who are worried about their privacy and surveillance when they’re in public spaces. Here are several example users we created:

Problem framework.

For my midterm project, I’d like to address the ethics and implications of widespread biometric data collection.

Biometric identifiers are defined as measurable, distinctive characteristics that are used to label or describe individuals. They’re commonly used by governments and private organizations to verify the identity of an individual or group of individuals, including groups that are under surveillance. Physiological characteristics include fingerprints, DNA, face recognition, retina scans, palm veins, hand geometry, and iris recognition. Behavioral identifiers measure behavioral patterns like voice and gait.

Here’s the breakdown of identification accuracy based on biometric input:

The earliest record of fingerprinting cataloguing dates back to 1891. Biometrics arguably originated with “identificatory systems of criminal activity” as part of a larger system to categorize and label criminal populations. “The biometric system is the absolute political weapon of our era” and a form of “soft control,” writes Nitzan Lebovic. Under the post-9/11 expansion of the Patriot Act, biometric systems have expanded from the state to the private market and blurred the lines between public and private control.

While biometric data is seen as being more accurate and therefore more reliable as a way to identify an individual, it is also not replaceable. If your private password was somehow compromised, for instance, you could simply change your password. On the other hand, you can’t replace your fingerprint or change other physical characteristics.

Italian theorist Giorgio Agamben experienced the implications of “bio-political tattooing” firsthand in 2004 when he was told that in order to obtain a U.S. visa to teach a course at New York University he would have to submit himself to fingerprinting procedures. In a piece published in Le Monde, Agamben explains why he refused to comply, arguing that the electronic filing of finger and retina prints required by the U.S. government are ways in which the state registers and identifies naked life. According to Agamben, biometric data collection operates as a form of disciplinary power.

Audience.

This issue affects potentially everyone so our audience is very broad. Biometrics data is most often collected about populations that are already vulnerable, including criminals, the poor, and immigrants. Corporations put a monetary value on biometric data, and yet individuals don’t think about data collection as an intrusion.

The goal of this project is to foster an awareness of the implications and ethics of biometric data collection.

Ideas for the project and user journey.

Concept #1: A physical installation that gives the user personalized information based on a biometric input.

Concept #2: A speculative VR experience with advertisements tailored to user’s biometric data.

Concept #3: A kit of wearable objects aimed at masking and altering user’s personal biometric identity.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/i-replaced-my-fingerprints-with-prosthetics-to-avoid-surveillance

Concept #4: Collect (non-identity-compromising) biometric data from various participants and sell data on eBay in order to gauge the monetary value of the data.

http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/this-artist-turned-herself-into-a-corporation-to-sell-her-data

She would not say of any one in the world that they were this or were that. She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, far out to the sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.
– Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

For this week’s assignment, we were asked to redesign a narrative experience according to the agile human-centric design principles we discussed last week.

For my source material, I drew from the themes and text of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, a 1925 novel written in a stream of consciousness literary style that sketches the portrait of life of one woman, Clarissa Dalloway, during the course of one single day.

In the first chapter of the book, Clarissa walks the streets around London running errands in preparation for a party she is throwing that night. When I reread the book, I was struck by the ways in which the novel sharpens our attention to details of time and space, especially the specificity of London during Clarissa’s walks. Time is a significant theme in the novel, with clocks ringing the hour and signs of aging and death made hypervisible in the text. So much of the narration in the novel occurs inside the head of the protagonist, with special attention paid to her surroundings.

With this project, I wanted to explore creating a film that employs this stream of consciousness narrative style while physically putting you in the shoes of the protagonist. I chose to reimagine Mrs Dalloway as an immersive VR/360 experience in order to explore this narrative style not only in text, but also in film.

The idea behind the project was to film myself walking in New York using 360 video, paired with a voice over narration of the opening chapter of the novel. I made slight changes to the text in order to accommodate the sharp departure in setting (from 1925 London to 2016 New York). Much of the narration in the novel is observational — Clarissa sees a woman in a taxi cab, she arrives at the park, she looks in shop windows — and I wanted to replicate those moments in the film as much as possible.

Check out the initial prototype of my idea.

YouTube:

My audience for this project could be anyone, really. Because it’s a 360 video, the user has full control over what he or she is looking at during the film. Just like London, New York is replete with observational details; I wanted the audience to experience that same sensory overload in my project.

Vimeo:

Listen: you are not yourself, you are crowds of others, you are as leaky a vessel as was ever made, you have spent vast amounts of your life as someone else, as people who died long ago, as people who never lived, as strangers you never met. The usual I we are given has…none of the porousness of our every waking moment, the loose threads, the strange dreams, the forgettings and misrememberings, the portions of a life lived through others’ stories, the incoherence and inconsistency, the pantheon of dei ex machina and the companionability of ghosts. There are other ways of telling.

― Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby

One of the goals of VR documentaries, suggested by the filmmakers behind Collisions and Clouds over Sidra, is to give the audience a sense of ‘presence.’ Immersive experiences in VR allow the participant to feel that he or she is physically in the same location as the camera. The technical constraints of VR filmmaking demand slow, deliberate camera movements. Many VR films have a structured narrative while still giving the audience the agency to decide what they will look at during the film. To paraphrase one reviewer of Clouds over Sidra, what moviemaker in the past would include 20 seconds of ceiling shots, looking up at the top of the tent?

I include these observations about VR film because I’d like to highlight the ways in which Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky uses similar techniques in many of his films to produce an immersive, experiential cinema experience.

During his career, Tarkovsky directed only seven feature films, including Solaris, Stalker, Andrei Rublev, and Mirror during the period 1962-1986. He was a pioneer in the field of cinema, experimenting with new narrative techniques and theories. Many of Tarkovsky’s films are characterized by extremely long takes, slow camera pans, and very few cuts. He developed a theory of cinema called “sculpting in time,” in which he explored how film can twist and alter the audience’s experience of time. Unedited movie footage and lengthly sequences were used to heighten that feeling of time passing.

I watched Solaris for the first time in college and I remembered being shocked by a long, drawn-out driving sequence within the first ten minutes of the film. The scene is nearly five minutes long.

Tarkovsky writes: “If the regular length of a shot is increased, one becomes bored, but if you keep on making it longer, it piques your interest, and if you make it even longer, a new quality emerges, a special intensity of attention.”

Tarkovsky also employed common motifs of running water, clouds, and reflections in his films. Many understood his preoccupation with reflective surfaces to mirror his own interest in self-reflection and introspection. Of Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman said: “Tarkovsky for me is the greatest (director), the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream.”

On a personal level, I’ve learned from Tarkovsky that compelling films do not need to have a strict narrative, nor follow time limits or other cinematic constraints. Tarkovsky’s films were so powerful because they pushed the audience into a state of heightened attention.

Crafters of immersive/experiential films often need to make similar decisions about timing, camera movement, and narrative in order to tell the most compelling story possible. The VR film Collisions, for instance, mixed beautiful, wide landscapes with meandering narration in very lengthy shots. With my work in this class, I’m interested in exploring the kinds of experiential, non-linear narrative that Tarkovsky’s films often embody.

Here’s the presentation I gave in class: