[ISEA2010] Paper: Owen Mundy – Automata: Counter-Surveillance Using Public Space

Abstract

Automata is the working title for a counter-surveillance internet bot that will record and display the mutually-beneficial interrelationships between institutions for higher learning, the global defense industry, and world militaries. The proliferation of automated spying techniques on the part of government and corporate institutions has created an unequal flow of information. This bot acts to subvert these techniques in the most relevant way – by making data about the confluence of economic and violent power visible to the public at large for research, activism, and examination.

  • Owen Mundy (US) is an artist who investigates public space and its relationship to data. His artwork highlights inconspicuous trends and offers tools to make hackers out of everyday users. He is an Assistant Professor of Art at Florida State University (US) and DAAD fellow, currently based in Berlin (DE).

Full text (PDF) p.  263-264