Abstract

My Studies of Work Atmosphere and Mass‑Production work has created a body of work that examines various socio‑political phenomena. While I have experimented with a wide array of media, I have defined an important part of my practice as Inverse Biotelemetry. Coordinating data mining with physical computing, Inverse Biotelemetry has been a supervenient discovery in forming a meta‑narrative for my research. In essence, Inverse Biotelemetry has clarified my observations regarding the effects of posthuman‑systems upon the individual person. The defining paradigm shift of the last hundred years can be seen as a movement from defining individuals as citizens, to seeing corporations as citizens.

Partnerships between psychology and industry have also lead to a demotion of individual citizens to the role of consumer. Advances in our understanding of how our individual minds work have accelerated and expanded upon this post‑human shift. As corporations shift from branding products to branding consumer’s experiences, notions of ownership, authenticity and disobedience become more important than ever before. What will tomorrow’s protest look like? Post‑human systems relate to demography, not the individual. For instance, thousands of individuals, both civilian and military, have been killed during the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. The global news media reflects on these events, it is out of an interest for the spectacle and the story being generated. Improvised Empathetic Device and Notepad are a pair of projects that comment on this phenomenon. Like many of my Inverse Biotelemetry based projects, IED and Notepad filters between the spectrums of where outcomes where humans are regarded in masse rather singularly. This inversion represents a strategy many present day artists and designers are deploying in order to tackle the important issues that confront our culture today. These strategies represent a ‘vocabulary’ of adversarial design.

• Matt Kenyon, University of Michigan, US