Brief: Design a way to track and trace human contact that builds trust
Group: Felix, Amber, Nancy, Tanvi
Project partner: Tactical Technology Collective
Overview of the brief
The project started with Stephanie Hankey, co-founder and executive director of the Tactical Technological Collective, talking to us about the given brief and the past projects done by TTC. She spoke about the glass room and the data detox kit. We discussed a few topics related to the brief like "A therapist in data", "House of world cultures" as well as the ethics in technology design.
As we started thinking about contact tracing, we started researching on the aspects of trust and how trust is built at the ground level. We started looking at cultural differences in trust, and how to design trust in a system.
Related to tracking and tracing, we dug deep into surveillance as cultural practices. Questions like- “What are the trade-offs to society by giving up data? What is consent in terms of the pandemic? How could you change behaviors?” started coming up.
Collaboration — Online
Due to the pandemic, none of us could be in London to collaborate in person. As my group members were all in different countries- Hong Kong, UK, Lebanon, and India, we were all in different time zones. We decided that we would have a fixed time for a group discussion every day and the other work was done asynchronized through the collaborative platform, 'Miro'.
Literature review
We decided to study surveillance as and in different areas. I chose to study surveillance without technology, and as a cultural practice. Nancy studied surveillance as a whole and Felix studied how trust is built while Amber looked at how dogs trace through scent. We also looked at the different technologies used while tracing and tracking.
Surveillance as a cultural practice
I looked at how surveillance has evolved through cultural practices. Lyon (2018) talks about surveillance societies, where there is extensive surveillance in spite of which, individuals still go about their life as usual. An example of this can be the show- Big brother, where every step of an individual is monitored.
Monahan also talks about how camera recording for films and in drama inspired it being used in criminal detection. Similarly, we can find connections between reality TV, literature, and drama. One more example can be the group of people — Surveillance camera players, protesting on the street of NYC against the use of cameras. Surveillance can also be capitalized by providing unique offers to those users who give more data about themselves.
Feedback
After the presentation on Monday, John and Alistair gave us advice on researching about the Hawthorne effect. They liked the idea of experimenting with tracking without technology. The cultural differences in trust seemed like an interesting place and we thought of setting the threshold of trust in each culture.
About the presentation, we used a Miro board to present, which seemed a little messy to navigate. Our feedback with that respect was to use more examples in the theory based study and name the references beside them.
Takeaways
As this was the first week, we focused more on the literature review. This project was more
micro which definitely gave us an advantage as we were in lockdown.
Collaboration through different platforms and online was an interesting thing to learn as everyone was facing the same issues. I also started learning how to not limit work to a certain time zone.
Relation to the reading
George Perec's, 'Species of small spaces and other pieces', gave me a good insight into micro-level interactions. The reading was about looking at familiar spaces in a different perspective which forced me to think about trust in my family in a new light. It also encouraged me to think about spaces affecting trust.
References
Perec, G., 1997. Species of spaces. Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, pp.1–96.
Lyon, D., 2018. The culture of surveillance: Watching as a way of life. John Wiley & Sons.
Kammerer, D., 2012. Surveillance in literature, film and television. Routledge handbook of surveillance studies, pp.99–106.
Monahan, T., 2011. Surveillance as cultural practice. The Sociological Quarterly, 52(4), pp.495–508.
Michael Carter and Bill Brown,1996. Surveillance Camera Players available athttps://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14794713.2015.1084797
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, 1991, Untitled, artwork
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