As I was not fully satisfied with any of the ideas for thesis projects I have had so far, I have decided to move forward with an idea I have had for a while now: Scrape.
Scrape is an art piece that explores information privacy by focusing on the graphical data that is left behind on a computer. All computers store visual data. The graphics card is basically recording a history of all recent activity on the machine. The core of Scrape is a custom software that retrieves the data from a computer graphics card at regular intervals. This found data is interpreted and represented visually, creating a beautiful, abstract mosaic of sometimes chaotic and sometimes recognizable tiles of information.
The idea behind Scrape emerged from a bug in software that I wrote, in which the user interface was being drawn within itself recursively. After much confusion about why this was happening, I eventually realized that I had accessed “leftover” data on the graphics card. The idea to expose this forgotten visual data has been in the back of my mind for about four years and finally became fully developed in Scrape.
I developed the concepts behind Scrape in Show and Tell Studio last semester, and my intention was to apply for a Canada Arts Council Grant to produce the piece after graduation. However, it is a solid project that is fit for a thesis, so I have decided to work on it now.
The Scrape software will be used in the three modules that make up the project.
The first module is an interactive installation piece. A room is furnished with three computers and six monitors on a desk, metaphorically a security office in a mall or office building. Visitors are invited to use the computers, where Scrape is running in the background, collecting data in real-time and feeding it to the monitors. The controls in the front of the monitors can be used to switch between a grid view of the eleven data interpretations, or a full-screen focus on one of them. This allows the users to directly see the contents of the scrapes and the relationship between their actions and the displays.
The second module is an exhibition of large format portraits produced with the software. The prints will be selected images generated by Scrape, offering a snapshot of users characterized by their collected data. Visually, the pieces will mirror the repetition patterns and singularity of collage art, resulting in compositions that are both beautiful and representative of this one aspect of their creators. By using the program extensively, the participants will understand the inner workings of its operation and will have greater control on the output, using data as a medium to “paint” their self-portraits.
The last module is an online service where users can upload their scrapes to a gallery. A downloadable application will allow participants to scrape their graphics data, save it as an image, and upload it to the online service. The uploads can be shared with other users and hyperlinked to already-existing social networks. The idea is to answer the popular “What are you doing?” question –which is at the core of services such as Facebook and Twitter– using a unique and personal visual badge. Instead of redefining one’s identity through written status updates, the visual scrape exposes one’s “computational state” impartially and uncritically.
0 Responses to “Scrape”