The Eyes
Surveillance capitalists realized that they could do anything they wanted and they did. The only thing they make money from: changing what you do, how you think, and who you are.
produced by: Cheng Yang (cyang017@campus.goldsmiths.ac.uk)
CONCEPT
I want to reimagine a documentary —— The Social Dilemma (2020), directed by Jeff Orlowski.
- We used to pay for hardware and software, but now these Internet products are free. Behind it is advertisers who are paying. If we don't spend money on the product, then we are the products being sold.
- All behavioral data we produced are monitored and recorded, specific to how long we stay in a certain picture, our loneliness or depression, these systems all know. The system will continue to make better predictions to determine what kind of person we are and what we are going to do.
- The processing power of computers has increased hundreds of millions of times since the 1960s. In terms of our human physiology, the brain has not evolved at all. Our brains have existed for millions of years, and then such a screen appeared. On the other end of the screen are thousands of engineers and supercomputers with different goals than us. So who will win this game?
As a result, surveillance capitalists that behind the scenes, behind the engineers realized that they could do anything they wanted and they did, they can change what we do, change the way we think, even change who we are. We're going to be a person that the surveillance capitalists want us to be.
MY IDEAS
I want to create a feeling that we are being controlled, like the surveillance capitalists always monitor us invisibly in order to maximize their benefits.
I think there are still many people who are not aware of the crisis that the data age brings to us. I hope that people can not over indulge in the virtual world and social networks. The more data we provide, the stronger the control power the capitalists can gain. Everyone is just one of the insignificant noises of this era, we can neither end this era nor change it. Compared with living in the cage of the Internet or social media, it is better to feel more substantial things and make more "real" friends.
I hope my project could let people realize that we should not become a passive reader, a passive thought receiver, but an independent thinker who actively intervenes in public life with value judgments. We should not be controlled by capitalists.
INTERACTIVE MODE
In my work, the capitalists can be compared to countless pairs of eyes staring at us in the back. We are like a puppet that can be manipulated, doing the actions what the capitalists want us to do.
This project requires two people to participate. One person plays the role of exerting control and the other person plays the role of being controlled. When the person acting as the controller moves his fingers, the arms and legs of the corresponding virtual man in Of will also follow the movement. At the same time, the vibrator tied to the being controlled person’s arms and legs will also vibrate. For example, the thumb corresponds to the left leg of the virtual man. When I bend the thumb, the man's left leg will move, and the real person’s left leg will also feel the vibration at the same time.
Seneors I used: flex sensors, vibration sensors
TECHNICAL
The most difficult part of this work is to transfer 4 different variables to Of through Arduino, because I have only done a single variable transfer before. At the beginning, I thought of 3 methods to complete this data transfer. First is serial.write(byte), the second is serial.write(string), the last is osc receive.
Well, the Serial.println(string) is very stable in Arduino but Of don't have the readString function. Using Osc to send data have a very puzzling problem, Of can only receive data within 1 minute, after that, the data is wrong. A friend of mine also encountered this problem before. So I foucus on send 4 bytes to Of. However, when I just send one variable to Of, it is very stable, data can clearly reflect the state of finger movement from 1023 to 0, but when I send two variables and hold my finger, the data will always jump from 0 to a value, this is very strange, beacuse there is no mistake in the code. I tried many times and almost gave up. But finally, with the help of others, I replaced the Arduino uno board with Arduino nano, and the data instability was solved miraculously.
FUTHER DEVELOPMENTS
I originally wanted to improve my visual effects, but found that some effects would take up some cpu and cause the data transmission of my Arduino to be delayed. Especially the noise effect, in the end I can only take the screenshot of of, and use the imported image to make the noise effect.
I also found that when I used projection to present the image, the ratio of the screen changed, which caused my image background to be segmented unevenly. I think I need to pay attention to this problem next time.
For sensors, I think I can make my gloves and wristbands use wireless connection such as Wi-Fi, which can make it more convenient for people to wear. For the virtual man, if I can use kinet to identify the outline of the real person, and then change the outline of the real person in of by bending my fingers, will it be more interesting?
REFERENCES
DIY Robotic Hand Controlled by a Glove and Arduino: https://www.instructables.com/DIY-Robotic-Hand-Controlled-by-a-Glove-and-Arduino/
How to Build a Vibration Motor Circuit: http://www.learningaboutelectronics.com/Articles/Vibration-motor-circuit.php
ofSerial: https://openframeworks.cc/documentation/communication/ofSerial/#!show_readBytes