Outsmarting the algorithm or leaving the grid through surveillance artivism

Abstract

Privacy feels like a distant memory since it is virtually non-existent nowadays. Cameras are all around, though we are not only visually monitored from any possible angle, but also with every movement and every trackable parameter. Faced with the feeling of being transparent and constantly recorded by various systems, the idea of becoming invisible is explored: finding inspiration from the ways that artists have tackled the issue of surveillance in their work – being exposed and evading it. Discussing artistic approaches as a means of raising awareness and exploring strategies to outsmart the algorithms can offer us alternative ways of existing outside the world of electricity and its manifold constraints. As the issue has been around for some time, the introduced artistic positions span the past 50 years and allude to the fast-evolving technologies in artistic research projects but also performances and artworks, which appear aesthetically pleasing at first glimpse but are insinuating a much more severe topic. Artworks inside the museum or gallery space might be much more refined, although intervention in the public space may reach a wider and more diverse audience. Raising the question of the evaluation, interpretation and exploitation of the material, the current discourse around artificial intelligence comes to mind and specifically the implications of machine learning and image generation in regard to the authenticity of the image in general, precipitating a broader conversation on surveillance and its antidotes.