My project proposal was about the intervention of data practices from Google, Facebook, Amazon and other companies into our communication systems and all the human labor happening behind it. I made an annotated diagram of the Shannon diagram of a general communication system that explains that from my perspective. So for example,....(explain one route with listening and transcribing)
I wanted to highlight the human involvement into the training of speech recognition software on which personal assistants are based on. And to highlight the importance of voice as a unique element of our bodies that is collected into a big pool of trained data. My aim was to make experiments with other people in group sessions where we would discuss about our privacy and at the same time the discussion would become input for a process of human activities. Like transcribing, listening, eavesdropping, speaking, recording, repeating. They would immitate the processes of the training of speech recognition tools. Here is a diagram made by somebody else that explains further the exploitation of user's speech data and the free labor for the Amazon echo.
...i am very interested in the sources/databanks that different material (recording, online broadcasting, transcripts, readings online, livestreaming) of voice samples of users is used by Amazon without their consent.
My idea for repeat these actions, immitate conversations, transcribing, eavesdroping came from these databanks. There are limitless actions happening from users that produce and publish so much material online.
My purpose was to strengthen our awareness for our involvement in the loop and answer some questions that bother me. Some of these questions is how our bodies are influenced by these systems, what is the control over them and how can we appropriate these new technologies more consciously? It seems to me that in all this process our personal body [cultural, physical, political, gender] disappears. My plan was to organise a workshop at Leeszaal where the visitors and the volunteers are permanent inhabitants of Netherlands and are coming from different countries. I assume that they have different relations to these tools and databanks.
My first experiment was the workshop, part of the pyratechnic sessions, with the first years. I wanted to immitate a loop in which a conversation of two people leakes out to another room, through Jitsi, where participants repeat, transcribe and then read the transcription back to them. So their words come back distorted. //Explain the second diagram//
The workshop was missing content and after the feedback I got from the participants and the outcome of it I started looking for transcripts and distribution of public speeches and that led me on my interest on the voice and the body in public.
So I started to focus my research on voice in public, public speeches and assemblies with the aid of media. I am very interested in the voice and its ability to connect people but also to express the uniqueness of the speaker. I looked at specific examples of counter communication for speeches of resistance that I had come accross in a previous research.
In feminists movements speech-making workshops were helping women to express the violence in their private space (their home) to the public domain that was dominated by male voices. There was a strong division between private and public, women and men that keeps up till today. They were privatizing listening and horizontal communication. The presence of them in public was very important.
In 2011 in occupy movement speech and voice played also an important role. Public assemblies and speeches were held every day by citizens in squares. It was not allowed to use amplifying devices in some public spaces so the crowd became the "human microphone", repeating what the speaker says. Youtube and live streaming was used for the fast communication of the public assemblies in internet and were perfectly fitted in the urgency of those actions. I see streaming as a bottom-up approach for establishing rapid (though temporary) communication.
A very fast process were the companies realised and developed their own livestreaming like facebook, instagram where people stream live videos from demontstrations, terrorists attacts. An urgent tool.
Coming from a country were the public presence and resistance is on stake, gender inequalities are reflected in the public and the engagememt with the technology is divided in the male expert and the other amateur, I felt the need to embrace this side of technology and awaken it and the demand for presence through my own eyes. Coming to a country were the public presence is highly controlled and surveilled. Use of technology for controling the crowd that is not expressed in public but online. The bodily representation and face to face communication not on priority in matters of democracy and agonistic arena. Reflecting the issues arisen on the rights on speech and open use of public spaces. Interrogating the contribution of daily technologies like livestraming and their exploitation by social media companies. Surveillance with personal assistants, listening to the crowd.
I want to organise group sessions with conversations on public speech and live-streaming that connect the public space with the private, the digital with the physical and explores the possibilities of these processes in both spaces. They will be similar to the previous idea, with conversations on privacy and claiming rights in the public with our own voice. At the same time engagament with the tools and practices that are related to these phenomenon. Looking for the potentials of these for a more active public domain (agonistic). I would try these sessions in physical public spaces, where the exploitation of citizens data and their restriction and control is present. The relation of a private space(and all the things that involve, the private life of the contemporary user) with a low_tech public space.
It’s somehow controversial when the citizens have to ask for the use of technology in public spaces but the states install surveillance devices in the streets and squares and gather data of them without their concent. I found several restrictions regarding public assemblies. In Rotterdam, in a specific area where a market of immigrants, Afrikaandermarkt, is being held, there is a ban on public assembly, previously legitimated by anti-hooliganism, it is now enforced due to anti-terrorist concerns. In some cases surveillance with several technologies and devices is applied. The installation of these devices in the public space conflicts with the constitution. Examples of such technologies and practices that surveil public assemblies are the operation of CCTV cameras and the collection of personal data through videotaping and photographing. They tresspass the privacy rights of the protesters.
A workshop discussion on public speech and assemblies in Netherlands:
- I will bring texts related to that, we will figure out laws in their country and this country, what is the situation with women? Able to speak in public? what are the public spaces for immigrants and refugees? What streaming tools are used for emergent publishing
- Using pad iframe in a website, git (my writing practice will affact that), human microphone, collective editing, transcription, collective live streaming--speech and assemblies, pad-Transcription, human microphone}
how: workshops with inhabitants (daily expression in rotterdam public) and experiments in public spaces, connect with people and communities around patebin, live streaming
why: occupy public space and the contribution of media, externilize the private the need for presence for democratic processes to happen, the conflict with the powerful.
Parts of my previous proposal may come back in the future if they fit my development (the bublic domain of all these databanks where users publish material and the public space ((the voice in public but unconsciously-just using a tool)) with the restrictions where citizens are obliged to listen to spesific rules ((the voice in public to reclaim rights))). I will move between private and public and privacy. My approach may look chaotic but everyting comes together and make sense at the end. I collect and search through the broader context of the topic but then I simplify a lot the whole process. I try small experiments, then I come back to research and then experiments again.
