[ISN] Surveillance and Control conference, 9 March

From: InfoSec News (isnat_private)
Date: Thu Mar 07 2002 - 00:36:26 PST

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    Forwarded from: Honor Harger <honor.hargerat_private>
    
    I'd like to invite you to come to Tate Modern in London this Saturday
    for a special event looking at the development of debates in
    surveillance technologies post-September 11.  The investigative
    journalist, Duncan Campbell will be presenting.
    
    Please come and join us and participate in the discussion. We would
    certainly be grateful if you would please forward the invitation on
    you anyone you think might be interested.
    
    Very best wishes
    
    Honor Harger
    Webcasting Curator, Interpretation & Education
    Tate Modern
    honor.hargerat_private
    http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/programmes/webcasting/
    PH: (44) 020 7401 5066
    
    
    
    SURVEILLANCE AND CONTROL
    
    Saturday 9 March
    1400 - 1830 [ GMT ]
    
    Starr Auditorium, Level 2, Tate Modern, London, UK
    
    Tickets: UK£10 / £5.
    Ph: 020 7887 8888
    
    http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/programmes/webcasting/surveillance.htm
    
    ABOUT THE EVENT
    
    Surveillance and Control is a half day conference which will consider
    widespread uses of electronic surveillance.It aims to analyse how
    recent social and political developments have impacted on discourses
    around surveillance, and to address how various surveillance
    technologies have influenced new media art practice.
    
    We are confronted by the troubling and expanding presence of
    surveillance in our daily life. Monitoring devices are used ever more
    to observe physical space, while electronic space has been proven to
    be likewise vulnerable to scrutiny, due to the operation of global
    data interception systems.The increasing ubiquity of surveillance has
    radically transformed the relation between public and private spheres,
    as well as the very nature of political and technological control.
    
    Surveillance has been a rich source of interest for artists for many
    years, and in recent times monitoring and tracking technologies have
    formed a major part of the arsenal of the contemporary
    artist.Exhibitions such as CTRL[SPACE] at the ZKM in Germany, reveal a
    growing interest in artistic surveillance tactics, drawing attention
    to new interpretations of the 18th Century concept of the panopticon
    as an ideal mechanism of observation and control.
    
    Our concept of a continually observed society has moved on since
    Michel Foucault seized on the panopticon as a metaphor for the
    oppressive use of information in modern society.Though Foucault's
    observation that control no longer requires physical domination over
    the body, but can be enacted through the constant possibility of
    observation, still holds true, the methods used to monitor individuals
    in space have changed considerably. Surveillance and Control will not
    only refer to the uses of conventional monitoring and tracking
    technologies, but also the operation of 'dataveillance' - the largely
    invisible practice of tracking and intercepting electronic data.
    
    The events of September 11 and their continuous re-enactment as media
    spectacle, have created a new psychological environment in which these
    issues can be considered. Since this time, new surveillance and
    communication interception powers for law enforcement agencies and
    intelligence authorities have been proposed and enacted in many
    countries. The war on terror has lead to what Nazi propaganda minister
    Joseph Goebbles once described as, the 'optimum anxiety level' which
    is needed to mobilise a larger audience for a certain common cause -
    in this case the rehabilitation of the authoritarian state and the
    expansion of the military and policing.In this context, it becomes
    more problematic to speak about privacy and threats to freedom of
    information.Surveillance and Control will ask if there is a
    possibility to counter this meticulously maintained public anxiety,
    and re-engage a more balanced dialogue about the limits of freedom
    versus the limits of systems of surveillance and control.
    
    This half day conference features artists Marko Peljhan (Slovenia),
    Kate Rich (Australia / UK) and Julia Scher (USA), investigative
    journalist, Duncan Campbell (UK), media theorist, Eric Kluitenberg
    (Netherlands), and Konrad Becker from Public Netbase (Austria).The
    event will also feature an info-booth by World-Information.org.
    
    
    PROGRAMME
    
    14:00 - 14:05 - Welcome and introduction
    Honor Harger: Webcasting Curator, Tate Modern
    
    
    14:05 - 14:10 - Chair's Introduction
    Eric Kluitenberg: media theorist, the Netherlands
    
    
    14:10 - 14:45 - Duncan Campbell
    Duncan Campbell's presentation will outline the scale and functioning
    of global electronic surveillance systems.In a slide lecture, he will
    show the real world visual iconography of surveillance, giving a
    graphic picture of the way in which surveillance is deployed.He will
    also address how the politics of privacy have undergone a major shift,
    since September 11.In a psychological environment where it has become
    difficult to argue for the protection of the personal sphere,
    intellectual and philosophical debate about the use of surveillance
    and the role of privacy, is in decline.Campbell will address the
    impact of the paucity of rigorous discourse and analysis of this area.
    
    
    14:45 - 15:20 - Kate Rich
    Kate Rich is part of the Bureau of Inverse Technology (BIT), an
    information agency which develops data, tracking and visualisation
    devices for critical deployment.BIT's projects often comment on the
    use of monitoring and data-tracking systems employed by large
    corporations and bureaucracies. Rich's presentation will outline
    projects such as Suicide Box, a vertical motion video recorder mounted
    below the Golden Gate bridge, and BIT Plane a miniature spy plane
    deployed over the aerial space of Silicon Valley.Rich will also refer
    to recent projects such as BANGBANG, a network of webcams which
    automatically sense gunfire or related explosions, and BIT Radio, an
    event-activated FM radio transmitter which can interrupt normal
    broadcast services with important information.
    
    
    15:20 - 16:00 - Panel discussion, with audience intervention
    With Kate Rich and Duncan Campbell
    Chair: Eric Kluitenberg
    
    
    16:00 - 16:30 - Break
    Tea and coffee
    
    
    16:30 - 17:05 - Julia Scher
    Julia Scher's work attempts to unmask and deconstruct surveillance
    technology. She employs standard surveillance tools in site-specific
    installations and online projects, which expose the mechanisms of
    technological domination and examine our complicity with them.Her
    presentation will refer to works such as Security Sites Visit, where
    visitors were lead on tours of company's security systems, and
    Predictive Engineering, a web project which analyses the ubiquity of
    surveillance and the manner in which power is asserted in the spaces
    we inhabit.Scher will also speculate on the changing face of
    surveillance, considering invisible forms of scrutiny and the role of
    privacy.
    
    
    17:05 - 17:40 - Marko Peljhan
    Marko Peljhan's projects put the tools of control in the hands of the
    scrutinised. Utilising the techniques and technology of military and
    corporate surveillance, Peljhan constructs pragmatic and utilitarian
    mechanisms, which enable the gaze to be turned back on the observers
    themselves. In this presentation, Peljhan will refer to projects such
    as Insular Technologies, which aims to establish an independent high
    frequency radio communication network, and Makrolab, an autonomous
    communications, research and living unit.His presentation will also
    address the technologies of remote sensing, and signals intelligence,
    referring to the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for surveillance
    purposes.
    
    
    17:40 - 18:30 - Panel discussion, with audience intervention
    With Julia Scher, Marko Peljhan and Konrad Becker.
    Chair: Eric Kluitenberg
    
    
    ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS
    
    - Julia Scher, USA
    Julia Scher is an artist, who's work focuses on the subjects
    surveillance and cyber-sphere. Aiming at the exposure of dangers and
    ideologies of monitoring systems, Scher creates temporary and
    transitory web/installation/performance works that explore issues of
    power, control and seduction. Scher is a founding member of The Thing,
    a net.community based in New York.She has lectured at Harvard
    University, Princeton University and Rutgers University, and is
    presently engaged with the department of architecture at MIT in
    Boston, USA. Online data:
    http://architecture.mit.edu/people/bg/cvscher.html
    
    - Marko Peljhan, Slovenia
    Marko Peljhan is a media artist and founder of the organisation,
    Projekt Atol, which runs Makrolab, an autonomous communications,
    research and living unit, and many other projects.Makrolab has been
    shown at documentaX in Kassel in 1997, on Rottnest Island-Wadjemup,
    Australia in 2000, and will be installed at Blair Atholl estate in the
    Scotish Highlands in the summer of 2002 and presented at the Tramway
    in Glasgow in August .
    
    Online data: http://makrolab.ljudmila.org/
    
    - Kate Rich, UK / Australia
    Kate Rich is a video engineer for Bureau of Inverse Technology (BIT).
    BIT develops data, tracking and visualisation devices for critical
    deployment. Projects she has worked on with BIT include, the SUICIDE
    BOX, the BIT PLANE, and the BANGBANG camera network. Online data:
    http://bureauit.org
    
    - Duncan Campbell, UK
    Scottish born Duncan Campbell is an investigative journalist, author,
    consultant and television producer specialising in privacy, civil
    liberties and secrecy issues. His best-known investigations have led
    to major legal clashes with successive British governments. In 1988,
    he revealed the existence of the ECHELON project, which has since 1997
    become controversial throughout the world and especially in Europe.
    Online data: http://www.gn.apc.org/duncan
    
    - Eric Kluitenberg, Netherlands
    Eric Kluitenberg is a writer, theorist and organiser of culture and
    technology events. He lives in Amsterdam and currently works for De Balie,
    Centre for Culture and Politics, where in 2001 he organised The Society of
    Control - a event showcasing artists' use of electronic observation
    technologies.
    Online data: De Balie: http://www.balie.nl
    
    - Konrad Becker, Austria
    Konrad Becker is the director of Public Netbase, an organisation based
    in Vienna, Austria, that explores the relationship between culture and
    technology, art and society, science and politics.One of their key
    projects over the past two years has been World-information.org, a
    "cultural intelligence agency", which maps out the cultural, social,
    economic and technological aspects of a global information society.The
    next series of World-information.org events will take place in
    Amsterdam at the end of 2002. A mini World-Information.org info-booth
    will be on display in the lobby area, outside the Starr Auditorium
    during Surveillance and Control. Online data: De Balie:
    http://world-information.org
    
    
    GETTING TICKETS
    
    There are still tickets available to attend the event.
    Tickets cost UK£10 (or UK£5 for concessions).
    Tickets can be obtained from:
    Tate Ticketing:
    Ph: 020 7887 8888 (choose option 1, then option 2 in the automated menu)
    Email: tate.ticketingat_private
    
    
    ABOUT THE WEBCAST
    
    This event will be presented live on the Tate website, as part of Tate's
    Webcasting Programme. You can experience the event live online in audio and
    video using the Real Player.
    
    To find out more, visit:
    <http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/programmes/webcasting>.  If you haven't
    experienced Tate Modern's webcasts before, please visit our technical
    help page:  <http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/programmes/help.htm>. The
    international times of the webcast are:
    
    9 March
    1400 - 1830 [ GMT ]
    1500 - 1930 [ Central European Time ]
    0900 - 1330 [ US Eastern Standard Time ]
    1930 - 0000 [ Indian / Calcutta Time ]
    
    10 March
    0100 - 0530 [ Australian Eastern Summer Time ]
    0300 - 0730 [ New Zealand Summer Time ]
    
    If your timezone doesn't appear here, visit:
    <http://www.timezoneconverter.com>
    
    
    MORE INFORMATION
    
    For more on this event, see:
    http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/programmes/webcasting/surveillance.htm
    or contact: Honor Harger, Webcasting Curator, Interpretation &
    Education, Tate Modern
    Email: honor.hargerat_private
    PH: (44) 020 7401 5066
    
    For more information about Tate or getting tickets for the event:
    Tate Box Office
    Email: tate.ticketingat_private
    PH: (44) 020 7887 8888
    URL: http://www.tate.org.uk
    
    
    
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