DATA RUSH call for submissions Noorderlicht 2015 international photofestival august 22 - october 11 www.noorderlicht.com
DATA RUSH
In 2015, every second person on this planet will be connected to the internet. It has taken just twenty years to reach this point. Unsurprisingly, the internet, like any other territory, has been made subject to power play. Government agencies, global corporations and black hat hackers are all players in a big scramble to either control, or at least survey everything so it can be used to their advantage.
Power Who possesses the digital archives we’ve accumulated, who monitors us with what intent? Those who amass ‘Big Data’ have the power to not let us know we are being monitored, either by legal means or by obfuscation. As we proceed to inhabit digital environments, we tend to forget the internet exists as data that can be used for good and bad, and that data once shared is out of our hands for eternity. These privacy issues threaten representative democracies as much as they endanger the lives of those in more authoritarian regimes.
Limitless Scope We also often don’t realize that the global network facilitates much more than your average website or email: it enables security cameras everywhere to transmit their surveillance data, phone conversations can be tapped, satellite images are gathered instantly, the stock market makes microsecond decisions that decide the fate of our economy, the ‘internet of things’ opens up our refrigerators and door locks to the world. Its scope is limitless.
Digital Freedom The internet enables freedom of information. It can enrich our lives, be an outlet for our identity and creativity. It makes new developments possible, facilitates resistance against the status quo, makes public what others want hidden. And its users should be able to feel safe when it comes to their digital freedom, in the knowledge that their privacy is a basic human right. This implies safety from the peering eyes of powerful parties, as well as from our own peers on the web.
Exhibition project DATA RUSH investigates the tension between freedom and control in a virtual world. At the same time, on a photographic level it poses the challenge: if photography is a medium that tells us stories about the physical world we live in, how can it enlighten us about life in a virtual world, and the revolutions taking place in it?
Photographers, curators and editors are invited to submit relevant portfolios. The final exhibition will have a multidisciplinary form, in which the main photography focus will be combined with other art forms and academic interventions, to stimulate a dialogue between art, science and the audience. The presentation will be part of the Noorderlicht 2015 International Photofestival, opening August 22 in Groningen, the Netherlands. Submissions and suggestions of photographers, media artists and curators are welcome, from every continent. These can be sent to curator Wim Melis, via FTP or by email to pandora@noorderlicht.com, starting now through March 30, 2015. There are no submission fees. Submission guidelines: www.noorderlicht.com/en/info/submitting-work/
Data Rush investigates the tension between freedom and control in a virtual world. It has only taken twenty years for the internet to reach global omnipresence. Unsurprisingly, like any other territory, it has been made subject to power play in which indivuals, governments, corporations are all players in a big scramble to either control or survey anything. DATA RUSH is the theme of the Noorderlicht 2015 international photo festival, for which we are welcoming submissions till March 30. Below we clarify the theme and expand on it via examples and possible approaches for the series to be shown. 1.
Individual liberties & responsibilities
Shifting boundaries between private and public life online, social networks. Sharing personal information online versus protesting spying by state and businesses. Censoring of free speech by others leading to self-censorshop. Online life overtaking ‘real world’ life, addiction to data. Instant sharing of large amounts of pictures from our phone cameras. Online versus offline self; pretending to be someone else, identity theft. Risk of conformist online behaviour, promoting prejudice and social pressure.
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Corporate interests & the new economy
Collecting Big Data, for financial gain and control over consumer behaviour. Our personal data as a valuable commodity, the consumer as the product. The dangers of too much knowledge, such as financial and medical details. Internet of things, the cloud, smart cities, connecting everything to everything. New business models disrupting or replacing old job securities, for bad or for good.
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3.
State control & surveillance
- Security agencies secretly collect both public data and private communications. - We are tracked in public space, via surveillance cameras and face recognition. - Do distrust and fear weigh up to the gains in security and safety? - Should a healthy open society be transparent about these matters? - In less democratic nations it is dangerous to vent non-sanctioned opinions. - The entanglement of corporate Big Data and government Big Data. - The new warfare that takes place online, governments hacking eachother. - Exchange of information on their citizens between governments, without consent. 4. Physical tentacles - What is the cloud, where is our data tangibly stored? - Changes in our daily environment, being surrounded by networked devices. - What do the systems look like that process and direct global data flow? - Satellites looking down on us and channeling data. - Faceless surveillance agencies operating from hermetic buildings. - Virtual reality hardware blurs the boundaries between offline and online life. - Automated stock market decisions affect our entire economy in miliseconds. - Automation and robotics push the human factor further out of view. - Data trash. How are unwanted data and its carriers erased, who is held responsible? 5.
Digital freedom
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How can limits be placed on the power of the state and corporations? Malicious hacking, access to valuable information and sabotaging systems.
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Whistleblowers and the Anonymous movement, disrupting the system’s abuse.
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Virtual free trade zones & new currencies, the Deep Web and the Darknet.
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People attempting to leave no online traces.
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Encryption as a solution to privacy versus less intrusions by the Big Data collectors.
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Freedom of information as a means to connect people that otherwise could not.
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E-democracy and global campaigning transcending national borders.
Noorderlicht Photography Foundation Akerkhof 12 9711 JB Groningen The Netherlands +31 50 318 2227 info@noorderlicht.com