Data Signs in Public

Imagine a traffic system without traffic signs and a road users code of conduct, in which the horsepower of a car engine and the aggressiveness or speed of drivers determine the way of right, with pedestrians and cyclists at the mercy of motorists, police and government. Such an unruly traffic system is the reality of the digital highway in the 21st century. When we navigate through the networked world of ubiquitous computing, we have little means to foresee the long-term consequences of our actions. We give up our data without control or knowledge whether who will make them public or who can access them. The increased capabilities of modern technology give governments and corporations unprecedented control over an unsuspecting and uninformed public. It is disconcerting that Edward Snowdens revelations of the US National Security Agencys mass surveillance program have been met with apathy: the complete loss of privacy is either perceived as a small price to pay for the convenience of modern technologies, or the complexity and ubiquity of the problem lead to resignation. The project Data Signs in Public aims to provide a visual sign language that gives control over private data back to its owners, making clear technologies, rights and responsibilities of government and corporate users with respect to e-data. We will provide a comprehensive system of visual cues and graphical representations which provide information about data aggregation and processing, duration and security of storage, and extent of sharing. The Data Signs language will comprise physical objects (such as labels) as well as interactive visualizations on mobile phone apps and websites, designed and developed by an interdisciplinary team of artists and designers, computer and social scientists, as well as lawyers and city planners. The complexity of the problem requires the joint expertise of scientific experts and of artists who make the technology perceptible for the general public. The visual sign language will be used to raise awareness and to educate the general public about privacy issues in big data, covering both the opportunities and the threats of the technology. We will achieve further dissemination through exhibitions, public installations, and public panels and talks. The feedback obtained in the project will be used as feedback in an empirical evaluation of the acceptance, adequacy, and understandability of Data Signs. The project Data Signs in Public uniquely unites artistic, scientific, societal, as well as legal and political aspects under one umbrella. The project is a timely effort: Our generation has the responsibility to provide for a future where data collection is ruled by consent, by means of a universally accepted visual sign language.

In cooperation with researchers from around the world, the artistic research project "Data Signs in Public" has developed visual methods to increase awareness, understanding, and critical perception of our ubiquitous entanglement with data technology. It has used intelligent artistic visualisation as a tool to capture the daunting complexity of this technology. Exploring potentials of civic empowerment through reframing contemporary understandings of 'data' and 'public,' the project has investigated one of the most pressing questions of our time: How can we ensure that the increasing power of data publics is wielded not only over people but also by people for people? Embarking on this question, the project has organised a series of research forums in London, Vienna, Los Angeles and Venice, resulting in initial steps for a universal visual language and method to make abstract issues, such as data collection via ubiquitous sentient devices, and the consequences for individuals and society, perceptible and comprehensible. It has also deployed a number of exhibitions of art and information design as critical means of interacting and communicating with the general public. The inclusion of the project's results in one of the world's most prestigious art events, the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021 has significantly contributed to shaping the public imagination and conception of data in the public realm. A central hypothesis deriving from this research postulates that a more inclusive approach to data can take its cue from participatory design and the concept of the commons and reframe the notion of data in a way such that data is not understood as property but as a relation. "Data is a relation not a property" - a provocative slogan used by the project to interrogate traditional perceptions - implies that for a more democratic and pluralistic vision of society to emerge, it is vital to challenge the politics underpinning the current schemes that regulate and distribute recognisability and to shift the debate from appropriation to the quality of relations created in our encounters. Based on its forums of public engagement, the research suggests recognising the activities of "sensing" citizens as important practices of commoning, as a collective cultivation of mutually shared environments, and to shift the focus from the question of what value we put on data to how we value the relations that underpin the generation of data. Recognising sensing citizens as active participants in smart cities, as a new generation of commoners and not as passive users of smart technology, has critical implications for many areas of research and policy-making concerned with questions of future global coexistence.