Self-Surveillance and Virtual safety

Abstract

Security surveillance techniques operated by authorities have increased over the last decades, and so has the monitoring of private and public space by commercial companies and institutions. Furthermore, mobile phones, blogging and digital social media constantly open up new means for self-monitoring. In this article I explore an artistic and personal response to this cluster of surveillance techniques, namely American artist Hasan Elahi's web project Tracking Transience (2002 – present). Having been wrongly suspected of engaging in terrorist activity, Elahi used his cell phone as a both a camera and a tracking device to carry out an extensive public self-surveillance. However, by only tracking his transient persona, Elahi manages to acquire agency in a virtual game of in/visibility and to address more general problems of observation, profiling, threat and security.

Notes

1 NY Times, Wired Magazine, Colbert Report, NPR and various other newspapers, magazines, TV-channels and radio shows.

2 Being asked whether the self-monitoring has any kind of personal value, Elahi answers that his memory has improved tremendously — and the project has also improved his sense of location and direction. The website and its databases function as a memory bank and private album. Email from Hasan Elahi to author, February 2012.

3 Email from Hasan Elahi to author, February 2012.

4 The Critical Art Ensemble has termed the collection of files connected to an individual the “data body”.

5 Email from Hasan Elahi to author, February 2012.

6 Exhibited works related to Elahi's web archive include Tracking Transience: The Orwell Project (shown in various contries 2005–2008), Citizen (2007) and Hiding in Plain Sight (2011). For further information see the artist's website: http://elahi.umd.edu.