Wear Your Data

We interact with the virtual world daily, and thus generate a trail of information relating to our personal preferences, our biology, and private information such as passwords and account numbers. Our laptops and cell phones seem compact and local, but we forget that they are connected to an invisible world of wires and waves.

Rocío Gauna uses her installation “Wear your Data” to inform us that much of our personal data is so accessible, we may as well take a loudspeaker and announce it to the world. Or better yet, wear it on our clothes.

Meet Rocío

Rocío was born in Argentina where she later studied Audiovisual Design and specialized in Design Theory. She gained skills in filmmaking and visual communication, investigating how to transmit an idea with images. Wanting to explore the world, she decided to travel after university and found herself in Berlin. Here, Rocio experimented with various softwares to make her projects more interactive. Looking at the intersection of art and tech, she found the AULA Future Lab.

Concept

During the Lab, Rocio was able to exercise the making of the idea, rather than focusing only on theory. During the research phase, she took an interest in how we handle our personal data online. She found that Artificial Intelligence is a prominent tool in this area, and that “big data” feeds its algorithms.

She knew that she was interested in identity, and became fixed on the idea of a human narrative told through data. Why are we so ok with giving away our identities in the virtual world, but not in the physical world? Rocío noticed that a lot of it comes from ignorance–many of us simply are not aware of the data we generate.

“If I am the product, I should at least manage my role.”

Beginnings

We are giving away pieces of our identity every single day, most often without any knowledge of doing so. Information like where we live, who we hang out with, and where we frequent, are open to those who know how to find it. Although your email address may seem like a trivial piece of information, a collection of hundreds of thousands of those bits of information is a gold mine for hackers and big corporations alike.

The question of how much the average person values their digital identity lies at the core of this art-based research project. It seems that the concept of personal data is still abstract for the majority of people, and Rocío sees an opportunity to relate it to something we are all familiar with. Wanting to create a piece that could shock her audience into taking notice of how private the information we are freely giving actually can be, she took an ironic approach to telling the story.

Project

In “Wear your Data”, the viewer is welcomed into what appears to be a high-end retail store, complete with champagne service.

Each guest is asked to log into their social media account and print the generated data onto a t-shirt. The guests are able to wear their data for everyone to see, or post their shirts online, “selling” their data for a profit on an online shop.This option represents the idea that we could be given a fraction of the profit that big corporations are earning from us.

The fun of walking around in homemade clothing which says if you’re single or taken or where you went to school is harmless, but the message is clear: Information is power, and whoever has that information has the power.

Though a lot of our information is encrypted, some might be surprised as to what is easily accessible to the rest of the world. Would you walk around with your email address, phone number, relationship status, or address, blatantly on something like a t-shirt for all to see?

When people argue that we give data to receive free services in return, Rocío counter-argues that we are giving much more than we receive. Companies are turning our behaviors and preferences into a commodity, and perhaps we should be more outraged about that than we currently are.

We mustn’t forget that we too have power as consumers. We can take actions like using encrypted passwords and browsers. We can stay on top of privacy settings. We can have conversations to educate our friends and families. We can also push for policy change, and advocate for receiving compensation for our information.

We are all a part of this game, and the best way to play is to play it smart. In Rocío’s words, “If I am the product, I should at least manage my role.” With this art piece, she hopes to create the interface for you to inform yourself. “Wear your Data” is less about wearing it than it is about starting to take ownership of it.