Okay, cool.
All right.
Thank you.
Yeah, so this is an image of performance, live coding performance.
So there's me on stage and there's a projection behind me.
This is a quite typical set up for a live coding performance.
Live coding means that people in this upper performance either write code from scratch or make alterations to existing code that they're using.
Sometimes it's for audio visual composition.
You might have come across algorithms in clubs.
In my case, I tend to do things that are a little bit more for the gallery space and I'm using what I'm going to show today is a little demo of
a look to go privacy extension that I've altered to use during these performances.
And this extension is sort of one element out of many things that I'm exploring here.
So yeah, this is just a close up of the screen where you have a browser being projected on one side.
You have a big corporation search engine and then on the right side is the browser console that I'm using Firefox.
So this is one of the questions that I started asking how current choreographic approach to data tracking human computer interaction look like.
My come with a surprise choreography because I haven't said so yet, but I have a background in dance.
I've been dancing since I'm like five years old about and I'm very passionate about that.
And I sort of even though I studied many other things, there are not dance related.
I've sort of keep on dancing and that really shapes the way I do things within also HCI.
And there's other questions that I started asking the more I was investigating these.
So how could maybe choreography help helping prove transparency in web interfaces?
Is there a role in that space or could it also help people configure resources for people to feel a bit more agency within that space of data tracking?
So it's been a lot so far, so if you just keep these two ideas in mind, there's like data tracking algorithms and choreography.
So what does that actually mean?
choreography.
I'm sure all of you have images of what that could look like in your mind, but this is an example.
Stand up if you're ages between 35 and 44.
Okay, so here we have an understanding of the age group in the room.
Rotate if you're ages between 35 and 44 and you live in Brussels.
Okay, great.
Thank you for performing those movements.
Here we see an example about choreography, so essentially it's notation system for dance.
So it's a way of either writing about movement or documenting movement.
So you just perform the choreography for me.
Thank you for doing that.
But it also means that now I have a bit more sense of the data within these rooms.
So I know that there's a percentage of people who are within a certain age group.
And some very even even smaller percentage of a group that lives in Brussels.
So I think I used these strategies to explain people why data tracking algorithms,
like why they're invasive and like how they connect to personal data.
So these are some of the experiments I do.
And I'm sort of also interested in choreography, and this is a quote by Andrea Le Pecki,
Brazilian scholar based in the US who think about choreography this idea of the society of control.
So how our movements sometimes are dictated and actually thinking about how much freedom
of movement we have.
And I'm sort of curious about these questions.
Online tracking algorithms, I suppose maybe in this space there's more knowledge around that.
Even more than I hold.
I like these definition by tactical tech and organization that also does a lot to helping these
space.
And they say, have you ever read a newspaper and notice the strength of reading it over your shoulder?
I guess this is maybe you can imagine it reading on your phone.
Now, so reading the news online is like having Google, Facebook, or Twitter doing the same thing.
I quite like these.
It puts things in a simple way.
So what I've done so far, I'm on my third year of my PhD.
So I don't have so much time left, but this is what I've done.
And a lot of it is practical.
So I've done workshops with people.
I've developed or continued developing an existing rather extension.
I've done performances.
And I've done a study with a group, a smaller group of people.
workshops mostly happened in the UK, where I'm based.
And people were invited for them, where they were hosted within particular setups.
So it's not really representative of a broad, very broad situation.
But it's been really interesting to understand how people sort of relate to these topics.
So a lot of things that I do are actually pretty analog, so I ask people to think about what
digital, what they're digital ecosystem, what do they use.
And some of them put a lot of effort that even like draw very carefully the logos.
And there's other things that I do, like moving around and having people think about observing
each other's movements, which is essentially what happens in the online space as well.
Obviously, in a different dimension as well.
And sometimes I even have people hack the hack existing websites by changing things using
the web console.
Obviously, this requires a little bit more comfort when it comes to using maybe JavaScript or the web
console etc.
So what I've come to develop using during this time is this vocabulary that I introduce to
people, some of it has more to do with movement and other has to do with analytics or
typical data tracking and user interaction data that is used for data tracking.
And I have people discuss how do they feel about these and what strategies they might want to
come up with to resist data tracking.
And it's quite interesting when you actually have people think about it because a lot of the
people that I've met throughout these years, they have some understanding of data tracking,
but they were never really asked how they feel about it and even more so like what they do
differently in that space.
So here I'm going to go quite quickly because I also want to show you the tool itself on
the browser.
So this is the go-private browser extension.
It works so that it actually blocks tracking from happening.
But the way I'm doing it is that I'm allowing that and I'm showing it in front of an audience or a group of
people.
And I also built my own scripts in JavaScript where I, as part of the narrative of the performance,
I introduce you for elements like fingerprinting or different aspects of data tracking.
So in a way that the extension is a small part of a bigger narrative and experiment around
data and choreography, this is also not connected to the extension, but it was one sort of browser based artwork that
I've done.
You can find it in recording technology that also plays a little bit with this idea of what if we
change the way we perform online and how much with that, these are up to usual tracking.
I've done performances.
It's been four now.
I'm going to skip these for now, but there's actually documentation online.
Here is a little bit about how people have been thinking about it and some feedback I got.
And I quite like how sometimes even this idea of choreography is re-appropriated.
In the way people think about what happened.
For example, revealing the invisible framework behind our movements so that people see this connection.
And for example, decomposing the web into moving and traceable parts.
And I quite like how people felt that, yeah, there are connections between what we do day to day in the physical space and then what happens online.
So it's been really nice and then the latest study I've done was with a smaller group of people and I really wanted to know.
But is it anything changing for people if they spend a little bit longer time with this idea of choreography and data tracking?
So I developed the website with 12 scores that people performed every day and at the end I did an interview with them.
This was five people, all of them based in Europe, but from different backgrounds.
Again, it's not really representative of a large population, but it really helped me understand that.
In fact, they did actually learn different aspects of data tracking and they actually started doing things differently.
So I think there's an opportunity there, but also in thinking of more maybe more creative ways that it's not so much about the jargon or the heavy technology.
This is what I've said that I'm going to lounge. It's already online, but I'm going to lounge as part of an exhibition that makes all those scores available for other people to use.
There's a paper being written about the live coding performance that is going to be creative comments.
And yeah, a little bit more things to come.
So what I'm going to do now quickly is showing you this.
So what I usually do is that in the performances that I have done so far, I have my own scripts on the top that I'm using now Google Chrome and Google Search Engine.
And you can see that obviously there's not much surprise. So what shows here is where we are.
And Dr. Go already makes this information available. So the likelihood of fingerprinting and the web prevalence.
And so I'm going to just try and do another website.
So okay, so this one has a few. So the idea is that there's a metronome and I use the sound of a metronome because it's very common in that training and music training as well.
So it marks a rhythm and there's a lot of the same. Okay, but here you can see like two different trackers, for example.
And obviously it's not it's not perfect. There's maybe different things triggering these, but it gives a sense of like how much track tracking happens within a given session.
And also if you look at these, it's like I barely did anything and it's like quite quite a long list already.
So yeah, it's just an effort of trying to make tangible these algorithms and the same goes for within a performance setting.
This is an example of.
So I'm actually going to it's not loud enough to hear properly, but I'm sort of introducing other other fingerprinting data, for example, and so during the performance, there's different elements that go into it.
So here you can see also my scripts populating the web console and other parts.
So yeah, yeah, and this is how it looks in a.
In a performance space.
So I'm going to finish now just in case there's a second for questions, if not, I'll be around and thank you so much for having.
I heard that before actually.
So I mean, even your life, it's also to me, it sounds regulated.
But I'm trying to in the mind for my research later, improve agency if you.
Well, they're heating systems, there's no one like to be here.
I'm quite interesting.
Did you find ways of making these things?
Yes, we're making it more say.
So people sitting there, they had a feeling the stuff was going on, right?
So that's exactly what they're going to do.
So that rather than them having to think about it, they're confused.
They are just getting better sense of what actually happened.
Yeah, absolutely.
And you did call someone anxiety.
So I think there's also things to consider in terms of, yeah, oh, sorry.
The question was how to make things more.
If I was achieving extra salience for the things that I was, yeah, for these.
So yeah, people did, it was quite rebuilding for them in ways that they're not used to.
So we, a lot of these is quite abstracting people's mind, what the striking mean.
Effectively day to day, people might encounter institutions like an ad comes for after some search they've done or writing something somewhere.
So there's a few things that people recognize, but a lot of it is totally just hidden, right?
So it does bring to the surface and it does bring it in a way that is a lot more sensorial and embodied.
So I think that's been, I think that's important because we are used to, like, if I were, you know,
to stand here behind you and then start following you, it would be awkward, right?
And you immediately sense that we have, like, we've learned so much and already know so much.
But when it comes to these, it's like, oh, gone.
And, right?
So I wanted to explore that side, that for us, it's much more familiar.
And, yeah, and I'm sure, like, this is not, I wanted to start here because it's like,
I think one of these really extreme situations, but we have so much in terms of, like, tracking performance and sports apps.
And, like, there's just so much, or even, I don't know, IoT, like, smart homes through that.
There's, like, so many, like, sensors, constantly capturing data from months and sending it to cloud services and whatnot.
So there's a lot more to be explored in terms of agency in the, all those spaces, for sure.
But anyway, good, you'll show you what a sweet kind of thing.
Yeah.
So, as you mentioned, that, for about 10 or 10 years, what was the word, what was it called?
Yeah.
So the question is whether, what was the demographics and the population of the workshops that people who attended?
It was very different. The starting point, even my own questions, because I sort of, I developed the workshops iteratively.
So every time I learned something and then I would exclude some activities, include new ones.
But I was essentially trying to understand what, how does choreography can be combined with data tracking for the purpose of raising awareness.
And, and, and then, yeah, hopefully help people do something about it if they wish.
So, yeah. So I was trying to get closer to answering that question as I developed workshops.
The groups initially, I think it was more like cultural context.
The one that was more variety was in a center in which people could, like, a day center type of thing.
But all of them people were somewhat open.
It's not like I suddenly arrived at a space and no one was expecting.
So people who attended had some sense of what was going to happen.
So they were somewhat open already to those ideas, which makes a difference.
I think the last study I've done, even though people did opting to do that longitudinal study,
it was maybe the most diverse group, because nothing to do with tech, nothing to do with dance or the arts or anything.
Yeah.
We do have time for more questions.
I've got one, if no one has done this.
You're sort of working within these multi-chart working within the bounds of a browser.
Is it nice to have that sort of restriction imposed on the artistic side of it?
Or would you like to sort of break out of that?
I think at this point I'm curious to, oh yeah, question is, if I want to break the space of the browser or if it's a nice constraint.
It started as a really nice constraint.
I was actually within before these research I was doing live coding performances in the browser.
Just not focusing on data tracking, but connecting, I have, for example, one that connects tango with web pages and things like that.
So I was already very curious with the web.
Also because there's a lot of tension there.
It's very gated.
It's essentially following money.
What we see is just all about who pays for the content to be there.
There's a very interesting space to unpack.
It's very familiar to everyone.
So I like that as an initial communication point with audiences.
If I open, you know, I already said it.
A Google page then it's, everyone will in your audience will recognize that.
And I like that.
But I'm already also starting to get curious about other aspects of another project that I hope to come forward.
Maybe after the PhD has to do with menstruation tracking apps and other more sensitive.
And yeah, or even mental health.
There's so many issues that go into these other spaces that I'd like to talk about.
So, but the browser continues to be a very problematic space.
There's still a lot of space there.
Yeah, I think it's okay.
Thanks.