"Confidentiality versus the Right to Know" - RAM by Doug Lewis

on the interdiscursive notion of privacy

The area in which I grew up forced its constituents to share a telephone line with other families. These 'party' lines were anything but a community-based party. It wasn't a hardship of course, but I am certain of one thing; the language my family chose to use with friends, family, and other loved ones was definitely more cautious or understated when on the line. Each in coming phone call could raise your suspicions. We were never sure if there would be an unwelcome set of ears perched covertly on an extension in another kitchen a half mile away. Outgoing calls always prepared the caller to readily blurt out "I've got the line!" Someone was almost always sure to barge onto the phone line as you were making that call which would not wait another minute.

When the famed artist Louise Bourgeois created the artwork Confidentiality vs. the Right to Know (part of Cell 111), perhaps she was insinuating that we all have aspects of wanting or even a need to know (the secrets of the other). Dichotomously, there are those things of ourselves in which we wish to keep the most private. This premise seems to be pointing towards varying degrees of our personal privacy or towards our consciousness in which we choose to act as an 'editor' in and of our own behalf. As for example, from the most personal feeling, thought or encounter, to the least public feeling, thought or encounter. What personal 'facts' do we guard that we share only with those closest to ourselves? Or the little items that no one under any circumstances should ever uncover. On the other hand, there are more than likely varying degrees of privacies that we are willing to share more readily or have a lesser control over

Our individual image is most often, anonymously captured these days. Surveillance cameras placed in stores (department store change rooms), apartment buildings, even at the local filling station. Our personal image is captured, put to tape and then automatically archived. Our S.I.N. number, our charge card numbers and even our driver's licence are simple privacies that we very easily, if we are not careful, may have methodically lifted from us. This is a type of cohersive observation. The recorded information(s) of our secrecy become used as an exploitive device against us. Electronic intrusions into and of our privacies are inevitable; although if we are not equipped with at least a sense of the theft at hand we enter into a dialogue in which we lose our voice. Again, the actual degree of our consciousness about our privacy comes into question. The degree itself is uniquely subjective in that the gender, political, sexual, moral and religious orientations are factors in deciding what gradation we define our confidentiality.

beneath the electronic skin

Amongst her many creations, artist Barbara Kruger, created a photomontage work entitled Your Body is a Battleground (1989). This work seems most prevalent in today's day and age of electronic surveillance's. Her work in context refers perhaps more to feminism and the male gaze (her black and white photograph depicts a woman's face looking back directly at the viewer with the title of the piece in large white font on red rectangles covering areas of the face). Yet somehow once identity is violated and reduced (as what happens with in the male gaze) to electronic information, it looses its subjectivity. The persona becomes immersed in the electronic multitudinal village. Gender then becomes the genderless. We then suffer from electronically imposed androgyny as well as the loss of persona. This premise of course hinges upon how the extracted information is practiced. The extracted personal 'knowledge' from a person must be used in a situation where our image, our voice, or other personal information is used anonymously, thus reducing our identities to 'digitallia'. For example, an ESSO points card (which does not buy its user cheaper fuel) records a transaction. The user (which becomes the used) is rewarded with chances to win trips or other wonderful things. Facts such as who specifically made the transaction and of what exact items are inconsequential. Your identity or gender can be discarded. We are severed from our personality and destined to a serial format. Identities are reduced to statistical consumption and are now a common way of approaching the marketplace for corporate bodies.

An example of where this premise may fall apart is when your digitized information becomes a product in and of itself and is then sold. After an initial sale, another company sends you its junk mail directly to your residence. Or when you're in the privacy of your own home, you receive a phone call with someone selling you something (which is traceable to a purchase you made somewhere else, undoubtedly). These instances are examples of how 'digitallia' becomes subversive. It is at this very spot where your body truly becomes a battleground. Your person can become victim to a loss of degree to its identity. The personality can become subverted, altered and reused as the electronic hypermedia.

an architecture of consumption

Once our physical image has been transgressed and absorbed by a surveillance camera, the damage is done. For the most part we could have avoided it by simply staying away from areas where we assume there may be a surveillance camera hidden or otherwise. The loss of our personal image though, seems to provide us with less angst than when we suffer the loss of private statistical information (tax information, S.I.N. number, P.I.N. number, credit card, etc). This sort of knowledge in the hands of the wrong person(s) can do irreparable harm to our personal security. Perhaps the reason is that we have increased our personal vulnerability by having exposed our information to an unknown agent. When we cannot assign a face or identity to an unknown mechanism that has digested our credit card number (P.I.N. number etc), at which point we are left feeling a little less personally secure of our personal boundaries. The boundaries which we design for ourselves in order to maintain a sheath of confidentiality, becomes ever more fragile with every encounter of an electronic form of surveillance. The source that contains and manipulates our personal data has one exclusive advantage. This advantage is what propagates the consumption. The electronic conglomerate at large has no identity, and therefore is not reproachable. There is no accountability on its behalf and therefore it has no morality.

hyperrealizations

It almost goes without mentioning that today in cyberland, privacy of the self has become objectified to such an extreme that it has become hyperreal. This concern although, seems to be being interestingly dealt with and synthesized prophetically by artists. Artists have delt with the subjective/objective dilemma since the issue was first conceived. This issue becomes clearly prominent when artists started to play and create with video. Bruce Nauman's Wall-Floor Positions (1968), depicts the artist writhing on the floor. He never stands, but lies on the floor and mimics caterpillar like movements. He is transformed from the subjective into the objective, causing the signified to be reduced to lifeless animation. Another example is Bill Viola's video art work entitled Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House (1983). It is depicted in black and white film, and illustrates a man's attempt to stay awake continuously for three days while being locked in an upstairs room in a house. The work does not just simply portray a stir-crazed man; the man is aware of the camera recording him and is forced to deal with himself as a subject being objectified by the camera. What then happens to our person when we become objectified by electronic observance? It seems that we fall prey to a co-dependant relationship between the viewer and the viewed. Artists Sophie Calle and Gregory Shephard's Double Blind (1990) is a 'double' artwork which doubles back in itself in order to reveal just what may happen under the scrutiny of a lens. The two artists travel from New York to Oakland via Las Vegas in a Cadillac convertible on order to get married (the viewer is never truly sure if the sequences have been choreographed or not). Throughout the duration of the road trip, they each are 'armed' with camcorders, and film one another the entire trip. This voyeuristic piece analyzed the differences between a double on going narrative. He objectifies her (male gaze), and she is just happy that some man wants to marry her.

The difference between the act of looking (with flesh lenses) and the act of looking (with electronic lenses) prescribes two separate types of subjective reality. They both oscillate between the objective/subjective and the physical explanations of the real. The artist seems well fitted to commit to this dilemma, for the act of making something presupposes that someone will eventually see it. An artist that dealt specifically with surveillance and security, is Julia Scher. An artwork called Security by Julia (1996) is an installation in which the artist impersonates a security guard in an art gallery. There is a security console (equipped with 9" security monitors and a video printer) which Julia sits at. The visitors are encouraged to print off their image that was captured by one of many security cameras littered throughout the gallery. This piece seems to deal with the frail territory that lies between observance and observed. Security by Julia promotes public awareness that security and the act of espionage are part of our everyday life. Her work seems to imply that we shouldn't become narcotic over electronic voyeurism because it is merely part of our life.

art at random with accessible memory

Each of the above mentioned artists intersect with the concept of the reduction of the individual - reconsidered through the electronic idiom. RAM is web-art; RAM instigates a cyberreallity. The website knowingly intrudes upon us with the various incongruent realities of others; their conversations are fused with randomized visual corroboration. These realities are unbeknownst to the forfeiter of the information, and yet we are compelled to act as a reluctant voyeur. We then justify our probings via the Freedom of Information Act. Electronic intrusions permit the violator to infringe upon the personal moment and conversely feel vindication while doing so. Electronic intrusions have offered to us a form of prosthetic. We are allowed to look but other accompanying sensations remain repressed. RAM fully integrates us with our commitment to our electronic existence and randomly queries the commitment to the limits of privacy.