PRIVACY COLLIDER

LIANG ZHIPENG (based in Berlin)
PRIVACY COLLIDER, 2015

This winner project was created in January during the '2015 In/Visible Cities: Prototyping Lab' as part of transmediale 2015 in SUPERMARKT - initiated by Public Art Lab in collaboration with Fraunhofer FOKUS and funded by the RWE Foundation.

The ‘Privacy Collider’ is a light installation of two spotlights equipped with directional microphones that track and capture people in the public space via motion camera. Once being captured by the light beam the talks of the people are transferred to the other beam so that the people can hear each other.

The main idea consists in addressing the personal privacy in a public space. The artists take an experimental approach: how will the people react when they hear the voices and talks of the others, will they communicate, what does privacy mean in a public space? The installation creates an awareness of surveillance by making visible the technology such as tracking and capturing. It uses the possibilities by creating a scenario of bringing people into exchange with each other. At the same time ‘Privacy Collider’ questions the consequences of using these technologies.

 

Artist biography

Zhipeng Liang is currently student at the University of Arts in Berlin in the master of contemporary media. He is working at the intersection of art, technology and media.

Tech info

Privacy Collider(PrCo) uses directional speakers and microphones to enable a long distance open-air private acoustic message transmission. Seated on a 2 axis gimbal and using a infrared tracking camera, 2 identical PrCo devices will follow the randomly selected moving chatting groups or single passengers in two different open spaces like two squares, two galleries or two cities, and automatically build up an acoustic communication channel between two sides. Spotlights will possibly be used in the open air to give a signal of connection. And the reaction of two groups will be shown on two monitors near each other at a third place.