April 07, 2008
Wearaware and IGargoyle Do Maker Faire
Come meet Nym and I and bring your wearables! We're here to profile and promote the community's work on this site, so let's meet, get some media, and get it up here. Come out, come out, wherever you are!
I'll be exhibiting my latest in the Wearaware collection.
More roving telepresence hacks from the brothers!
More Soon!
November 12, 2007
Mixed Reality Cartography Corset
A wearable device for Gordan Savicic's "Constraint City: The Pain of Everyday Life", includes: "A chest strap (corset) with high torque servo motors and a WIFI-enabled game-console are worn as fetish object. The higher the wireless signal strength of close encrypted networks, the tighter the corset becomes." Whether it is meant to be painful or pleasurable seems unclear.
I suggest exploring the link below to glean the project's conceptual background. I find its discourse reminiscent of Stelarc's. I do share the artist's interest in sensing the electromagentic waves permeating our environment; even to the extent of mapping it to haptic feedback. However, regarding the restriction of the public through normally undetectable information layers, I do not share his tenet that secure WiFi networks are as actively constrictive as this project asserts. Perhaps wireless security cameras and traffic lights are even more controling than secure WiFi, since private citizens should have the right to encrypt their networks from the public without suspicion of conspiracy.
July 13, 2006
Color Video Recording Sunglasses
Now, since these are supposed to be spy glasses, it can't look like you have a small SGI workstation on your person, lest you arouse suspicion. To that end, the small wire connecting the glasses runs through your shirt and into the included MP4 media device, which stores the video. There's no external battery source required for the sunglasses to function beyond plugging them into the MP4.No price info listed at the vendor, however this site looks like it has the same hardware for $399 for the glasses/camera and $249 for the video recorder/player. In fact, their sunglasses look more normal than the one shown here.
June 11, 2006
Spiders - sousveillance web comic
[ Link ]
May 15, 2006
Military Sousveillance
The Military is delving into the world of sousveillance, trying out some high tech wearable recording tools. I've always thought that point of view (POV) video recording would be great for the police to deter coruption and help with gathering evidence, and the military is just one step away from that.
A soldier’s after-action mission report can sometimes leave out vital observations and experiences that could be valuable in planning future operations. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is exploring the use of soldier-worn sensors and recorders to augment a soldier’s recall and reporting capability. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is acting as an independent evaluator for the “Advanced Soldier Sensor Information System and Technology” (ASSIST) project. NIST researchers are designing tests to measure the technical capability of such information gathering devices.This week NIST is testing five different sensor systems* at the United States Army Aberdeen Test Center in Aberdeen, Md. The tests, ending May 12, involve sensor-clad soldiers on unscripted foot patrol through simulated Iraqi villages populated with “bystanders,” “shopkeepers,” and “insurgents.” The sensors are expected to capture, classify and store such data as the sound of acceleration and deceleration of vehicles, images of people (including suspicious movements that might not be seen by the soldiers), speech and specific types of weapon fire.
A capacity to give GPS locations, an ability to translate Arabic signs and text into English, as well as on-command video recording also are being demonstrated in Aberdeen. Sensor system software is expected to extract keywords and create an indexed multimedia representation of information collected by different soldiers. For comparison purposes, the soldiers wearing the sensors will make an after-action report based on memory and then supplement that after-action report with information learned from the sensor data.
From the looks of the picture though, it really doesn't appear all that high tech, more like a bunch of random generic cameras glued to some embeded reporter's uniform and helmet.
[ Link via boingboing ]
January 24, 2006
FlashCam - Video Recording Flashlight
This flashlight is also a video camera, and while it's designed for police use, it definately has a nice sousveillance ring to it. It's super bright at 85,000 candle power and also can do night vision with infrared illumination. It comes standard with an LCD monitor, 2 hours of storage, and it can also take snapshots.
Unfortunately, like every other thing I talk about on igargoyle, this item is ridiclously expensive, but if you have 2.5k to play with, you too can own one.
[ Link via wired mag ]
January 19, 2006
Sousveillance Against Racist Police
The boy made the recording by activating his phone's record device as he was being put into a police van after his arrest in Paddington, west London in February.A two-and-a-half minute tape of an exchange with Pc Yates, 26, a Territorial Support Group officer based at Paddington Green police station, was played to the court.
It is alleged that on it the officer swears repeatedly, accuses the boy of being a robber and rapist, and threatens to "smash your Arab face in".
Personally, I was once falsely arrested, and one of the two police officers responsible for the arrest threatened me by saying to his partner "Go get the sirenges and baggies from the glove compartment to put on this guy". Sure, racial harrasment is considered worse than threatening lies by most law enforcement officials, but having been exhonerated for what I was arrested for, such a claim might have some weight.
Still, the best tool of sousveillance that I have, years after that incident, is only a cameraphone. It really makes me want a DejaView [warning awful design] type device that records audio and/or video.
[ Link via wearcam via ideal government ]
January 02, 2006
Video Blogging as Sousveillance?
Video Blogs are obviously the next big thing with sales of video iPods soaring and broadband becomming the norm for consumers. That being said, are video blogs the next big thing for sousveillance? I found this article over on We Are The Media, a site that reports on "News from the Vlogosphere":
There is a really interesting radio program on Democracy Now about the infiltration of the bike group critical mass by the New York Police who have been going undercover and videotaping the demonstrations and in some cases, getting themselves arrested to appear to be with the group. This was front page news in the NYT two days ago as well.When will critical mass get a video-blog to show the world their story first hand? They’ve got lots of video that needs to get out documenting their demonstrations.
On the other side of the fence, where are the police surveillance video blogs? If there is lots of video surveillance going on, wouldn’t it be great for it to show up on a video blog? We as the public should be seeing what’s being seen by the police.
Transparency in video surveillance would be a good thing for both the police and the folks at critical mass.
I did an interview with Steve Mann a while ago, and one of the questions I asked him was what he thought of blogging:
You've talked about cyborg-blogging, what is your view on blogging and the Semantic Web?Originally 'glogging (cyborglogging) was a way of keeping a personal diary that could be shared with the rest of the world, with dated entries, etc.. See for example,
http://wearcam.org/previous_experiences/eastcampusfire/index.html
I think that the proliferation of personal weblog diaries leads naturally to shared understanding and documentation of the world, since these entries often provide useful information, both historically as well as in a timeless sense.
Certainly if Mann were to reopen his sousveillance activities to the public, I think video blogging would be the way to do it.
[ Link via We Are The Media ]
November 21, 2005
Sousveillance Good or Bad?
CBC Newswriter Stephen Strauss thinks that sousveillane may not be as wonderfully democratic as some might think. Sure sousveillance may eat away at public police brutality, and has even brought to light situations like the Abu Grabi, but if the society and regime around you is oppressive, maybe it will only lead to more oppression.
I am not sure at all that citizens armed with cameras must make the world a more democratic place. There are lots of undemocratic societies wherein masses of people have embraced narrow, mean, spiteful and never-endingly illiberal civic behavior. Think “no dating” in Iran. Think “destroy Buddhist sculptures” in Taliban-run Afghanistan. Think apartheid in South Africa.You don’t necessarily have to have a dictatorial state, or paranoid businesses spying on defenceless citizens. You can have common zealots righteously sending to the authorities pictures of Mina and Yusef holding hands, or of a soft-hearted soldier ordering a couple of Buddha’s statues to be left standing.
If everyone is taking pictures of everything that everyone else is doing you can easily create the evil backside of small towns. That isn’t innocent gossip but relentless active efforts to drive out deviants, what author David Brin, who has written extensively on sousveillance, has labelled “the bad posse … old time vigilantes and the more recent psycho-racist-self-righteous militias.”