Tuesday's Step Count

Sound On: ‘Tuesday’s Step Report’ is a video reference to an installation made through collaboration by myself and Rosie King. It was due to be exhibited on 1 May in ‘Through the One-way Glass Window’ at ISO Design, Glasgow. This will happen at a later date, but tonight we want to celebrate and thank each other and curator of the exhibition, Tommaso Ranfagni.

Initially I was interested in how my body, moving through the city, was being recorded; what happened with that information? We started from a very Sci Fi place, replicating the relationship between people and data collectors. I was the Subject passively giving up my data and Rosie was the Server. While the collection of data by Apple, Huawei, Strava etc., is used for exploitative means our relationship utilises those systems of power in an exchange of care.

Rosie and I use the data surveillance model that identifies itself as a support mechanism, but intends to exploit its users with questionable short-term and unimaginable long-term implications.

We are referencing the acceptance of constant data collection and surveillance as a side effect of modern life. For this artwork we have only used data which is collected from my phone passively. And while I relinquish my privacy, for this project I am rewarded as our exchange is guided by friendship.

Claire Curtin 30/04/2020

Data surveillance isn’t about care, like servers don’t care about you, but as Claire’s data came to me and I learnt how to read it, well it made me care. I’d go through her data and worry that she’d gone to work on 4 hours sleep again and missed her train back home, even though she ran really fast for it. There was a moment back in January where we’d spent a couple of days together going through all her recent data and kept remarking how high her heart rate was. Within days she was hospitalised with an infection. That was a turning point for me. The data was there, it knew she was ill, but it didn’t care.

Rosie King 30/04/2020