RE: [-empyre-] mobile media debate + RFID

["Heather Corcoran" <Heather@spacestudios.org.uk>]

Hello all, 

Perhaps 'identity' is the way that we can tie the RFID thread that Paula introduced earlier with the rest of what we've been talking about this month so far -- the discussion of mobile phones + identity relates to RFID, though perhaps in a slightly different way than the multiple identity issues we've touched upon. A mobile phone acts as a type of electronic tag, providing you with a virtual identity situated in space and time (SPIME, as Bruce Sterling names it), simliar to an RFID tag. Our mobile virtual identities can then be used to create (even more) complex networks between objects/people -- the "internet of things" concept. 

Many of the works in the Tagged exhibition, which Paula summarizes by way of her conference documentation, address identity through RFID. The piece Origins and Lemons addresses this most directly, but I think Armin Medosch (to reference his work again) does a good job of contextualizing this in his essay accompanying the exhibition -- and via Paula's documentation notes, also in his presentation at the workshop:

>another point he emphasised is the
>uneven tracking, the divide between the voluntary adoption of arphids 
>amongst high tech consumers moving in a seamless environment, while at 
>same time arphid is made compulsory to asylum seekers.

I'd like to augment this with an excerpt from his essay, The Spychip Under Your Skin, that relates directly to identity -- this essay will be published online in the next week on a new Space Media Arts website and I'll post a link to when it does. In a section titled "Electronic Borders", Armin writes: 


"...However, the real danger [of RFID] is the two-faced nature of the technology. RFID gives the holder of a key access to an area, but it also makes the presence of a person in that restricted area subject to monitoring. Thus, RFID can be used to control bodies in space. Companies and public institutions do it by issuing RFID keys. The technology is being applied already in prisoner probation schemes with a view to extending RFID tagging to asylum seekers. Whereas those RFID schemes are mandatory for the 'user', other schemes introduce the very same technologies with a promise of more convenience. As internet users know only too well, password management increasingly becomes a burden. Add to this bank cards, an NHS card, PIN numbers, etc., and the authentication quagmire expands. Now, the IT industry is about to gift us with a new product, called 'identity services'. For large corporations authentication and authorisation concerns increase exponentially regarding security issues both in real space (access to buildings) and computer systems. It becomes praxis to outsource the management of identity and access codes within their institution to a security IT company. 

For privileged individuals this means getting through the security gates of airports more quickly and moving through a 'seamless' environment of managed 'secure' identity. The same technology could also be used to monitor people who are lined up for deportation. Ironically, the frequent business flyer and the would-be 'immigrant' are both part of the 'avant-garde' of RFID deployment. Willingly or not, they are subjected to a new regime where the electronic world holds significant sway over the real world. As spaces are structured by informational layers, access codes increasingly regulate our ability to move or to obtain goods and services. The ordinary individual has a weakening position in this technological armament race. Those who feel this most strongly are immigrants or generally people 'sans papiers', whose mobility and security is suspended by lack of official documentation. In other words, without some plastic with biometric information stored and checked via RFID, a person soon will not really exist. Rather than only being an encroachment on one's privacy, RFID can become an issue of simple biopolitics - meaning survival."


This excerpt is a personal favorite of mine. I hope it informs the discussion on identity, if interrupting it a bit to take the identity debate in another direction -- perhaps towards questioning access and privilege in new mobile identity systems. 

Best,
Heather



---

>Hi everyone, as a guest contributor to this month's discussion I'd like 

>to thank everyone that is joining in, and to complicate things a bit by 

>bringing in additional contributions from the Tagged presentation I 

>attended at ENGAGE/ HCI2006 conference, Queen Mary University London 

>(11-15

>September)

>The discussion on mobile media has already picked up with interesting 

>points of dissent which might benefit from the additional layer of 

>identity critique and theory that emerges every time one talks about arphid.

>These notes were collected during the workshop Designing the Not Quite 

>Yet, organised by Ann Light (researcher based at QMUL) and Gini Simpson 

>(Space Media Arts Coordinator) and briefly summarises presentations by 

>Armin Medosch, mute-dialogue, processing plant, C6, boredomresearch and 

>moi-self, offering a sneak preview of the exhibition that opens 6 

>October at Space

>(http://www.spacemedia.org.uk <http://www.spacemedia.org.uk/> )

>Before presenting arphieldRecordings 

>(http://www.odeo.com/channel/8535 <http://www.odeo.com/channel/8535> ), I did my spyveillance act, 

>note-laptopped a bit, photobitted another (accompanying photos at 

>http://www.msdm.org.uk <http://www.msdm.org.uk/> ), and what I lost in immediacy (felt like a 

>camwoman, loggin in all the bits of what might have been a ³quite not there yet² afternoon), I gained in documentation.

>So here they are, the latest to emerge in parallel to the rfid rampant 

>industry, the new generation of theoretical arphids. These are arphids 

>about rfid. These arphids speculate on rfid and rfid making, about the 

>politics of rfid, about modes of tracking and other rfid hegemonies.

>Armin Medosch (http://www.scansite.org/scan.php?pid=302 <http://www.scansite.org/scan.php?pid=302> ) who wrote the 

>essay for the Tagged catalogue contextualised the topic of arphid, 

>gently reminding us that the sun that for so long has been radiating 

>frequency waves has now become part of a commercialised magneticscape 

>at the service of tracking commodities and people; another point he 

>emphasised is the uneven tracking, the divide between the voluntary 

>adoption of arphids amongst high tech consumers moving in a seamless 

>environment, while at same time arphid is made compulsory to asylum seekers.

>The arphid divide was also part of Yasser Rashid¹s presentation of 

>Origins & Lemons by mute-dialogue 

>(http://www.innovatelab.net/mute-dialogue <http://www.innovatelab.net/mute-dialogue>  ) in which they critique how 

>objects are tracked in the global commodities market. In the foreseen 

>installation- a recreated market stall- arphids are placed inside the 

>objects, invisible from audience. As they are scanned their history is 

>made visible, as well as privacy and ethical concerns surrounding 

>tracking. Objects chosen are socially and politically loaded. The 

>market is used as a social practice, namely of black market. Issues of 

>race and society in the markets of east London are also fore grounded. 

>The question

>being: what remains in the periphery of id? The irony here consists in 

>using rfid to track things that most commonly survive in the 

>consumptive market by avoiding being tracked. A fake Louis Vuton 

>handbag engages a playful narrative on the tracking of the clandestine.

>Louis-Philippe Demers (http://www.processing-plant.com <http://www.processing-plant.com/> ) likely places 

>arphids amongst other calm technologies, and with his project iTag 

>makes a statement about the similarities between the apple mp3 players 

>that everyone carries around and the chips that similarly can be used as plug and play:

>just put it on and listen to the music. No need for a user manual.

>Mix ipod with arphid toys and behind it reappear the American Army and 

>Wal-Mart, the real forces behind what are both user-friendly and 

>profile-driven objects. Essentially, the confluence between efficiency 

>and privacy intrusion. Itag will be installed in the Hollywood grocery 

>store in Mare Street (next to the Space building), where the objects in 

>the store shelves will be tagged. Handheld rfid reader picked up from 

>Space, will read the trail of sounds ³broadcast² by the items, and as 

>you walk around the aisles, these arphids will talk around you, like a 

>shopping-list muzak soundtrack.

>C6 (http://www.antisystemic.org <http://www.antisystemic.org/> ) in the speech that delivered live the 

>essay The Freemasons Of The Future Are Lurking In The Wardrobe, 

>unzipped the ideologies embedded in the identity industry of western art and science.

>With a proliferation of rfid aids reducing human beings to 

>0-dimensional points in a 2d space, and redoing for identity what 

>television did for the imagination, C6 aim to critique the theory of 

>spimes (the time+space gizmos) that repackages the idea of a 4th 

>dimension with a simultaneous de-policisation and re-estheticisation of 

>identity probes. Attempting just that, the freely distributed copies of 

>The Islamic Millennium enhanced with a ?we are reading you tags¹ 

>explicitly track the Bin Laden fans that dare to pick it up. These are 

>now part of the uk branch of the distributed Library project (http://dlp.theps.net <http://dlp.theps.net/> ).

>To bring home the point that arphid theory can be heavy indeed, Paul 

>Smith with Vicky Isley of boredomresearch 

>(http://www.boredomresearch.net/ <http://www.boredomresearch.net/> ) showed the diagrams for their new 

>work realsnailmail, that uses snails to perform the functions of an 

>email server. The estimate that a snail would take 13.2 years to go 

>from London to New York, makes it impractical to operate the system in 

>the real world. Instead, snails with injectable pet idchips glued to 

>their shells will be restricted to a transparent aquarium allowing for 

>the live tracking of the slowest email delivery system. For a period of 

>time, the email experience will have a physicality of its own, with the creatures carrying the burden of the message.

>looking forward to your comments

>forever yours

>>>>>paula

>http://www.msdm.org.uk <http://www.msdm.org.uk/>