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

Workshops Mediamatic <workshops@mediamatic.nl> · Tue, 19 Sep 2006 14:59:48 +0200

Tja, ik gooi het meestal weg, maar ik zag iets met RFID, wie weet zit  
er nog eens wat bruikbaars bij!!
Groet Harobed
On Sep 19, 2006, at 11:18 AM, Heather Corcoran wrote:
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/>

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