CANCELLED - Screening Surveillance: Speculating Surveillance Futures (Film Screening & Discussion)

* Please note that this event has been cancelled  - apologies for the inconvenience caused *

This event is co-hosted by the Digital Social Science research cluster at the Centre for Data, Culture & Society and the Centre for Research in Digital Education, University of Edinburgh.

In light of recent surveillance developments — social media breaches, smart city projects, workplace monitoring — we need to consider the implications and critically examine the logics and practices within big data systems that underpin, enable, and accelerate surveillance.

As part of an international multi-phase project on Big Data Surveillance, the Surveillance Studies Centre, led by sava saheli singh, produced three short films in 2018/2019 speculating surveillance futures and the effects of deeply embedded and connected surveillant systems on our everyday lives. Intended as public education tools to spark discussion and extend understandings of surveillance, trust, and privacy in the digital age, each film focuses on a different aspect of big data surveillance and the tensions that manifest when the human is interpreted by the machine.

• Blaxites follows the story of a young woman whose celebratory social media post affects her access to vital medication. Her attempts to circumvent the system lead to even more dire consequences.

• In A Model Employee, an aspiring DJ has to wear a tracking wristband to keep her day job at a local restaurant. To her annoyance, it tracks her life during and outside of work, even using location-based surveillance to nudge her. She figures out a way to fool the system, but a new device upgrade means trouble.

• In Frames, a smart city tracks and analyzes a woman walking through the city. Things she does are interpreted and logged by the city system, but are they drawing an accurate picture of the woman?

The films raise issues in our understandings of trust and surveilled relations. Blaxites highlights issues that arise when different data systems are connected; A Model Employee examines data ownership and the need to earn a system’s trust; and Frames highlights the problems in trusting sensor data and facial recognition to interpret human behaviour.

Pip Thornton's film, Newspeak , will be displayed on the outside of Inspace for the duration of the event. Newspeak received a Surveillance Studies Network Arts Prize 2020 honourable mention award.

Tim Maughan is an author and journalist using both fiction and non-fiction to explore issues around cities, class, culture, technology, and the future. His work regularly appears on the BBC, New Scientist, and Vice/Motherboard. His debut novel INFINITE DETAIL was published by FSG in 2019, and selected by The Guardian as their Science Fiction and Fantasy book of the year. He also collaborates with artists and filmmakers, and has had work shown at the V&A, Columbia School of Architecture, the Vienna Biennale, and on Channel 4. He currently lives in Canada.

sava saheli singh is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Ottawa researching young people’s media use in terms of their dis/connection with media and technology. Previously, as a postdoctoral fellow with the Surveillance Studies Centre (SSC) at Queen’s University, she conceptualized and co-produced ‘Screening Surveillance’ – three short near-future fiction films that call attention to the potential human consequences of big data surveillance. Specifically, this project extends existing SSC work to examine the intersections and implications of big data systems, risk, and surveillance. Previously, sava completed her PhD on Academic Twitter from New York University’s Educational Communication and Technology program.

Pip Thornton is a post-doctoral research associate in Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, primarily working on the AHRC Creative Informatics project where she takes a critical and creative approach to the concepts of data and value in the digital economy.