colloquium /Beatriz Da Costa

Locative Media & Environmental Politics

Beatriz da Costa will present her current PigeonBlog project, an initiative which uses homing pigeons as allies for real-time air pollution data gathering. The pigeons are equipped with small gps/gsm communication devices in addition to a carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides sensor unit. During flight time, pollution data will be sent in real time to an online mapping and blogging environment. Da Costa is currently developing the pigeon “backpack” devices together with her graduate students Cina Hazegh and Kevin Ponto. The project will be launched at ISEA 2006 in San Jose.

In addition, da Costa will also present her collaborative work with the Preemptive Media, a group of artists, activists and technologists who are making their own style of beta tests, trial runs and impact assessments based on independent research. Preemptive Media’s work includes public workshops, performances and tool development

Projects by Preemptive Media include Swipe, a three-part project (performance, installation and toolkit) that reveals to people what information is encoded on a U.S. driver's license and attempts to prevent the hemorrhaging of personal data without consent or notification. Swipe illustrates how personal information is used and why businesses and government crave it.

And Zapped!, a recent project initiative which takes a close look at Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies. Zapped! interrogates the current push toward RFID, encourages public discussion and develops models for creative feedback. Preemptive Media has developed a set of tools that allow for alerting of RFID readers installed in public and commercial environments (through mobile devices emitting light and sound) as well as “jamming” of existing RFID systems.

This presentation will specifically address the notion of grassroots scientific data gathering and the pursuit of such a practice within an academic research environment. What role can artists play in negotiating the relationship between high-end academic research and public knowledge dissemination? How can a non-expert public participate in policy-making procedures regarding the uses and releases of new technology applications as well as standards and releases of environmental toxins and health hazardous materials? How can these forms of counter-surveillance and awareness raising go beyond a mere symbolic gesture?

Bio

Beatriz da Costa is an Interdisciplinary Artist and Researcher. From 2000-2005 she worked in collaboration with Critical Art Ensemble, and is a co-founder of Preemptive Media – an art, activism and technology group. Beatriz's interests include social robotics, biopolitics and the politics of surveillance. She is currently working on "PigeonBlog" a distributed remote sensing project, involving human-pigeon collaboration for a collective air pollution sensing initiative. Other projects include "AIR" with Preemptive Media and "Experiments in Biosensing" with Dr.Tau-Mu Yi.

Beatriz is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art, Electrical Engineering and Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. She is also the Associate Director for Academic Initiatives in the “Arts Computation Engineering” graduate Program at UCI.

http://www.beatrizdacosta.net
http://www.preemptivemedia.net
http://www.parasitelab.net