(5 pieces made – just 2 remaining)
“Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.”
Ayn Rand
“If the right to privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion.”
William J. Brennan
82cm wide X 60cm high X 6cm deep
Cost £2200
Only 5 will be made – just 2 remaining
Sousveillance is about the technical ability that we can have in a healthy society to allow the individual the right to privacy whilst removing the Governments practice of secrecy and making them transparent and accountable.
We can do this through the use of open source, privacy focussed and decentralised technologies… it’s early days but the basic infrastructure is there and a multitude of solutions, startups, and grass community initiatives are pioneering the way
I designed Sousveillance to look like a giant eye… the layering around the outside is representative of the organic nature of society and how blockchain technology will eventually be seamlessly blended into it… the pupil is made up of a hexagonal structure representing the technical nature of a decentralised technology
In the centre of the piece above you will notice the “All seeing eye”
This eye can be seen all over the world from the Freemasons to the American $1 bill to the logo of the British Security Service MI5 (logo circa 50’s-70’s)
The eye that I depict on my piece has a tear drop… the tear drop has two meanings…
1) the tear drop tattoo, which has numerous meanings, in this case it means the killing or murder of a fellow human being
2) the tear represent sadness, the game is over, the reign of oversight is coming to an end
The two circles of beings around the outside are us… humans, individuals, decentralised and working in cooperation… the technology allows us to keep an eye on the establishment, ensuring that governments are there to serve us… the tables have now been turned, we are now looking in on those who once surveilled us
The piece is finished off by an oak ply border
My original character looked more like the Guy Fawkes anonymous character
But in a moment of random 80’s’ness I stumbled upon and played Jean Michel Jarres Equinox album… it’s still a classic today… on it’s cover there were these beings known only as “The Watchers”… they eerily gaze upon you… I am hoping that my recreation of them also conveys that eeriness to those that surveil us now
Sousveillance is a term first coined by Steve Mann an engineer with numerous inventions to his name in the fields of Augmented Reality, wearable computing, and computational dynamic imaging… Sousveillance is contrasting the French words sur, meaning “above”, and sous, meaning “below”… so sousveillance is observing from below
The name Sousveillance is a word I first heard from an Andreas Antonopoulos talk and then later just as I was finishing this piece I read it in his book The Internet of Money… buy the book, but also watch the video “Bitcoin: Privacy, Identity, Surveillance and Money – Barcelona Fablab Meetup March 2016” I dropped it at 21 minutes 04 seconds where he explains Sousveillance… thank you Andreas
“It’s dangerous when people are willing to give up their privacy.”
Noam Chomsky
“I value my privacy and my personal life – and I certainly don’t exploit my personal life.”
Scarlett Johansson
Lots more coming soon
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