Images - New Vulnerabilities

In the wake of the NSA scandal and the Boston Marathon Bombing, the presence of surveillance in our everyday lives has come back into the minds of people all over the world. This project seeks to consider what the threats to our privacy in the environment really are, and whether we should still be worried about surveillance cameras instead of the things we happen to depend on in our daily lives. Therefore, the project audibly maps the wifi networks that surround us, attempting to make us aware of the over-abundant nature of them, perhaps hinting at our dependence on being connected, while also making us consider the fact that networks are not neutral entities. Furthermore, considering the fact that the contemporary participant in society can be defined by their data more than their physical nature, we are perhaps at our most vulnerable when we naively join wifi networks, or any type of network, even those that are our own. By being able to hear what’s around us, we are able to judge the spaces we are in and understand them in these terms, changing the notion of what a “safe” space really is.