Surveilling the surveillers

In the first part of this presentation, I will talk about critical technological art in general and its connections to (defensive) architecture, electronic and physical warfare and international power relations, with a special focus on surveillance, borders, and international contracts. In the latter part I am going to exemplify these concepts by showing important works in their fields, like artistic counter-survellance installations, passive reconnaissance walks through metropolitan cities, forensic analysis of HDDs discarded as electronic waste and so on. I will also show some of my personal works in this field, ranging from passive radio antenna stations towards universal modems to transform existing conductive architecture into a computer network. As a hybrid between computer scientist and media artist, I am creating works at the intersection of engineering, sculpture and formal aesthetics, which investigate power relations between citizens and technology, and often also the relations between citizens and the state. In my latest works, I am pondering how technology can be capable of re-democratizing public space, and how the issues surrounding the creation of private spaces through technological means can be artistically addressed. As a computer scientist, I have worked in high-tech environments and published scientific articles in the fields of artificial intelligence and digital culture.