Conclusion and next steps

In the time I have been working on this project, I have been able to find connections to a number of current themes. Two of those themes are: image metadata and inverse surveillance.

While working on this project, I have tried to think of all data in the dataspace as relatively equal in value. Image metadata is data that accompanies an image to describe it. Recent writings on image metadata (metadata.net) have reminded me that, while extremely important decisions need to be made about how we describe images, my approach is fundamentally different. I have no metadata for my images. I could even think of the image itself as metadata for the data. I do not want to be forced to decide that any one part of the data is more important than another since making such a decision would limit the scope of my exploration.

Inverse surveillance or sousveillance is the personal capture of everyday life. Probably the most well-known souveillance practitioner and advocate is Steve Mann. My goal is to help define artistic agendas to help prevent development of this area from being solely consumer-based. To that end I am working to develop a more integrated and diverse data gathering wearable in the near future so that I can further investigate specifically artistic approaches.