I began thinking about the visual outcome of my project. My brief states I must explore and expose the idea of Surveillance Capitalism, through an engaging way. My initial thoughts were to create an immersive, virtual reality, experience. Working with VR has been on my university bucket list, so employing this method for my design research project seemed like I could create something really engaging.
My VR idea was to expose Surveillance Capitalism by gamifying its process. What I mean by its process is, how it collects our data, what medium it uses to collect our data, and how the data collection works together to construct inferences about our behaviour. This all contributes to the final step which could possibly be targeted advertisement or physical behavioural manipulation.
I would design a setting in Unity. This setting would be where the user - who is playing the role of the algorithm - would freely be able to move around and engage with surroundings.
Where is the data coming from?
I thought about what/who the data is being collected from. Using ideas from my Unsecured CCTV Cameras project, I think it would be great if I could find an unsecured feed of an individual minding their own business. I would attach this camera view into the VR setting so the algorithm can watch over them and start collected real data, based off a real human from somewhere in the world.
I started developing the idea in Unity, roughly, just so I could get the hand of the program a bit. The images below show what I was thinking about.
This sketch shows how I was envisioning the experience. The user wears the VR headset. Ahead of them, they see a live feed. To the sides, I would design interfaces which allowed for data collection of the subjects personal movements, digital behaviour and anything the user would consider to be useful data to use against them.
Now I started developing the scene in unity.
Trying to connect a live feed into my Unity scene was difficult. I tried to find some answers through online research, but this didn't hail any results. I could, however, embed an MP4 file into the scene and so this is how I tested my idea for the moment.
UPDATE:
Due to the global health emergency, our degree show has been cancelled. I was developing this idea from the beginning as something I could display in the degree show, an immersive experience allowing those visiting the show to interact with. Now that classes have also been adapted to be delivered online, receiving help from university staff for Unity will be limited.
Therefore I have decided to take the features I have mentioned above, but adapt them to an idea where they can still represent the same theme, however through a medium which I can work from at home. Most likely an interactive interface.
Comments