I’m Anu! I research, make, craft, code, and sometimes, hack things.
On a daily basis, we give large amounts of personal data to online companies and services. Yet, we rarely think about where our data is located. Where does it travel to and where is it stored? Our use of and reliance on 'the cloud' can make it seem as though our data is floating and abstract, but there are vast physical centres around the globe that are responsible for the safekeeping of our personal data. The Wired Eye attempts to highlight this and draw our attention to these physical locations of data storage. Using information from our internet browsing history, the device retrieves the IP addresses of recently visited websites. From these IP addresses, it finds the associated data centres used by these companies and pulls an aerial image of the centre using satellite imagery.
The Wired Eye displays a slideshow of these images through a kaleidoscopic lens, inviting play and wonder around visuals that are both strange and beautiful. The optical distortion comments on the blurry nature of our knowledge of our data’s whereabouts at any given moment, as it is constantly moving, shifting between servers and travelling across the world in a span of milliseconds. The Wired Eye aims to provoke curiosity in further exploring the complex relationship between our online data and geographical sites of storage.
Wired Eye was presented at the Design Expo as a part of the Microsoft Faculty Summit 2014 in Seattle.
Exhibited at Enter 14, Watermans, London.
18th Nov 2014 - Janurary 5th 2015
Team: Anuradha Reddy, Samantha Miller
Project Website: www.wiredeyeproject.com
This project is a collaboration between Goldsmiths, University of London and Microsoft Research
Annotated Portfolio for the project: Wired Eye