“In this provocation, Justin Durrel reflects on notions of anonymity and the power it can give us. Justin contextualises the opening of his talk in the US interview: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/375428/february-24-2011/corporate-hacker-tries-to-take-down-wikileaks which sadly we can’t show in the UK. However, nevertheless, Justin raises a number of interesting questions and challenges some of our traditional research notions of anonymity. The second part of the film shows a very energetic interaction between researchers and artists in which some of the roles of anonymity in society are debated.”

More details on the workshop, its objectives and an outline of the process can be found here

Justin Durrel – Pt 1 from VOME on Vimeo.

Justin Durrel – Pt 2 from VOME on Vimeo.

Justin Durrel is accelerating forwards as an artist and theatre-maker.  His knowledge of the web is vast, his thoughts fresh and on the beat, naming things as is – he certainly does not beat around the bush.  From Baltimore he comes to Europe bearing his cultural roots with pride.

‘I don’t believe that privacy exists on the net, I don’t actually believe that privacy exists anywhere anyway’, Justin says.  He thinks this thing about wanting privacy is a modern day phenomena, historically we were content to live much closer, more people living in the same space, close knit communities – there wasn’t much privacy then, he says.

Link here to read Freya’s complete thoughts on Justin’s presentation

More details on the workshop, its objectives and an outline of the process can be found here

There’s so much there in Rika Deyricke’s presentation.  You’ll see Rika  captured on film with her own craziness and fun, with a tiny pinch of vulnerability and a depth of thought.  ‘The only truth we have at our disposal is hidden within us, unless of course, we elect to share it with others.’ Rika quotes from Simon Lane.

Rika Deryckere from VOME on Vimeo.

Link here to read Freya’s complete thoughts on Rika’s presentation.

More details on the workshop, its objectives and an outline of the process can be found here

VOME WORKSHOP:WHAT DOES PRIVACY LOOK FEEL AND SOUND LIKE: Jonathan from VOME on Vimeo.

Link here to read Freya’s complete thought’s on Jonathan’s presentation

Private Moments -A film from the Workshop “What does Privacy Sound Feel and Look Like” – Reettta’s  pure essence – a provocation that was developed to explore thoughts on the nature of identity and identity management.

As part of its work, VOME has engaged with art and design communities as we work to envision different ways in which privacy and consent technologies might evolve. Art and design disciplines have also helped to enrich VOME’s current technology development programme. VOME is focused on grassroots debate and interaction on privacy issues across all sections of the community.
In support of the evolving discussion prompted by the alternate viewpoints on privacy highlighted by these videos, an artist from the VOME community will be leading blog discussions on our art and design programme.
You can find all the film related to this part of our work here:

This is the first film from the artists’ workshop entitled “What Does Privacy Sound, Feel and Look Like?”.  More details on the workshop, its objectives and an outline of the process can be found here.

Each artist was asked to develop a provocation related to the theme of on-line privacy. Here is Reetta’s provocation based on the theme of identity. The audience interact with Reetta to uncover aspects of her identity that she typically keeps hidden. This provocation helps VOME researchers to think about the different aspects of identity and identity management and some of the sense in which identity is negotiated.

VOME WORKSHOP:WHAT DOES PRIVACY LOOK FEEL AND SOUND LIKE: REETTA from VOME on Vimeo.

Watching Reetta’s presentation you see a glimmer of Reetta as she really is, pre performance.  A private moment of the actor captured.  The moment before ‘going on’, when you don’t know for sure what will really happen as there is audience involvement and it all depends on how they accept your proposals, react and interact.  Making sure you’re ready, in Reetta’s case: props, costume, makeup and music – not too high / not too low.  Had the audience interrupted Reetta’s pre-set up, she would have had a momentary loss of control of the illusion she wished to create.

Link here to read Freya’s complete thoughts on this presentation

Lizzie Coles-Kemp presents “What does privacy look, feel and sound like” from VOME on Vimeo.

Peter Hall Presentation at the Design Centre: Mapping the Intangible from VOME on Vimeo.

At this event, VOME presented some of the artistic output from the VOME project and presented a talk on experimental design practices by Peter Hall, Design Educator and Critic, University of Texas. In his talk, Peter Hall explained approaches to creating visualisations of societal issues using artistic input and social research and discussed the potential role these approaches might play in technology design.

Abstract from the presentation

The VOME project has worked together with UK online to conduct a survey of privacy attitudes and behaviours. Focusing on our concerns about privacy while using the internet, the survey reveals that online identity theft is currently the greatest fear for internet users.

Other key concerns relate to individuals having their personal information compromised.  Among these concerns, finance features prominently, as does the exposure of personal information and the potential for individuals and companies to misrepresent themselves. Gender, length of internet experience and education levels all contribute to affecting the level of general concern.  The tracking of web pages visited by an individual is predominantly regarded as either harmful (43.1%) or both helpful and harmful (39.7%).  Very few regard it as purely beneficial.

These results form part of the backdrop to a project called ‘Visualisation and Other Methods of Expression’ (VOME), which aims to produce methods and tools for negotiating and engaging with on-line privacy and consent. These tools could help service users define, agree and check levels of privacy when using the internet and might help service providers respond more effectively to the service user’s privacy concerns.

Dr Lizzie Coles-Kemp, VOME Project Manager, comments, “The survey results are a useful stepping stone to helping us understand the bigger picture when it comes to on-line privacy practices and behaviours. We look forward to developing a more complete picture with the results from our qualitative fieldwork.”

VOME is an interdisciplinary research project funded by the Technology Strategy Board, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).  The VOME partners are the Information Security Group (Royal Holloway), Cranfield and Salford Universities, Sunderland City Council and Consult Hyperion.

The survey was developed by VOME researchers from existing privacy scales which have been previously used to measure privacy attitudes and behaviours. The use of existing scales enables VOME researchers to compare their results with previous surveys of this nature. The survey was administered via an online platform known as ConfirmIT provided by UK online. Participants were recruited from UK online’s research panel known as “myopinion”.

The total number of valid responses for the survey was 1048. Of the 1048 respondents, 49.8% (523) were male and 50.2% (525) were female and the mean age was 41.0 years (range: 18 – 82 years).

Although a large proportion of respondents had not personally experienced an invasion of privacy, many had heard or read about the use and potential misuse of customers’ personal information collected on the web. 45% indicated that they had heard or read about such incidents “somewhat frequently” and 16% had heard or read about such incidences “very frequently”. 31% had heard or read about such incidences “not too frequently” and only 4% had not heard or read about such incidences at all.

VOME is currently undertaking qualitative research to explore the trends identified in the survey in order to develop a deeper understanding of the privacy protection practices and how these can be improved to become more usable by wider sections of the community.

Copies of the survey and further information about VOME can be obtained from here or by contacting Claire Hudson  claire.hudson@rhul.ac.uk