What does the Web know about us?
George Orwell’s masterpiece 1984 is often quoted when it comes to criticizing surveillance. But not even he could have foreseen that people would buy their own listening devices, carry them around with them all the time and completely voluntarily indicate where they are, for what reason and with whom, or what they like. The digital world is constantly with us – we communicate, store, read, listen, publish and share. We log in, store our data in the cloud, get discounts with our customer card, walk through publicly monitored places or take our pulse. Our signature is digital, the consent form is approved without even reading it.
The exhibition OUT OF CONTROL in the AUDIOVERSUM is intended to particularly make young people aware of the downside of digital presence – namely the abandonment of privacy. Selfie-posts on a social media channel remain permanently accesible, even if they don’t seem to be so funny anymore. Our awareness is only slowly being raised of how corporations and government agencies handle our personal data. They know what we like, where we are, who we are. It is up to us to protect our privacy effectively.
As part of the exhibition, the AUDIOVERSUM-Team is also working on a new archive: The currently very present Corona topic and the discussions about big data and data protection, mobile phone apps and tracking are contemporary historical testimonies. Todays communication possibilities are contrasted with those of the last pandemic in 1918, the “Spanish flu”. This archive is constantly being updated and is inteded to encourage reflections and discussions.