Right now, even if you keep your mouth shut to anyone, your inner secrets will be spread to people who want to know you through the Internet. The reliance on Internet electronic equipment is transforming our last privacy rights into a kind of resource. Even the information was collected from your behavior, you have no permission to access and to own. Basically, from the moment that you click “agree,” you’re basically NO ESCAPE.
Just as industrial civilization thrives at the expense of nature, now we are threatened that the information civilization shaped by the power to surveillance capitalism which will thrive at the expense of humanity. Considering that the Internet has become a necessary condition for social engagement, commerce is now subordinate to surveillance capitalism, our dependence on it is the core of surveillance capitalism. This reliance creates a mental numbness that allows us to understand the reality of being tracked, parsed, excavated, and modified, while also making people take it for granted. That is why I want to make this work.
No escape is an interactive monitoring system. This work is the first one of trilogy about surveillance capitalism. In the scene, each pedestrian will generate a set of personal data with visual chart that includes hundreds type of personal information. I want to create a disturbing atmosphere by magnifying personal details and watching over all. Audiences can control a C5EB-3 Cruising Robot with a flight controller to wander on the street and check anyone’s information.
The background is set in an alternate history in the near future. After a global climate disaster, the traditional state power was crumbling gradually. Super Internet companies and pharmaceutical giants started to question the legitimacy of previous government. The big companies got chance to try building a NEW WORLD that completely decentralized likes internet! The idea spread rapidly and had many supporters, shortly after, a super metropolis – YiLi was build with this goal. The population of the whole world began to flow to this metropolis, it has expanded rapidly, even beyond the size of some countries.
Because of the completely decentralized management, here is only one super computer to adjust decisions. Actually The computer itself does not make any decisions (not an AI). All policies are automatically adjusted in real time based on the big data collected from current behavior of citizens, in other words, all citizen change the law or financial rules together, no one can exploit loopholes. Therefore, every citizen and newborn in YiLi must implant a personal identity chip under the skin in back. This chip can be used as the only identity authentication to pay for digital currency, and it collect and upload your personal data to analyze.
However, the real-time transmission of personal data does not mean that the behavior of citizens can be fully predicted to anti-crime. “low value people” are no right to have citizen ID, but they are allowed to live in specific areas and cannot cross the border, so it is difficult to predict their actions.Others modify and fabricate false information without authorization, which is absolutely prohibited in YILI. Therefore, there are many inspection cruisers robot in the city to monitor citizens’ behavior in local and compare network data to judge data reliability.
XIAHAN.ART 