2022 Gait Augmentation Seminar



Should opting out of surveillance be this hard?


A satirical workout and devices that obfuscate your unique walk so you can outsmart gait-signature surveillance.




Forget your fingerprint or your face: did you know your walk is a reliable bio-tracker?


After decades of research and the advancement of computer vision, skeletal tracking and AI, identifying one’s unique gait signature is now more accurate.

Imagine it’s 2022 and gait tracking technologies have been successfully pitched in boardrooms and adopted by law enforcement, even retailers. If you want to go incognito on any sidewalk, you need this seminar!





Should opting out be this hard?


Decide for yourself with our 90 minute seminar.

First, your gait is analyzed with skeletal tracking to establish a baseline.

Then, you practice peculiar walking techniques — what we call Mind Over Matter moves to thwart detection.

Can you talk and walk strangely at the same time?





Then, you layer on our proprietary Matter Over Mind equipment for upping your disguise game — The Pebble, The Elastic Enhancer, and The Self Refractor.

All inspired by CIA clandestine protocols and our testing on what can successfully obfuscate you from skeletal tracking.

It turns out shiny, light-refracting, wind-catching mylar party curtains do the job well. So for a few dollars, you too can join the incognito counter culture.




After the seminar, I roll you a clementine and we cool down with a philosophical discussion on the use of this technology.

This absurd take on surveillance technology prompts debate: 
  • When should this technology be used, if at all?
  • Which entities would you trust with the technology and captured datasets?
  • What if the technology has biases?
  • What regulations or civil protections should be put in place?


2019-PRESENT

90 minute participatory performance

Science Gallery Detroit: Tracked + Traced

September 10 2021 -December 11 2021 in Detroit, Michigan.

With the advent of the 21st century, new technologies expedited the ways in which governments, corporations, and individuals surveilled people, places, and things throughout the world and beyond. In fact, many now claim that we live within a surveillance society. Data is collected, stored, analyzed, and applied in ways both known and unknown. The devices and tools we use—search engines, social media, smartphone apps, fitness trackers, retail loyalty programs, to name a few—enable these forms of opaque surveillance.

What does it mean to live in a world where privacy is merely an illusion? How does surveillance benefit us as individuals and as a society? Alternatively, what are the inherent harms inflicted upon those being tracked & monitored?

In this exhibition, we invite you to explore the myriad ways surveillance impacts our society. Further, we encourage you to explore how we can work to enable more ethical and equitable practices of seeing and being seen.

Also staged at:

Creative Time Summit X on Truth
November 16, 2019 at The Cooper Union in NYC.

Design Vancouver Washington
October 5, 2019 at Tandem Hall in Vancouver, Washington.

PRIMER19: Futures For All
June 15, 2019 at The New School in NYC.

Design Week Portland
April 7, 2019 at Yale Union in Portland, Oregon.
CREDITS

Artist - Laura Allcorn

Consulting Technologist - Thomas Wester is a technologist specilaizing spatial interactions at Glowbox. He advised on materials that could obfuscate skeletal tracking cameras.