Dr Ben Dalton

This chapter explores publicly visible counter-terrorism measures – uncovering the strategic role of design in creating controlled disruption in public spaces to reduce threat while at the same time reducing anxiety. Evidence of counter-terrorism security design is now essential in the planning process and projects will need to demonstrate how such issues have been addressed (Royal Institute of British Architects, 2010). This emphasis on design is highlighted in a recent Home Office report (2012) which provides advice on how to integrate such measures at different stages, from conception to development so that ‘vulnerability of crowded places to terrorist attack can be tackled in an imaginative and considered way’ (Home Office, 2012, p. 3). This last point is critical if we are to develop and manage public spaces in way that will not have a detrimental effect on the quality of the public realm, but will be socially responsive, enhancing a sense of vitality and well-being.

An active audio self-localization algorithm is described which is effective even for distributed sensor networks with only coarse temporal synchronization. A practical implementation of a simple method of estimating ranges from recordings of reference sounds is used. Pseudo-noise “chirps” are emitted and recorded at each of the nodes. Pairwise distances are calculated by comparing the difference in the audio delays between the peaks measured in each recording. By removing dependence on fine grained temporal synchronization it is hoped that this technique can be used concurrently across a wide range of devices to better leverage the existing audio sensing resources that surround us. An implementation of this method using the Smart Architectural Surfaces development platform is described and assessed. The viability of the method is further demonstrated in a mixed-device ad-hoc sensornetwork case using existing off-the-shelf technology.

Rabbit Field is an infestation of inflatable rabbit-like forms, filling their display space and inviting tactile interaction. They cover much of the floor, and any other available surfaces, growing in number each night. Each rabbit is self-inflating using a simple computer fan, and can sense its internal pressure state by monitoring its fan speed. If a rabbit is squeezed, and partially deflated, the rabbits around it respond, as if out of empathy, deflating themselves. In this way, a wave of deflation ripples out from the squeezed center. By connecting an entire field of forms into a network of sensors and output media, interactions between viewer and inflatable are further displayed and amplified as deflation data is passed from one rabbit to the next. The organic feel of the forms and the rhythm of their inflation and deflation in reaction to human touch are easily anthropomorphized by the audience as simple expressions of emotion. This initiates and encourages play and exploration. This piece seeks to encourage and reward a 'tangible dialogue' between viewer and inflatables, as well as hoping to establish social connection between viewers who co-interact with the system. Rabbit forms were chosen to engage and invite inquiry. These animals also have strong cultural connotations of fertility and innocence, and are prevalent images in modern eastern and western aesthetic. Use of the unique properties of inflatable structures in architecture, art and design has a long and creative history, flirting between chic design and tacky novelty. http://www.media.mit.edu/~bcd/rabbits.

In 1995 Frances Cairncross’ The Death of Distance declared a compelling vision, that over time the communications revolution would release us from geographic locales. Digital public space has redefined working life - untethering workers from their desks and workplaces it has enabled the opportunity to work anywhere, anytime. Yet, digital public space (which we define as digital tools of connectivity for everyone, anywhere) simultaneously lacks geographic substance. It is both nowhere and everywhere. Where do you go to…? responds to a growing need for design solutions that reduce ‘psychological distance’ and foster a sense of ‘connectedness’ in distributed working. It explores how digital visualisations of workspaces can create a sense of being ‘local’ in digital space and enrich human experience independent of geography. Partnered with BBC MediaCityUK this project combines design prototyping in an experimental collaboration with staff and associated creative freelance networks. Describing one possible design concept, this paper reports on preliminary insights gathered from a halfday design consultation hosted at BBC North Lab and outlines the proposed approach to design prototyping and evaluation as we seek to develop a local solution to this global challenge.

In collaboration with FutureEverything, TodaysArt presented ‘Chattr’, a newly commissioned artwork and provocative design experiment. The lead artist for ‘Chattr’ is Ben Dalton and the inception of the project was based on conversations with media artist Kyle McDonald. ‘Chattr’ asks a deep question about the Internet and our life online – how much of our data are we willing to leak into the public online domain? We live in an always online world, and are growing accustomed to our online interactions being saved, stored, and sold by global online companies. The lines between offline and online, and also private and public, are becoming increasingly blurred. Could private conversations captured in public places be next? Where do we draw the line? Originally entitled 'Chatter - In sync with digital public space'. Initiated as a pilot project in collaboration with Lancaster University and FutureEverything festival, I joined the project as a doctoral researcher just as it was moving from wider explorations of the social intimacy and identity signature analysis of linguistic style matching (LSM) in networked conversations with Kyle McDonald, Drew Hemment, Mel Woods and Paul Taylor, towards a final performance project in the FutureEverything festival. Drew Hemment asked me to take the role of lead artist and to design the project experience. I worked with Elliot Woods from Kimchi & Chips and Joeli Brearley from FutureEverything to prototype the recording and transcription processes as a cafe space at the festival. I led the development of the framing of cloud data use policies, drafted the ethical consent, the brand identity, and the continuation of the project in an extended form at Today's Art festival in Den Hague. The performance and analysis of this project was a collaboration with FutureEverything, Kimchi & Chips, Today's Art, Mel Woods, Lara Salinas, Joel Porter, Tom Higham, Joeli Brearley and Hwa Young Jung. Kyle McDonald who had pitched an original idea of infrastructure provocation for Chattr, returned to that in his fork of the project Conversnitch. I led both iterations of the project, co-developing the performative process and cafe space for the first installation, and producing a new form, software and objects for the second. In its first manifestation at FutureEverything festival in Manchester, we created a dystopian privacy violating social space — with a social cafe perk — which visitors to the arts conference could only access by acquiescing to a long and abusive data use policy agreeing to recording, transcription and public publishing. We used a performative, prototyping and speculative future approach. In the second venue, I extended my exploration of the recording objects and the visual manifestation of the transcribing process, using guinea pig brand objects (modified garden ornaments from Vivid Arts supplied by Alexander Palace Garden Centre), an app (Cordova app running on Blackberry tablet computers) and live transcription screens (using modified Sublime text editors) to negotiate audiences accepting the terms and conditions, and real-time transcription screens in addition to online publishing for the spoken records. Paid transcribers Catherine, Tiffany and Laura at FutureEverything and volunteer transcribers at Today's Art made the project possible, as did the support of the teams at both festivals, particularly Tim Terpstra and Joeli Brearley.

Data as Place merges artistic and scientific research to investigate the global network of physical data centres. The project will use geopolitical mapping, data visualization, and architectural analysis of existing and proposed data centres to generate design proposals that expose the problematics and aesthetics offered by the physical installations on which the virtual flow of information depends. The world’s data increases ten-fold every five years. Massive amounts of information move across globally distributed networks as the data is processed, broken down, archived, and repackaged. The ease with which this information moves makes data seems placeless: the cloud is invisible territory simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. However, processing and storing the vast flow of virtual information requires significant physical assets. The ever-expanding global network of physical data centres that have arisen to meet the demands that the flow of information require have an equally insatiable need for energy to keep all of the bits flowing freely. Inchoate as it seems, the virtual cloud is inextricably tethered to these physical installations, and kept aloft only by massive inputs of conventional energy. Owing to their key role in the flow of information as well as their extensive energy requirements, data centers have been the subject of territorial disputes and international conflict. The 500,000 data centre locations spread across the globe can be read as barometers of contemporary geopolitical and economic forces. The energy required to operate these installations collectively outranks the energy demand of all but five countries. At the intersection of global politics and free-market forces, these locations are determined by a balance of favorable data regulation, access to affordable energy power, and tax incentives created by local and sovereign governments. Computation and energy for cooling are paramount, but the physical and regulatory freedom to operate are no less important: an overly controlling government or the absence of sufficient connection infrastructure renders sites less viable. Writing about the development of information infrastructure, Keller Easterling has pointed out that many of its physical assets are intentionally hidden from public view. Once the domain of national governments, information infrastructure is now largely constructed, operated, and maintained by major multinational corporations. These corporations, which include Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft, have a similar vested interest in maintaining control over of the flow of goods and information once exercised by national governments, but a reach at once more extensive and less transparent. The planning for data centres is cloaked in secrecy. Where large amounts of land are required it is often acquired under a handful of pseudonym companies that help maintain the anonymity of the actual sponsors. Where governments run data centres, they take pains to conceal data centre locations for security reasons. Unmarked buildings hum through the night, city data switches growing to fill existing architecture. Older buildings are gutted and retrofitted with racks of switches and drives, leaving anonymous offices and factory façades intact. Even as increasing access to information at all levels holds the promise of more free and open societies, the physical assets required for the access to information are kept secret, hidden from view in plain sight, the better to assume ultimate control over the information flows. As computation speeds increase and globally located markets grow, the even distribution globally of these processing centres will become increasingly important, exacerbating extant geopolitical issues. Faster connection speeds can mean a few microseconds winning advantage in trading or tracking. Calculation load can also be balanced around the world. Current data centres cater to massive scales of economy, favoring cheap boxes on cheap land, but in these are unlikely to be the only solution in the future. Plans are being developed for data freighters and platforms at sea, data drones and data zeppelins in the sky. Companies are already working towards data shipping containers, the standard unit of measurement of intermodal transport. And data architects may look toward colonizing currently uninhabitable places with data: the depths of the sea; radioactive waste stores; mountain tops; and deserts. The Data as Place project will investigate the aesthetic ramifications of the physical nature of data, and its often contentious relationship to place. Data as Place will be the first pilot project of Data is Political, a conference held at KHiB during April 2012 in which artists, designers and engineers offered diverse perspectives on the politics of data and information design. A presentation of the project at the Sensuous Knowledge conference would provide an opportunity to show a curated collection of photographs, diagrams and video, which tell a story about the obscure and often overlooked territory of global data infrastructure, in the context of the larger project plan.

Data Is Political: A symposium on art, design and information politics Kunstøgskolen i Bergen / Bergen National Academy of the Arts, Norway Our talk introduces our symposium examining the relationship between art, design, and the politics of information. The event brings together speakers from design, art, theory, and information sciences to discuss such questions as: What are the aesthetic, ethical and spatial dimensions of information and its relation to power, the production of knowledge, and construction of urban spaces? Speakers include Gediminas & Nomeda Urbonas, Daniel van der Velden, Philippe Rekacewicz, and Jessica Rylan with contributions from Michelle Teran, Jill Walker Rettberg among other artists and practitioners from the Bergen community.

Hewlett-Packard's mScape platform allows people to package up audio, images and movies along with geographical information to make interactive maps [Stenton 2007]. When downloaded to a location-aware device these media-maps trigger content based upon specific locations, story elements or more interactive game play. Our City, Our Music has been selected by b.TWEEN08 to develop a location-based album using the mScape platform. This paper presents our project as a case study for the educational potential, creative and social possibilities of this locative media technology.

This piece is an investigation of my interest in the acute self awareness triggered when humans are placed in the range of a camera or microphone. There is something about the knowledge of the future record of ourselves which often triggers discomfort, and provokes a set of strange, plastic, forced responses. We find it difficult to prevent these reactions to someone who may be about to record our appearance or voice. We are even quick to adapt to new recording devices, such as our developing uneasiness and consciousness of cameras in previously innocuous mobile phones. The audio recording for this project was produced by following a series of pre-formulated algorithmic steps: - position yourself at a reasonably busy intersection with a standard (in the sense of being instantly recognisable as such) microphone. - as someone walks towards you, try to not make eye contact and to not display the microphone until moments before they pass you. - attempt to elicit a response from each passer-by using only the familiar action of thrusting the microphone within range of their face. - retain only the first utterance from each person in the final recording. - do not reorder or modify the words and noises.

This zine is about the potential of collapse as a method, for our research and zines generally, and for ethical empowering 'reciprocal generosity and pleasure' specifically. It looks for productive possibilities in the form of 'context collapse' – a term used by internet scholars to describe jarring collisions of juxtaposed fragments from different social contexts, often found in networked publics like social media networks. Juxtaposition is a tool long explored by zine makers and their montage predecessors, and so zines offer a useful form for re-examining collapse as a method. The zine will draw on the history of collapse in social communication studies and read it through both: 1) questions of sustainability in the midst of climate collapse and burnout collapse; and, 2) Karen Barad's feminist theorising of superposition and wave-function collapse in quantum physics. I want to draw on Barad's diffractive methods and agential realism stance to seek possibilities for resistance and action in collapse. Networks collapse time and space through new topologies of connection. The social and cultural consequences of a rapid growth of data storage and processing are violently unpredictable. High-carbon infrastructures can also become unstable in the face of spiralling climate instability. DIY methods of network building, and the care work that sustains them, are resilient in the face of collapse. Finding possibilities in collapse as a method offers ways of re-working ideas, sharing knowledge and acting in a world in which we are already implicated. As Gloria Anzaldúa teaches us "The ability to respond is what is meant by responsibility".

Data Is Political explores the aesthetic and political dimensions of information and its relation to power and the production of knowledge. By constructing a New Cloud Atlas map of global internet infrastructure, maintained as an open public working website, this project has developed to ask what role networked publics play in accountability technologies and holding networks to account. An artistic research project led by Amber Frid-Jimenez and Ben Dalton, Data is Political was begun in 2012 at the Bergen National Academy of Art & Design in collaboration with the Jan van Eyck Academie, and University of Bergen. Since 2014 it has developed through the conception and production of the New Cloud Atlas, using a research through design method led by Ben Dalton, as an active network cartography website (newcloudatlas.org), and accompanying urban network mapping art-walk performances and workshops, along with critical network architecture analysis through conference and exhibition settings. The context for sharing includes exhibitions at Designing Digital Now, FACT gallery, Liverpool, 2016; and Information+ Interdisciplinary Practices Information Design & Visualization exhibition, Vancouver, 2016. Two public mapping art-walks with FACT, suported in-part by the AHRC Creative Exchange Hub AH/J005150/1, evolved mapping tools and ongoing collection of internet infrastructure data. The project was presented to the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Detroit, 2017; and in A Diffractive Practitioner a chapter contribution to the edited book The Superposition, edited by Dave Lynch, PO publishing, forthcoming in 2019. While the New Cloud Atlas sits alongside a growing field of critical network mapping including Ingrid Burrington’s New York network mapping – its original contribution to the field lies in the creation of an open mapping process and infrastructure, that builds on the existing cartography resources and practices of OpenStreetMap to sustain ongoing global network mapping driven by an intersection of art, design and architecture.

© 2015 Taylor & Francis The control and shaping of pedestrian movement recurs as an aspect of security planning for crowded spaces. Using the concepts of triangulation, performance and flow, this paper presents a series of experiments designed to shape pedestrian movement patterns in public spaces in different spatial and operation contexts, by eliciting noticeable behaviours and disrupting routine use of space. The hypothesis investigated is that playful, non-obstructive interventions foster a positive social experience yet can be used to shape pedestrian movement. The interventions examined were around the themes of floor marking and mirrors. Analysis demonstrated that the interventions were able to create zones of attraction and exclusion, engage people’s curiosity and elicit playful actions. Habituation, goal-directed behaviour and the influence of increased cognitive load at personal level were all important factors responsible for reducing the level of engagement with an intervention. The results suggest that increased understanding between environmental and interpersonal stimuli and behavioural responses can provide guidance in using socially acceptable design interventions to influence use of space in different operational contexts, contributing to sustainable security.

This paper describes the potential of systems in which many people collectively control a single constructed identity mediated by socio-technical networks. By looking to examples of identities that have spontaneously emerged from anonymous communities online, a model for pseudonym design in social machines is proposed. A framework of identity dimensions is presented as a means of exploring the functional types of identity encountered in social machines, and design guidelines are outlined that suggest possible approaches to this task.

An approach to extract the spin asymmetry of a current from measurements of domain wall resistance was described. It was observed that the resistivity and the domain wall resistance change by a factor ∼3 between helium and room temperature. The temperature dependance of the spin asymmetry of the current was determined over a wide range in a single material. It was shown that the magnetoresistance of domain walls could be used to determine the spin asymmetry of an ordinary diffusive current flowing in a ferromagnet.

This paper examines the publicly visible aspects of counter-terrorism activity in pedestrian spaces as mechanisms of disruption. We discuss the objectives of counter-terrorism in terms of disruption of routine for both hostile actors and general users of public spaces, categorising the desired effects as 1) triangulation of attention; 2) creation of unexpected performance; and 3) choreographing of crowd flow. We review the potential effects of these existing forms of disruption used in counter-terrorism. We then present a palette of art, advertising, architecture, and entertainment projects that offer examples of the same disruption effects of triangulation, performance and flow. We conclude by reviewing the existing support for public art in counter-terrorism policy, and build on the argument for art as an important alternative to authority. We suggest that while advocates of authority-based disruption might regard the playfulness of some art as a weakness, the unexpectedness it offers is perhaps a key strength

As interactive systems become increasingly entwined with architecture, and spaces become able to detect the presence of individuals, we argue that the control of visibility as a temporary personal state should be considered in the design of public spaces. This workshop will provide the opportunity for participants to engage hands-on with a computer vision tracking system (OpenCV) and explore how low-cost materials and tools can be used to render people invisible in monitored public space. We invite researchers and practitioners from the fields of art, design, HCI, architecture and social science to consider strategies for managing personal visibility and how these relate to design and the use of technologies. The intention of the workshop is not to produce implementable designs. Instead we prefer to make speculative design scenarios that might act as future inspiration or critique. By focusing on practical strategies for managing personal visibility we hope to extend designers thinking of presence in public space beyond the purely physical to include digital representations of inhabitation that are processed and archived remotely. © 2012 Authors.

’Time & Motion’ re-examines the relevance of our traditional notions of the eight-hour day, in particular the effects of digital technology on patterns of working life and on digital public space.

Chattr was a participatory art project that opened the debate on personal privacy in social media, just a few months before the Snowden story broke, revealing the extent to which government and corporate entities were listening to our conversations. Originally entitled 'Chatter - In sync with digital public space'. Initiated as a pilot project in collaboration with Lancaster University and FutureEverything festival, I joined the project as a doctoral researcher just as it was moving from wider explorations of the social intimacy and identity signature analysis of linguistic style matching (LSM) in networked conversations with Kyle McDonald, Drew Hemment, Mel Woods and Paul Taylor, towards a final performance project in the FutureEverything festival. Drew Hemment asked me to take the role of lead artist and to design the project experience. I worked with Elliot Woods from Kimchi & Chips and Joeli Brearley from FutureEverything to prototype the recording and transcription processes as a cafe space at the festival. I led the development of the framing of cloud data use policies, drafted the ethical consent, the brand identity. The performance and analysis of this project was a collaboration with FutureEverything, Kimchi & Chips, Mel Woods, Lara Salinas, Joel Porter, Tom Higham, Joeli Brearley and Hwa Young Jung. Kyle McDonald who had pitched an original idea of infrastructure provocation for Chattr, returned to that in his fork of the project Conversnitch. I led this iteration of the project, co-developing the performative process and cafe space for the first installation. In its first manifestation at FutureEverything festival in Manchester, we created a dystopian privacy violating social space — with a social cafe perk — which visitors to the arts conference could only access by acquiescing to a long and abusive data use policy agreeing to recording, transcription and public publishing. We used a performative, prototyping and speculative future approach. Paid transcribers Catherine, Tiffany and Laura at FutureEverything made the project possible, as did the support of the teams at the festival, particularly Joeli Brearley.

Queer Joy is conceptualised as a form of resistance to oppression by celebrating queerness in the face of adversity. This research aimed to centre queer joy and understand how it is expressed and may be facilitated in online spaces. To do this we conducted a survey with 100 UK participants who indicated they identified as LGBTQ+ on the online recruitment platform Prolific. We asked a series of open and closed questions in an online survey to investigate 1) what queer joy looks like on social media 2) how queer joy content is engaged with on social media, 3) which platforms are perceived to facilitate queer joy and 4) how queer people protect their privacy online. The results suggested that to facilitate queer joy online, platforms should allow flexible self expression and community engagement, while allowing for granular control over privacy and the audience such content is shown to.

Climbing magazines from the 1970s to the 2000s, originating as a product of male dominated climbing cultures, provide a rich illustrative source for embracing visual methodology. Working as a multidisciplinary collective of four across history, art, sociology, we are using photomontage methods to interrogate the photographic representations, absences and stark invisibility of women and women climbers held within our climbing magazine collection. We engage collage as our means of working with the magazine imagery and representations therein. Situating art making at the kitchen table, Dada artist Hannah Höch (1889-1978) invites us to trespass towards a collective, resistant leisure activity. We do so by workshopping to deconstruct, disassemble and reassemble our visual artefacts to speak back and through the ways women’s bodies are objectified, and materially and discursively play out against exclusive leisure. Identifiable representations of women appear in the magazines which chime with complexities of absence, sexualization, and conditional inclusion. We chat and discuss and unobtrusively transcribe our emergent commentaries. Our visual methodology therefore invigorates the examination of women’s status within climbing culture past and present, across climbing and non-climbing audiences, revealing resonances between past and present attitudes to women, suggestive that representational strategies continue to impact discriminated groups.

Initiated in discussions at the Modelling Digital Public Spacep.309 lab, I worked with Phil Booth and Max Van Kleek to develop a proposal to "explore the creation of a 'commons' around self-curated journeys or ‘trails’ through digital media" using existing personal data projects including Mydex’s Personal Data Store (PDS) platform, and taking parks as a public space model for "inspired centers of civic life and the physical manifestation of the common good" (James Howard Kunstler quoted in the Walk in the Park proposal). The project worked with Phil Booth, and David Alexander and Chris Adams from Mydex CIC, and through Van Kleek, the SOCIAM (Theory & Practice of Social Machinesp.317) researchers. During the project, both the Mydex and INDX personal data stores developed and presented features of visualising and exploring personal web history data. We then took these interfaces and prototypes as the starting point for a series of speculative design workshops with designer-researchers exploring the future of life-long personal data stores.