Tearing down the biometric cage: deconstructing biometric surveillance through art

Abstract

This paper opens up for scrutiny the issue of transformation of strategies and practices of surveillance in the face of the widespread use of biometrics understood as bio-power technologies. Development of contemporary biometrics is based on and depends on the convergence of analogue technics of body analysis and identification with digital “intelligent” technologies of digging, storage and manipulation of data. As a result biometric surveillance becomes more and more automatic and algorithm driven. This fact has many consequences, the most important of which are pervasiveness of control connected with the specific "black-boxing" of technology. In this context, it is particularly important to look for ways to open a black box of technology. This is the first and fundamental step that can allow for developing of a critical reflection on the society of surveillance in the age of digital biometrics. Searching for critical analysis of biometrics I refer to various artistic projects in which subversive use of biometric technologies leads to deconstruction of common beliefs, myths as well as political and ideological interpretations of these technologies. I focus on works by Sterling Crispin, Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovico, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Seiko Mikami, Marnix de Nijs, and Paul Vanouse, i.a. that critically address mechanisms of biometric surveillance in the post-human society of control.