In 2019, CLTC and the Daylight Security Research Lab launched its inaugural cybersecurity arts contest seeking artistic proposals that expand and refine representations and portrayals of cybersecurity, broadly defined. Last year, we invited several of our contest prize winners to come back and present their finished work to a global audience which brought together members of the cybersecurity research community with the arts community.
In addition to showcasing new ways of representing the human impacts of security, the events featured conversations with special guest interlocutors to discuss how new alternatives to contemporary tropes might reshape the way policymakers, technical practitioners, and the general public make decisions about security.
Click below to watch a recording of each event or read a recap of the conversation.
“The Price is Wrong”
On June 10, 2020, CLTC held a screening of The Price is Wrong, a three-part mockumentary aimed at starting a conversation about cybersecurity within the African context through the lens of comedy and realism. Filmed and set in Uganda, The Price is Wrong was created by Neema Iyer and Shayna Robinson. Iyer is the Executive Director of Pollicy, a civic technology organization dedicated to revolutionizing civic engagement and participation, and Robinson is a Uganda-based artist, former Pollicy team member, and Programme Officer at the Internet Society Foundation. The two producers joined Elizabeth Resor, a PhD candidate at UC Berkeley School of Information, for a live Q&A to discuss the series, as well as the social and political dimensions of cybersecurity in Uganda and other African countries. Read more.
“Virtual Caring”
On July 15, 2020, CLTC hosted artist Lauren McCarthy and Salome Asega, a Brooklyn-based artist, researcher, and Ford Foundation Technology Fellow, to discuss McCarthy’s work with collaborator David Leonard on “Virtual Caring,” a one-week interactive performance that confronted the prospect of using artificial intelligence (AI) as a virtual caregiver for aging populations. The two also discussed what the project reveals about notions of care, human connection, privacy, and surveillance. Read more.
“SweetWire”
On September 16, 2020, CLTC presented a discussion and live Q&A to showcase SweetWire. Created by artist Greg Niemeyer, in collaboration with dancer Olivia Caldeira Holston and composer Hallie Smith, SweetWire is a music video project that translates a successful containment of a cybersecurity attack into music and choreographed motion. For the panel discussion, Niemeyer and his co-creators joined Sydney Skybetter, a Public Humanities Fellow, Lecturer, and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Theatre Arts and Performance Studies Department at Brown University, to discuss their experience in creating SweetWire. Read more.
