Privacy Seed is an installation to challenge the intersections of personal spaces and data privacy, the connection of human identity and its digital extensions.
A wooden tree structure holds at its center an anatomical heart with a heartbeat sensor. By holding it in their hands the participants start interacting with the tree. The sensor readings are used to “seed” a secure digital random number generator that is one of the foundational elements of modern cryptography.
How people feel when something as intimate as their heartbeat is captured, digitised and made visible in the public space?
Participants after interacting with the structure are invited to answer the following question:
“WHAT DO YOU LOVE AND HOPE TO PROTECT
FROM DIGITAL MASS SURVEILLANCE AND EROSION OF PRIVACY?”
Their answers are written on ribbons and tied to the branches of the tree to build a collective answer at each performace.
Privacy Seed is a reflection on our personal-and-digital identity boundaries.
It is an exploration of our intimate spaces and their public digital shadows.
“Arguing that you don’t care about the right
to privacy because you have nothing to hide
is no different than saying you don’t care about
free speech because you have nothing to say.”
― Edward Snowden