English 680V: Visual Rhetoric in a Technological Age (Purdue)

Here's another nifty item from GOOD magazine. They feature a short article on Hasan Elahi, a professor of art at Rutgers who was questioned by the FBI shortly after 9/11. He was continually harassed and repeatedly questioned, in Arabic, a language that he doesn't speak. This is unsurprising considering that he is Bangladeshi and not Arab. Afraid of being abducted during the night and spirited away to Guantanamo, he began tracking his own movements on his website Tracking Transience. It was a brilliant move. He documents all of his travel on this site, which currently includes a video feed of present location, a Google map indicating present location with flashing red arrow, and a series of photos of things like buildings, meals, and even urinals. If you click on any of the pictures, additional verification is provided in the form of a bank statement. When I clicked on the plate of spaghetti, a window listing the charge on his bank (or credit card?) statement appeared.

Elahi tells GOOD magazine that the impetus for documenting his movements was his requisite report to an FBI agent when he travelled. According to Elahi, he's "borrowing a very simple economic principle and flooding a market to a point where the currency has no remaining value" (48). Recording all of his movements and making them publicly available is an interesting commentary on the government's continued permeation of our private lives. Elahi is preempting FBI or NSA invasion of his privacy by opening his movements up to everyone.

Unfortunately, the technical details of Elahi's postings are not available. I'm wondering what technologies he uses. Obviously, he uses a digital camera and an internet connection but does he have a GPS locator that automatically posts his location on his Google Earth map? (And yes, they do have GPS locators that do that.) Is he constantly on his Blackberry posting to the site? Does he have a camera with wifi capabilities? How is he able to link to a text only version of his bank records that don't include sensitive information?

Overall, I did find the site itself to be a little disappointing. The picture painted by the article created expectations that the site did not deliver. However, the idea of the site is really the significant part. I think this is a particularly interesting instance of how changes in technology and media provide new avenues of social expression. I consider Elahi's site to be a kind of hybrid performance art, where the performance occurs through the artist's interaction with the site. This reminds me a lot of Lanham's discussion of Christo's Fences project, where the art includes all of the steps of production, including the acquisition of permits and Jean-Claude's afternoon teas with landowners. This certainly qualifies as an art that relies upon attention. And my absolute favorite part is Elahi's ending quote: "If I do disappear, numerous people from all over the world will notice that I'm missing. I look at it as the best security that money can buy" (48).

Related articles:

"The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force us to Choose between Privacy and Freedom" by David Brin