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Six Thoughts On Google Glass From Celebrated Artists

Six tech-conscious artists discuss the implications of a future with Google Glass.

Privacy is going the way of landlines but consumers could not be more thrilled. Project Glass, Google’s latest venture in its ever-expanding quest to rule the world with a Mr. Rodgers smile and seamless technology, is but a year away. The advent of this brand of technology is not without its detractors. Its potential use in things as simple as riding a ferris wheel and as serious as matters of counter-terrorism has raised a Google Search worth of questionable implications.

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It certainly hasn’t stopped pop culture hacker Jon McIntosh from poking fun at an augmented future run by a glorified advertising company.

The first batch of Glass shipments is apparently already under way to a select group of developers, dubbed Glass Explorers, who were selected via Google's "If I Had Glass" campaign, which asked eager would-be-cyborgs to share their ideas for how they'd use Glass in exchange for early access.

In that spirit, The Creators Project decided to reach out to some of the art world’s most exciting figures to get their impressions for how our world might one day run on GG, how they might use Glass as a medium, and whether or not wearing Google’s eyewear will make strangers want to punch you in the face.

Wafaa Bilal

Bilal is an Iraqi-born artist who is also an Assistant Arts Professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Usually dabbling in interactive works of online and video formats concerning politics and surveillance, we thought he might be especially critical of a Google Glass future. We couldn’t be more wrong.

Wafaa Bilal,documentation, 2010-2011, courtesy of Wafaa Bilal

3rdi

He said: “I think there is no escape from the fusion of technology and the body. Augmented reality is the way of the future, it will be our way of navigating our environments. We’ve already seen this with our current digital devices―we start by programming the apparatus, but eventually the apparatus programs us. One day, life will be in 3D.”

His 3rdi project, pictured above, is a visceral example of that inevitable merging of biology and technology―what some might call a cyborg existence. Much like Google Glass, the camera temporarily implanted on the back of Bilal’s head was able to capture the world around him in one-minute intervals. Stemming from his inability to capture images & memories forever lost during his frantic journey to the U.S. via Iraq, 3rdi points to a day when nothing will be forgotten. And, as Glass will allow, one where those never-forgotten memories can be shared with everyone. As Bilal puts it, “It is the way of the future!"

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Rafaël Rozendaal 

As an art phenom who moves at the speed of Google Fiber, it certainly is fitting that Rozendaal uses the internet as his primary canvas. His wide-cast net of websites attracted 47,166,931 visits in the past 12 months. Not too shabby for someone with no seed funding behind him.

Still of www.lookingatsomething.com, Rafaël Rozendaal

Like Bilal, Rozendaal is excited for Google Glass’ eventual coming: “I would love to create www.lookingatsomething.com for Google Glass. The way I imagine it is that [you’d be able to] change how you see the weather. If it's kind of grey outside, you might want to turn it into a virtual snowstorm so it's more exciting, or you could add sunshine. Weather on-demand.”

www.lookingatsomething.com is one of Rafaël’s many websites and certainly points to a future where screens will do your bidding. If translated to a Google Glass interface, lookingatsomething might allow a user to cycle through the seasons at the end of a voice command.

“A screen is a surface that changes into anything you want it to. It's a dark shiny surface, but when you turn it on, it can be a fireplace, a bank, a bakery, or a memory. Google's glasses will blur the boundary between screen and [dreams]. At some point the whole world will behave on-demand.”

But not all artists were instantly receptive to Google Glass. Or, they just couldn’t imagine how GG might serve their art. Vitùc, an exceptional filmmaker from Luxembourg whose work relies heavily on “first-hand” footage, simply had “no comment” on the matter.

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Thomas Jackson

Jackson, a photographer whose work has the look of augmented displays, sees potential in the device to benefit his work at some point. But generation 1 of Glass seems more a social notification augmenter rather than an experience upper.

Cups #1,, Thomas Jackson

Emergent Behavior

“If GG was a virtual reality device, I could envision my images being viewed in three dimensions somehow, which would be awesome. But as I understand it, GG simply augments what the viewer is already seeing, as opposed to manufacturing an experience from whole cloth. Not seeing how my work could tie into that at the moment…”

Ian Wittenber

Filmmaker Ian Wittenber’s short film “Turtle” seems so impossibly personal and emotional that it’s as if the fourth wall melted before your eyes. One can only wonder if “Turtle” is but an example of the types of emotional landscapes Glass can reach when used as a video camera. With essentially a person’s field of vision doing the filming, films can become heartfelt explorations into other people’s humanity.

But Ian isn’t very convinced that Google Glass will bring us closer. In fact, it might do the opposite:

“To me, Google Glass seems like a celebration of unreality and disconnection. A tool that records the experiences of the elite and emphasizes living in 'the cloud' rather than living on Earth. How can this technology be used to benefit, or at least illuminate, the lives of the disenfranchised?”

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Wittenber is not alone in these feelings as similar impressions have been noted across the internet. He adds: “I would try to use Google Glass to make people feel more connected with other human beings, not less. Though I'm not sure if thats completely possible.”

Adam Harvey

As someone who has designed counter-surveillance wear, patented an anti-paparazzi clutch, and has played around with the idea of DNA spoofing, Harvey seemed like a shoe-in for this conversation.

Hoodie In Thermal IR, Stealth Wear, Adam Harvey

“Google Glass is yet another imaging technology that gives power to the wearer at the expense of others. It's a form of surveillance masking as a designer self-help accessory. That's not to say I don't want [it] too. But the idea that my senses would merge with Google's more than they already do is unsettling.”

For those equally as unsettled as Harvey on Glass’ privacy-breaching potential should look no further than his Stealth Wear and face detection camouflage projects. Harvey continues:

“For those interested in the privacy implications, I suggest reading this thread on security.stackexchange.com. The contributing users discuss Google's policy of scraping web data versus physical and human data in relation to "robots.txt" files. These files are used on websites to allow or disallow Google's bots from scraping and indexing your site. What's clearly missing from Project Glass is a version of "robots.txt" for the real world. The implication here is that Google respects the privacy of the virtual you more than the real you. This is just plain wrong."

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If Google doesn’t address this startling revelation before launchtime, expect more than a few protests from privacy hounds. A real world that is less valued than a virtual one seems like a recipe for disaster.

She/Color

It is all too fitting to end a piece on a device that is expected to kill privacy as we know it, with an artist who values his own tremendously. She/Color’s work distorts archival footage into kaleidoscopic collages that function as multi-layered realities, something that brings Project Glass to mind. His work has been mentioned and praised by Fact Magazine, the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde, and Version Fest.

“Before Google Glass becomes another coil of vogue like the iPad, iPod, and iPhone, it will be extremely awkward times. The first person who leaves their Glass on at a social gathering will be treated like the Man With No Eyebrows.”

She/Color does note some of Glass’ positive upside, even if not exactly serious: “I think it could be incredibly tremendous to use as a tool to document public life and society, and a proliferation of modern actualities could be made by wearing the Glass in public. Glass will be a reliable database of art and life until someone punches you in the face.”

She/Color isn’t alone in thinking that Google’s eyewear is far from stylish. Of course, as the technology advances, the device’s size will assuredly fall along with price just as with Apple products. But it remains to be seen if humans will respond well to wearing smartphones over their pupils. As a relatively small sample size of people has shown, Glass is neither unanimously disliked or embraced. Some, it seems, have a hard time wrapping their head around the concept, much less on how it will dictate their future artistic projects. But at some point, paper was technology's latest trendy invention. And that caught on pretty well.

[Google Glass images courtesy of Google]

@blacktiles