New York, New York

Fuerzabruta

I went to see this show at the Daryl Roth Theatre in New York on April 13th, 2008. By then it had already been playing to sold out crowds for months.

I rushed in late and quickly took in the crowd. It wasn't the typical experimental crowd that I usually find at these shows in Vancouver. The crowd was thick with a few of the typical hipsters but also with quite a few seniors and primary school kids. I wondered if I was in for a Cirque de Soleil type of performance rather than something more avant garde that I was promised by the reviews. However, this was New York and I was not dissapointed.

The high energy cast didn't take long to whip the crowd into a flury of passionate interactions. You could feel club beats penetrating your skin, vibrating your psyche, chasing any inhabitions that may have hung about you as you entered the room. There were crowd directors to move us around every few minutes so you were never standing still for long. The crew threw cardboard, paper, water at us. When the half nude women shreaking in a pool above us began to play it started to look a bit like a wet t-shirt contest. I wondered, how are they going to pull this one off?

The cameras started coming out. Our hands raised up as the pool was lowered close enough for the crowd to touch. Touch we did, who could resist? Who, male or female, could resist the intimacy of the moment. You went from an instant of feeling like a pervert voyeur to feeling a strange need to connect with these women through touch. By the end of the show women and men were kissing and touching the actresses through the plexi glass swimming pool that hung tauntingly within reach.

I wonder how many, being caught up in the experience, blushed when they thought about how they acted the next day. I wonder how some of them would react if a picture of them kissing a partially nude women through plexiglass were to show up on the Internet somewhere.

A Customer Information System for the homeless?

Another possible reason behind Vancouver's tent city?

http://www.tetrad.com/custm/hifis.html


While following up on some research for my term project I went back to the link that Richard gave us for the company Tetrad. I decided to look at some of the projects they have with other companies and the CMHC write-up looked interesting. It turns out that they have a system to track the homeless in terms of why they are using the shelter. They actually have a category for “Avoiding Law Enforcement”. I wonder how many put a check in that box? The funnier one is “Financial Management” … Yep, I bet there’s lots of checks in that one too.

Just the other day I parked at the library and when I was going up the stairs a Security Guard says to me “Homeless Alert”. I looked at him very confused and he repeated it. I still didn’t get it so he had to explain that there was a homeless guy sleeping on the stairwell so he wanted me to avoid him. He went on to wonder aloud why the guy would choose a stairwell over a shelter. I think I’m starting to get the picture. Could this registration process have anything to do with why tent cities keep cropping up?

I can see the desire to get statistics on homeless to be able to help them better. But do we really think that people going to a shelter are going to give their real reason for being there? Or are they going to give what they think is the easiest answer that will illicit the least amount of questioning. Plus, many homeless have probably already been victims of a breach of trust and now we’re subjecting them to a registration procedure? It doesn’t seem to make any sense to me. First we are at risk of alienating the people we are trying to help. Second, the accuracy of the data collected is entirely suspect, so therefore, what good is it?

Comments About Brazil

I just read an interview with Terry Gilliam (thanks for the link Debbie) and I was surprised to read that Gilliam professes to be a skeptic and not a cynic. I, like Debbie felt that the ending was too much like that of the movie 1984. Gilliam states in his interview that an optimist should be able to find a ray of hope in the ending. How do you find hope in an ending where the lead character goes completely insane and has had no positive affect on society despite his incredible efforts? How is this ending not cynical?

From a surveillance perspective I found the concept of making someone disappear by removing them from a central information system interesting. In today’s Vancouver Sun there is an article about a company that is trying to start a monopoly for a central agency to manage an individual’s global Internet identity. It’s referred to as a globally unique personal identifier (or gupi).

Article Link: http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=a4c38f15-400f-473c-8c09-cf9ac9c49e1b

It seems like a central repository for your identity just makes it easier for all of your information to be lost at the slight of a key. The article highlights the benefits to consumers in that they don’t need to maintain separate identities at multiple websites but it doesn’t discuss the drawbacks or potential for abuse.

In the movie, I appreciated the visual play on the bug that falls into the machinery to create the error. I heard about the first known computer bug of this sort when I was studying computer science. It was Dr. Grace Hopper who first found a moth in a computer. This started the term computer bug and the concept of software ‘debugging’. Apparently the bug now resides in the National Museum of American History. I think the idea of computer bugs is an important concept to keep in mind in mind as we move further into our technological society, particularly where our identities are concerned.

Gilliam did an amusing yet clear depiction of the after affects of glitches in technology. You can read a good overview of the “the computer bug” and the consequences at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_bug. I wonder how many people will think about possibilities that may result from computer bugs before rushing to sign up for their GUPIs.

I also appreciated Gilliam’s comment on the human factor, specifically the actions of Sam’s boss. It was clever to show how the boss used Sam to do his dirty work so it could not be traced back to him. You realize just how sly he was when Sam’s crimes are read out against him and the list includes the unauthorized visit to return the cheque to the widow. I could instantly recall Sam’s boss having him forge his signature on documents, which meant he was free of any blame relating to Sam’s actions even though he authorized everything that Sam did. The boss acted helpless but he was actually very clever.

As Gilliam says, the movie is quite complex and I have no doubt that I would get more out of it watching it again.

Blow Up Movie Review

I have to admit that I didn’t get this movie at first. It took me a while to realize where the director was going with this movie. Maybe it was because it was so much subtler than the Hitchcock flick.

At first I completely missed the point that the photographer was probably on drugs when he “witnessed” the dead body in the park. At the party he started acting irrationally and then ran off to the park to stumble upon the corpse. When he returns the next day, the body has miraculously disappeared, but so too have the drugs from his system. When his wife (or partner, or whatever she was) looks at the blown up photo she comments that it looks like one of the painter’s abstractions. I realize now that even though we were shown the image of a man’s face in the one picture it was to provide us with the lead characters perception of a face. It was as though I was too caught up in suspicion while watching the movie to realize that nothing sinister was going on except for in the characters mind. It reminded me of the movie Rear Window but it was better because I was able to get caught up in the action rather than being critical of the lead characters actions.

I thought the mime ending was a nice touch, and obviously needed for the likes of me.

Surveillance Camera Field Trip

This entry describes my thoughts upon reflection of our class field trip last Wednesday, which took place around downtown Vancouver. We took pictures of surveillance cameras in retail shops, banks, on the streets, and in at the post office.
I spent some time thinking about what the field trip meant to me. I was surprised at first at how unconcerned I was about the number of cameras. When I was a teenager I remember being frightened by signs in retail shops that stated in glaring capital letters that I was under surveillance. I remember instantly feeling like a criminal when I would look up at these signs. I would usually leave because somehow I felt unwelcome in the area. I remember the sense of unease wouldn’t leave me right away but would linger and follow me out of the building until conversations with friends or other activities would replace the feeling with the usual carefree attitude of youth.
Thinking about this made me wonder what has changed. Why do I no longer feel like a criminal when I look up at these signs and these cameras. I think first of all it’s that many of the signs have disappeared and the cameras are now mostly hidden. Public surveillance is becoming incognito. I think the other reason is that the cameras are everywhere and I’ve come to accept them as common-place as street lights. I wonder if this parallel means that the cameras prevent me from doing anything illegal because I’m being watched just as the streetlights prevent me from crossing on a red because I know I may be ran over. This is not a happy thought, to think that the only reason that I’m not a criminal is because I’m being watched. It makes me wonder how this affects the psyche of society as a whole. Then again, maybe I’m just thinking about this too much?

A good use for surveillance?

I went to the Vancouver Art Gallery's Exhibit for Massive Change: The Future of Global Design. There was a wall hanging that said that 85 million viewers have been made aware of human rights issues through targeted presentations by Witness, an NGO that puts cameras in the hands of activists.

I thought that was an interesting little tidbit, especially after our little downtown surveillance field trip.

Check it out at:
http://www.witness.org/

Icelandic Genes

The movie Gattaca reminded me about the article: “For Sale: Iceland’s Genetic History” at

http://www.actionbioscience.org/genomic/hlodan.html

I have a friend who is of Icelandic heritage so I wrote him a note asking what he thought about the project.

It turns out that he supports the project because he thinks that if he could find out about potential health issues sooner then it would be a fair trade-off, even if health insurance companies discriminated against him as a result.

He questioned why they would sell the information to just one company but thought that it was justifiable if it was so that the company could make a profit based on the information. He’s going to forward the information to his sisters to see what they think. One is a poet and one is a ceramic engineer, so I’m interested in their various reactions to the story.

Once we start selling our genes to companies to analyze for health problems I think the next step is naturally that we will start analyzing to find "the best" of all genes and "the worst" of all genes (globally). This can easily progress to a quest for "the best of the best". I think this extends from the idea of a couple picking out the best in their combined genes to pass onto their children to the potential of choosing your mate based on his\her genes.

It also brings up the question, will armies of the future look beyond biological warfar to genetic warfare? - e.g. targeting susceptability of a race based on genetic predispositions?