By Shaun Persaud

Project Description
Communicating Surveillance is a multimedia interactive installation that aims to call attention to the corruptive exploitation of everyday people by large communications corporations, major technology manufacturers, and Government Agencies. In the information age, user-generated data is ubiquitous, highly informative, personal, and highly sought after. It has the power to uniquely identify “end-users” by utilizing unique tokens that are associated with every individual person. Phone companies can track your locations depending your proximity to the communications tower— regardless of the location settings on your personal device. If you launch a Word document on your personal computer, Microsoft will know what you’ve been studying, thinking about, or designing. These companies can then sell this information to advertisers for millions of dollars; turning your personality, habits, and uniqueness into a highly-profitable commodity. Government Agencies utilize communications to develop lists of people considered to be “high-risk” individuals while surveilling citizens through a combination of email snooping, camera feeds, and phone records. Is the convenience of modern technology worth the price of surveillance?

Bio
Shaun Persaud is an Interdisciplinary Artist whose work explores the connections and disconnections between the physical and digital world in an attempt inspire people toward action in areas of social injustice and community mobilization. The current political climate is ripe with social injustice as people are displaced or exploited by people of power and marginalized on an almost daily basis. His works aim to reach people through the ubiquitous nature of the internet to disseminate information and create platforms for collaboration in an effort to subvert the political machine that lends itself toward social injustice.