New Media Caucus, Art in the Age of High Security

David Stout and Jenny Vogel, University of North Texas.

Email:david.stout@unt.edu and jenny.vogel@unt.edu

Artists have characteristically explored the potential of emergent technologies, often subverting intended functions and stimulating new design developments in the process. In an environment where security concerns accumulate a kind ofpervasive ambient narrative, artists play an important role to reveal, redefine, and repurpose the mechanisms, relationships,and unintended consequences engendered by advancing securityand defense research. Whether examining the implications of anonymous webcams, amplifying the anxiety surrounding biometric scanners, or turning the first-person shooter game backon itself, artists have critically engaged with the form, content, and cultural context surrounding systems of control. This“experimental” Open Form session seeks to integrate individual performative and/or media-rich presentations to be moderatedby a roundtable panel discussion. We invite participants using an interdisciplinary approach combining aspects of theory, prac-2013 Call For Participation 23 tice, and/or innovative pedagogy relative to the high-security apparatus increasingly embedded in our daily lives. Proposed possibilities for performance-presentation topics may include such concepts as repurposing surveillance technologies, ubiquitous profiling, the unintended consequences of control systems,weaponizing abstraction in digital art, voyeurism, and (in)voluntary surveillance.