“Superflat,” the name of the art movement influenced by Japanese anime cartoons that was founded by Takashi Murakami, also describes the human characters in his first feature film, Jellyfish Eyes.
NSA
Posted inArt
Publicly Shaming the US’s Top Surveillance Officials with Street Art
New York-based artist Paolo Cirio is chastening key NSA, CIA, and FBI officials involved in the agencies’ surveillance programs by finding and disseminating across the world snapshots of them in informal or intimate contexts.
Posted inNews
‘Citizenfour’ Director Laura Poitras Sues US Government Over Harassment
Citizenfour director Laura Poitras has filed a lawsuit against the US federal government for “Kafkaesque harassment” she says she’s endured in airports and border crossings because of her work.
Posted inArt
Artists Blow the Whistle on Their NSA Whistleblower Project
On Friday artists Jeff Greenspan and Andrew Tider walked away from We Are Always Listening (WAAL), a National Security Agency (NSA) subcontractor, DIY surveillance program, satirical prank, or new media art project, depending on your interpretation.
Posted inArt
Mass Surveillance Hidden in Plain Sight
SAN FRANCISCO — It’s been two centuries since Jeremy Bentham introduced the panopticon into structures of confinement and surveillance, including penitentiaries and mental institutions.
Posted inArt
Living in a Post-Private World
What if we were more aware of the thoughts and exchanges that we’re unwittingly making public? That’s the intention of neverhitsend, a 12-person LA-based arts and technology collective that formed in 2013, post–Snowden leaks, to discuss issues of digital communications today.
Posted inNews
Transmediale Festival Shuts Down NSA Imitators
Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev, two artists participating in Berlin’s Transmediale 2014 (January 29–February 2), had an artwork summarily disabled at the festival last month because the piece uses the same technology as the National Security Agency (NSA) to hijack cell phone information.
Posted inArt
Disrupt NSA Surveillance With This Typeface
As a reaction to government surveillance, the ZXX typeface is embedded with disruptive designs that are meant to combat optical character recognition processes. The four options for online communications camouflage — called XED, Noise, False, and Camo — each have characteristics that keep them legible to humans, but baffling to machines.
Posted inOpinion
White Womens’ Bodies as Selfie-Objectified Tools of Dissent
CHICAGO — “Even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re being watched and recorded,” 29-year-old spy Edward Snowden told the Guardian last Sunday, openly identifying himself as the whistleblower on the NSA PRISM program, which he alleged is gathering communications data not just from foreigners, as officials previous said, but on a vast domestic scale. Nine major internet companies, including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo! and Facebook are all named as offering up data, according to DemocracyNow. We are all being watched, and now we know it.
