course
01/04/2024 – 14/07/2024
Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf
An important aspect of digitalization is that traces are left behind. Amazon tracks every mouse movement and scroll, while Facebook and Instagram tailor advertising to the interests of over 3 billion people. The US National Security Agency and other organizations monitor a large proportion of civilian telephone and data traffic transmitted worldwide. Such issues are omnipresent in everyday life in the 2020s. As users of digital devices and infrastructures, this form of data surveillance has become the norm.
But as European platform users, we have the opportunity to appropriate new data narratives. According to Article 15 of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), every citizen has the right to access their personal data stored and processed by organizations. In the course, we will make use of this right to develop our own perspectives on the data stored about us. We will ask whether the narratives of total surveillance are true, what certain companies and platforms know about us and how we can use this information to develop new artistic and speculative narrative forms. In the 'MeMedia' seminar, each student will request information from a company or organization about themselves and work with this information over the course of the semester.