User:Pascalle/RADIATION

MINOR

Introduction

In the first 2 weeks of the graduation year (Minor Digital Craft) this project has been made. This is a group assignment consisting of; Boris (Grafic Design), Pascalle (Lifestyle and design), Rens (Grafic Design), Emma (Spatial Design).

The assignment says to make a project about electro magnetic radation. The result is flexible, there are no real rules or obligation to work with except the theme and that you can show something (so not only a concept)

After 5 work days the first presentation will be given, this is only to announce the idea and possible ways of production. This will be for the third year students of Digital Craft.

After two weeks the end presentation will be shown as an exposition at the Wijnhaven.

First Idea

S While researching other art projects based on radiation we stumbled across an tutorial about transforming a cassette recorder into a audio device that can produce the sound made by radiation.

Source to tutorial video: *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5YfxoZa9AY

We made the device as the tutorial explained and started using the device in our direct environment, this includes; phones, laptops, audio recorders, boxes. We made a video about the results:

The sounds we have recorded about the different devices gave us inspiration about the next steps we would like to make. The group came together and we decided to split up for the next experiments so we can all focus on a different part and therefore make faster progress. Each team member had a preference for a certain experiment;

Boris: 'Orchestra' collecting sounds from different devices through the cassette recorder. He wants to find a way to make the different elements that make sound work together.

Rens: This idea is about collecting data gathered from different radiations produced by random objects. He would like to make a publication of his findings.

Pascalle: 'Visualising the radiation' this part is about finding ways to visualise the different radiations emitted. The visualisation will focus on colouring.

Emma: 'Mapping school' This plan is focused on the Willem de Kooning Academy. With a EMF - meter (Electro Magnetic Field detector) the school will be measured and eventually brought back into a data visualisation.

These different experiments will bring different outcomes, we hope to find things we did not expect. With the found information we will make new plans, these can consist of a combination between the different idea's or the group decides one experiment to continue with.

Week assignment Pascalle and Emma

How do we 'claim' things we can not even see?

The picture shows a chart of radio frequencies in the Philippines, each color show who owns which frequency. As you may see, the chart is colorful, so many government owned institutions claim radio frequencies. For the people who trespass this 'property' there are several kinds of punishment, from fines up to jail! you can find this information under search warrants and seizure without warrant in http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/enforcement/spectrum-enforcement/law

We find this kind of 'claiming' strange and wonder if it is ethnically responsible. Why would one person be allowed to use something when someone else is not? We searched for a connection between the claiming topic and the electro magnetic radiation. Our next step was to make a EMR jammer that blocks the signals to electric devices. In this way, we can claim the usage of the devices surrounding the jammer and thereby claim them.

These are links to the DIY jammer tutorials:

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Your-Own-Cell-Phone-Jammer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siVGavpBiyA http://www.instructables.com/id/How-To-Create-Your-Signal-Jammer/

We did not make the jammers because some of them actually fry the electronic device, causing it permanent harm. The other jammers had components which were hard to find. We also realized that making these jammers would not help our project further.

Instead, we looked for further ways in which big companies claim the very basic things of humans. We found information about surveillance camera's and the Albert Heijn bonuskaart which all show a way of privacy being taken from people. There is little to none that can be done to win that privacy back, even worse, companies become more and more 'aggressive' in taking over the right of every human to decide what to share.

Most of the ways we are being observed is through electronic devices that watch our every step. We saw a future setting example in the series Black Mirror, episode Fifteen Million Merrits. Besides all these electronic devices being placed for surveillance, there is also the story that these EMR waves have a negative effect on our health, you can see that on the picture below.

Controversy has arisen again about whether holding a cell phone next to the head for too many minutes a day threatens the brain with electromagnetic radiation. The preponderance of evidence continues to indicate there is no threat. Many people do not realize, however, that we are increasingly surrounded by technologies that emit radiation in the same radiofrequency portion of the electromagnetic spectrum: WiFi routers, Bluetooth transmitters and more.

As the graphic above shows, the radiation emitted in this region is nonionizing: it may heat molecules in the body but does not ionize them (that is, set electrons free). Ionizing radiation, which can tear molecules apart and therefore potentially damage DNA—is the greater worry.

— Mark Fischetti

Graphic courtesy of Jerrold Bushberg. Reproduced with permission from The Essential Physics of Medical Imaging, 3rd edition, by Jerrold Bushberg et al. © Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2012.

The Plan

We decided to make 'body art' that protects against EMR waves and also makes you anonymous. The most vital parts of the face and neck will be protected through high density material that rebounds the EMR waves and blind the parts of the face which are necessary for identification. Here you can find a article about materials with the highest density (high density materials have the natural behavior to rebound EMR waves) http://www.apsimplepsaltery.com/appendices/material_densities/

Of these materials we were most interested in all the Poly variants, or also; plastic.

A few examples of body art that covers essential parts used for identification can be found in the following links: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/anti-surveillance-state-clothes-and-gadgets-block-face-recognition-technology

We are all working towards something. Contributing and being a "productive member of society". But are we?

Are we master and creators of our own life? Or simply a cog in the machine, working and following the rules, the protocol. Never seeing the end result. A OS that dictate our life, telling us what to buy, what to see, what to fee and who to follow. Am I being paranoid or am i observant? I care about what they tell us not to worry about. Don't worry, as long as you follow our rules, we will take care of you, we will keep you safe they promises. But are we being kept safe or being controlled? one thing is clear, privacy is becoming more and more of a luxury. and maybe in time the most valuable commodity

Pascalle de Jager Rotterdam 2016

First experiments plan:

We want to create a 'body jewel' that covers the face and the ear. The jewel will be made of plastic and shaped in the same way as boats protect against unwanted EMR waves. The protection of boats is a metal component with many corners, the corners bounce back the waves in the exact opposite direction of how it came in. The jewel we intent to create will have a similar way of bouncing back EMR waves.

This is a picture of the device on boats to bounce off EMR waves

• EMR waves stands for Electro Magnetic Waves