The Art of Privacy

Philip Trotter 33327830 BA Dissertation Word Count: 10352
The Art of
Privacy
Contents
Introduction
1
Only the Clever Are Stupid

4
Images Arent Circulated by Parrots

13
Means Nothing on the Wall

21
Conclusion
29
Bibliography
31
1
Introduction
For something so presently disputed, what does a concept of privacy

even look like? This is not me asking for definition, that is a venture for
the most part considered an almost impossible conceptual quagmire 1,
normally associated to the cultural tendency to differ about what is
considered private2. What I ask is how we see it. As our private lives
become ever more public in the digital age, we are well on our way to
seeing a perfect image of what we are loosing. It is an abstract idea so
strongly debated by governments and laymen, that it sits ever at risk of
existing in a culture that puts the private to work on glass houses.
We stand represented in many forms, an analogue being in a world of
digital records and virtual incarnations, our lives divided to a point where
that which makes us is considered so separated3. Our reality and our
digital appearance have opened the private not just to cultural difference
but divided opinion on everything that encompasses a privacy of
ourselves. Everything from shopping history and health concerns, to
opinions on web pages and the influences of your decisions; there
permanence and their presence creating an era where the self is produced
as real-time representation in everything we touch. The web server now
sits as the ultimate digital self portrait4 to a real world self. Everything that
allows and defines us has come to form a digital self-image, the
combination of ourselves as digital persona and analogue person, as
much the foot on the ground as the electronic footprints upon
technology5. It is an understanding for psychoanalyst M. Masud R. Khan
that the self is as much created by its symbols, as it is represented and
1 Helen Nissenbaum. Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy and the

Integrity of Social Life. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010) 3
2 Charles J. Sykes The End of Privacy: The Attack on Personal Rights - at
Home, at Work, Online and in Court. (New York, NY: St Martins Griffin,
1999) 185
3 Charles J. Sykes The End of Privacy. 20
4 Domenico Quaranta. Life and Its Double MMGalleries. Originally
Published for "Eva and Franco Mattes (0100101110101101.ORG) LOL"
Fabio Paris Art Gallery, 2007. Accessed 13/04/2016
2
expressed by them6. Snapchats, passkeys and data banks produce an

image of our self in the digital age defining us. The digital self-image can
seem as much part of the confusion surrounding privacy definition as
much as it is the appearance of to outcome of the conflicts of the concept.
As the concept of privacy becomes more apparent to the everyday, the
digital self-image falls to privacies multitude of meanings7. Different
ideologies and moralities produce a concept that is rejected by some and
agreed by others, a field of visible private entities that co-exists in privacy
with constant conflict; one that surface in society through different means.
What we see broil on the surface of news feeds and in commons
chambers are often negotiated by a structure of populist politics, a
method conducted by subjective moral attachment to a scenario in
question. This is what privacy writer Helen Nissenbaum identifies as a
normative conception of privacy8, one that takes into account moral
positive bias of the good or worthwhile attachment or removal of
privacies. This produces a discussion of ideological intention, where the
decision is often the culmination of the popular or ambivalent strength in
argument. To be outside of this is considered by writer Ruth Gavison who
utilises a neutral or, as Nissenbaum expresses, descriptive concept of
privacy9. This identifies a loss of privacy for the benefit of a structure of
law10, one that looks to convert conflicting concepts into privacy as value.
For Gavison this revolves around the language used to conduct an
exploration, using words of measure such as reduction and loss rather
than considering the subjectivity of a violation, intrusion or the general
liberal desire for justification in good11. Gavison ignores a writers inability
5 Jeffrey Rosen. The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in

America. (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2001) 197
6 M. Masud R. Khan. The Privacy of the Self. (London, UK: The Hogarth
Press, 1974) 294
7 Lubor C. Velecky. The Concept of Privacy Privacy. Edited by John B.
Young. (New York, NY: John Willey & Sons, 1978) 14
8 Helen Nissenbaum. Privacy in Context. 68
10 Ruth Gavison. Privacy and the Limits of Law The Yale Law Journals.
Vol 89 No 3. (Connecticut, USA: Yale Law Journal Company, 1980) 422
11 Hannah Arendt. The Human Condition (Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 1998) 282
3
to completely remove their personal influence12 in taking an approach that

considers privacy as something formulaic and objective.
In order to question the digital self-images presentation of privacy
complexities however, I intend to utilize the nature of both forms through
neither a structure of law or populist politics. I have no interest in either
formulating a value for privacy surrounding the digital self-image nor do I
wish to preside over a public argument of a million voices. Therefore, I
intend to explore the concept of privacy that surrounds the digital self-
image using a structure of art.
Through arts own lack of common definition, it has the capability to be
considered an object of minimal moral significance while also
acknowledging the normative influence of those involved, be it the artist
or the subject. Where I state its minimal moral significance, I mean to
acknowledge the capability of agentless material to present neutral
description and have normative conceptions attached. Its seen in cases
such as glass, where low or reduced privacy may be expressed in the
nature of the material but the use and interaction of the glass can
constitute a violation of privacy. By having this constant agitation within
the art object, we will into specific examples of the artists digital platform,
their recontextualization of the digital self image and the physicality of the
camera as a vital site for perpetuating the presence of the digital self
image. In doing so, I hope to unearth a new questioning of a concept of
privacy appearing in light of the digital self-image.
12 Friedrich Nietzsche. Part 1: On the Prejudices of Philosophers Beyond

Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Edited by Rolf-Peter
Horstmann & Judith Norman. Translated by Judith Norman. (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 8
4
Only the Clever Are Stupid
The digital platform has a three-word concept: privacy is stupid. Or at

least those where the words of artists Eva & Franco Mattes. Written on
masking tape, strapped to the side of their home computer, they allowed
the world every email, project and program they had. This was Life
Sharing (2000-2003), everything that constituted their digital self-image
became the entertainment and intrigue of anyone. Before a social media
world of normalized oversharing13, their project was opening up a
derestricted private world into a new age of digital publicity. What they
saw was a concept of privacy void in this new phenomena of global digital
interconnectivity, that the digital self-images of today are increasingly
accepting as the way things are. In more recent years, Mattes
understanding of their statement has moved from themselves quite
literally to The Others (2011). A presentation of over ten-thousand photos
of other people, it was produced by exploiting a glitch in online digital
storage. What had been a statement on their own free-movement
software, had fully come to realize itself as a warning upon the very
nature of the digital situation of privacy. With these works as a focus of
Mattes actions and statement, we will look to question a concept of
13 Michael Zimmer & Anthony Hoffman. Privacy, Context, and

Oversharing: Reputational Challenges in a Web 2.0 World. The
Reputation Society: How Online Opinions Are Reshaping the Offline World.
Edited by Hassan Masum & Mark Tovey. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,
2011) 180
5
privacy presented in the digital self-image of the online platform and the
conceptions of privacy that Mattes so effortlessly put aside.
Life Sharing is first and foremost built on the understanding that a
removal of the division between a public and private sphere exists in the
denouncement of a concept of privacy. Writers such as Hannah Arendt
explain that the private is that which lies in the absence of others,14
something which is closed off from the multitude. This at its very root is
placed within a unit considered singular though not always individual,
either in creating the isolated state where the private man does not
appear, and therefore it is as though he did not exist;15 or in the the
forming of a deprived state where he exits in a lesser relation to others.
An isolated state or solitude, can go towards expressing a perfect
private sphere16. Where the public is understood as seen and heard by
everybody and has the widest possible publicity17, prefect privacy depicts
a state completely void of this. This perception is only possible in the
knowledge of a reality beyond the self, as without an understanding of an
outside both public and private blur into non-existence. It is that life
requires the existence of both public and private spheres18 regardless of
a public space containing other people directly. This is seen in the Mattes
hard-drive, a device by which the only way to conduct a perfect private
sphere is to destroy it. No longer obtainable, the digital self-image can not
be thought of as public or private as without connection to its external
digital reality it cannot be beyond itself. The digital self-image contained
within the device therefore exists as part of Mattes private sphere, not
because it is without relation to the other, but because it is in relation to
an outside granting it the potentiality to not be absent of the other. Private
has become public because it has connected to the outside that defined it.
Even if the work is never seen, the work is still public, the outside that
14 Hannah Arendt. The Human Condition. 58

16 Ruth Gavison. The Yale Law Journal. Vol 89 No 3. 428
18 Suzanne Duvall Jacobitt. The Public, the Private, the Moral: Hannah
Arendt and Political Morality International Political Science Review. Vol 12
No 4. (Sage Publications, 1991) 289
6
defined it is no longer isolated. Life Sharing would therefore appear to

suggest that the concept of privacy exists in the way this division is
handled, that in allowing the free movement across the public/private
divide privacy is void.
This would explain what Helen Nissenbaum identifies in traditional
theories of privacy, which take as their guideposts the dichotomy of
private versus public, asserting that privacy is morally violated only when
private information or the private sphere is inappropriately revealed 19.
What these tradition normative theories explain is due to the divide
between spheres either being handled in accordance or difference to the
intentions of the private, moralist concern is applied. This squarely
considers the placement of privacy only to who or what that which the
private denotes. As Nissenbaum explains, the implication [is] that privacy
is an interest we need protect in the private realm alone and, by
implication, that privacy in public makes little sense at all20. This would
assume that Mattes hold all the power in implementing the void privacy in
Life Sharing, that in opening up their hard-drive online they have
controlled, or allowed access to their material. Yet to either access or
control are not necessarily inherent only in the single unit considered
private. Mattes implementation of a concept of privacy would appear
defined by these two terms. They allow total access and no longer
influence control however, to presume a concept of privacy under these
terms appear to only form a morally-charged referent from a public
handling upon this divide, accesses a complexity of privacy only in part.
Ideas of control and access around privacy form within a public influence
can be thought of under depravation rather than isolation. Dependent on
all constituents, depravity is the requirement that the private has the
potentiality to become public. Within Life Sharing, the understanding of
the online-platform is to deprive or allow a public access, a concept of
privacy Jeffery Reiman sees as being able to limit other people's
19 Helen Nissenbaum. Protecting Privacy in an Information Age: The

Problem of Privacy in Public. Law and Philosophy. Vol 17 No 5. (Kluwer
Academic Publishers: 1998) 585
20 Helen Nissenbaum. Law and Philosophy. Vol 17 No 5. 570
7
observation of us or access to information21. By information not

previously being connected to the network, the information has limited
access, a private deprived of connection, forming a strong handling of
privacy. When Mattes connects it to the online platform, this depravity
immediately contains a greater potentiality to be public, yet Reiman
insists that only Mattes demonstrate influence over the access to their self
image. This greater potentiality of connectivity to a public could be what
Mattes understand in preemptively addressing a public access through
linguistic hints, denouncing a concept of privacy to alleviate public action.
Take access as discussed by Ruth Gavison, placing the concept of
privacy in our accessibility to others: the extent to which we are known to
others, the extent to which others have physical access to us, and the
extent to which we are the subject of others' attention22. Considering it
under her terms, we see that though all these actions can be associated
to the private as outwardly facing, there is the room for the limit of
observation discussed by Reiman to be placed in the public. The delimited
access to the Mattes hard-drive handles the divide between the public and
private as void but equally, when looking at the sight the public feels no
need to impose a privacy that Mattes has not requested. If a public was to
refuse to access the information in the belief Gus Hosein expresses in his
understanding, that privacy protects individual autonomy and human
agency. Knowing everything about someone reduces that person to a set
of known facts, controllable and manipulatable23, publics could re-impose
the concept of privacy. Because this is not seen as a lowering beyond the
private request of privacy, the moral justification of violated difference
seen by Nissenbaum isnt their, almost constituting a positive oppression
of the single unit.
Where society doesnt consider this re-imposition in the public of privacy
concepts, we see what Mattes exploit as part of The Others. Exploitation is
associated equally to the way we handle ourselves across private/public
21 Jeffrey H. Reiman. Privacy, Intimacy, and Personhood Philosophy and

Public Affairs. Vol 6 No 1. (Wiley, 1976) 30
23 Gus Hosein. Privacy and or as Freedom. LSE. Accessed 14/04/2016. 5
8
as social bodies, society conditions the way privacy is expected to be

handled by the individual. In The Others, the pictures are of other people
exploited by Mattes under the belief they are thought of as private. As
Reiman points out it is of little importance who has access to personal
information about me. What matters is who cares about it.24 Mattes in
there action care nothing for the self-imaged beyond the idea that privacy
has been handled from the position as private. Any thinking of violation
comes form the fact the access wasnt granted, though the digital-
platform had itself open.
In being open, the systems respond to what Deleuze explain about
computers, whose passive danger is jamming and whose active one is
piracy and the introduction of viruses25.
These glitches that Mattes exploit are passive issues of the computer,
they occur without interference or intention as part of the system
themselves. They however cause the system to be less effective or
incapable of its role formulating a reduction in privacy.
This exploitation can be seen in part to therefore place a concept of
privacy in the intention of a public to gain or prevent access. Where writer
Robert Post explains issues of privacy refer to the characterizations of
human action, not the neutral and objective measurement of the world26 ,
the concept of privacy relates to the human element involved with the
network. Though access may have been available to the images of The
Other, it only becomes an issue of privacy in the intention. Where Life
Sharing sees the possibility of digital platforms as an intentional positive
community transparency, allowing for access as an action of privacy void;
Mattes actions to create The Others show the digital platforms focuses the
individual in a way where the human element can quickly present an
active danger to privacy with intention27.
24 Jeffrey H. Reiman. Philosophy and Public Affairs. Vol 6 No 1. 34

25 Gilles Deleuze. Postscript on the Societies of Control. October. Vol 59.
(The MIT Press, 1992) 6
26 Robert C Post. The Social Foundations of Privacy: Community and Self
in the Common Law Tort Faculty Scholarship Series. Paper 211 (Originally
Published California, USA: California Law Review, 1989) 969
27 Gilles Deleuze. October. Vol 59. 6
9
Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker further explain this intention

within the network. Only when the individual human nodes of a network
interconnect, are access or inclusion raised as a problem. Instead, the
question of individuating a network is really a problem of establishing the
very conditions in which a network can exist at all.28 What this could
mean for a concept of privacy surrounding the digital self-image is that
the single-sided nature of privacy production has been exploited as a
whole on the digital platform29. The self image does not present itself as
the responsibility of others, in fact society looks to this disregard as
entertainment in the network, leading to an involuntary relationship
between private and public that Mattes simply choose.
The network goes on to show further imbalance in the data collection
Mattes present through Life Sharing. Data such as location, time and
duration of the public on the platform is collected forming a two-way
access to the self-image. What is conducted is a scenario questioned by
writer Larry Hunter in relation the home and street. He describes that
although we consider it a violation of privacy to look in somebodys
window and notice what they are doing, we have no problem with the
reverse: someone sitting in his living room looking out his window30. The
network is thought to behave like the street, a public where information
about the self-image is available out of pure function for the fact you are
seen31. A public of virtual capacity however is formed of a private sphere
of record, most often positioned within their own private devices, homes
or usernames their access far less temporal and far more detailed. It is the
equivalent in Hunters analogy to posting your personal details through a
front door, before then walking the corridors of a block of flats under
constant analytical observation by residents through peepholes32. The
28 Alexander R Galloway and Eugene Thacker. The Exploit: A Theory of

Networks. (Minneapolis, USA: University of Minnesota Press, 2007) 38
29 Jeremy Rifkin. The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism
Where All Life is a Paid-For Experience. (New York, NY: Penguin Putnam,
2001) 101
30 Larry Hunter. Public Image. Whole Earth Review. (1985) 34
32 Hal Niedzviecki. The Peep Diaries: How Were Learning to Love
Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbours. (San Francisco, CA: City Light
10
digital allows far more permanent information to be recorded for inclusion

than we provide in the street. What these apparent one sided
relationships of digital platforms33 show us is that access can quickly
undermine privacy. These digital spaces change the digital self image
from something which we grant access to a public, into something which
we grant access to be a public. That which we intentionally grant access
can produce even more information to constitute our digital self-image,
leading access alone not to constitute our privacy.
What might be thought by privacy theorist therefore is that control
presupposes the ideas of access within a concept of privacy. Writer Paul
Schwartz sees control in this way, explain privacy as keeping information
isolated from access34. This could very well suggest that disconnecting
from a network is the best form of privacy considering the nature of the
network. Nevertheless, its a similar consideration backed by many other
writers including theorist Alan Westin for whom privacy as the claim of an
individual to determine what information about himself or herself should
be known to others35 Life Sharing on a technological level uses open-
software, allowing the content to be copied, opened and viewed yet the
control is very much kept by Mattes. As Gavison explains, defining
privacy in terms of control relates it to the power to make certain choices
rather than to the way in which we choose to exercise this power.36
Within Life Sharing, Mattes still protect their work, control the inability to
delete particular items or remove programs on a foundation level. Though
a public have been given access to their information as privacy void,
Mattes very much maintain privacy as a means of control, denying a
public access to function. Where you able to delete their information, the
public could be seen to force a deprivation upon the private, without
Books, 2009)
33 Jeremy Rifkin. The Age of Access. 101
34 Paul M. Schwartz. Internet Privacy and the State (32 Conn. L. Rev
818). Berkley Law Scholarship Repository. Published 01/01/1999.
Accessed 14/04/2016. 820
35 Alan F. Westin. Social and Political Dimensions of Privacy Journal of
Social Issues. Vol 59 No 2. (Wiley, 2003) 3
11
control or access to themselves. You would produce an entirely public

being without possession of their digital self-image, an autonomy lost and
a self-image they themselves could not witness or be constituted by37.
Interestingly, Mattes would some what relatively unperturbed by this
except in their professional capacity as their information is already false.
In an interview with Tilman Baumgrtel it was explained that Mattes
dont want to reveal their real names. They also wont divulge their ages
or any other personal information38. They are able to maintain a huge
amount of privacy through the mediated control over their identity, their
very names a fiction. This use of alias reflects what psychanalyst M.
Masud R. Khan presents of Donald Winnicotts false self39. Winnicott
explains the false self which can now be seen to be a defense, a defense
against that which is unthinkable, the exploitation of the true self, which
would result in its annihilation40. By producing a false self, it is not to say
it is any less their digital self-image. Usernames, avatars, edits and lies all
make up the self produced and experience, however by producing this
image the private distorts the impact of the public access or even control
of their image. False image produces a privacy as defense that may not to
the same extent violate the autonomy in being revealed or deleted. It
reflects privacy theorist Charles Frieds understanding that it is not true,
for instance, that the less that is known about us the more privacy we
have. Privacy is not simply an absence of information about us in the
minds of others; rather it is the control we have over information about
ourselves41. We know a lot about the self-image Mattes presents as
defense, yet this does not alter the fact the information is under their

38 Tilman Baumgrtel. Interview: 0100101110101101.ORG [net.art 2.0].
(Germany: Institut fr moderne Kunst Nrnburg, 2001) 198
39 D. W Winnicott. Ego Distortion in Terms of True and False Self The
Maturational Processes and the Facilitation Environment (London, UK:
Hogarth, 1965) Cited in M. Masud R. Khan. The Privacy of the Self.
(London, UK: The Hogarth Press, 1974) 292
40 D. W Winnicott. The Maturational Processes and the Facilitation
Environment. Cited in M. Masud R. Khan. The Privacy of the Self. 292
41 Charles Fried. Privacy. The Yale Law Journal. Vol 77 No3. (The Yale
Law Journal Company, 1968) 482
12
control. It may still harm a persons autonomy in that privacy no longer

gives a freedom within their alias but their true self remains unhindered.
There does however pose issue that for many, the true self is used to
access the false selves we display within the digital platform. Deleuze
explains that we operate with machines of a third party, computers42
that allow both active and passive dangers to undermine these defenses
as concepts of privacy. Exploited by Mattes in The Others, the passive
glitches and active threats are placed upon systems that handle the
public/private divide for the private of the self-image. By giving over the
images to a system such as a drop-box or storage cloud, the control over
the self-image seen in having a disconnected hard-drive possible for Life
Sharing is no longer present. A networked storage system is outside the
private sphere of control yet not under public influence. These private-
others produce a self-image totally reliant on access and normally
requiring the identification of the true self43. No longer just for the public
consumption as access seen with Life Sharing, the analogue figure of the
digital self-image also finds themselves relating to the self only as
access44. This undermines the control one can have ultimately over
privacy, as the third part involved often operates outside the awareness
and technological understanding of the person behind the self image. The
constant re-evaluation of how we conduct privacy in light of active threats
as analogue figures in society, is now no longer a part of the control we
receive as part of the digital self-image. No longer important, a mediator
exists between analogue and digital self in a position to present the same
threat as Mattes prevent in Life Sharing by controlling function. Privacy as
a private self becomes already void. That belongs to the system itself and
often the corporate center behind it. The Others could in fact be seen as
exploitation not of digital self-image privacy but the privacy of the system
that sees no self as different. What opens up is a concept of privacy for
42 Gilles Deleuze. October. Vol 59. 6

43 Matthew Blakstad. As Government Launches Verify Scheme, Our
Digital Identities Are Becoming More Important Than We Realise
Independent.co.uk. Published 03/05/2016. Accessed 03/05/2016.
44 Jeremy Rifkin. Age of Access. 115
13
the digital self-image that is designed to keep private our digital self-
image and the actions of privacy even from ourselves.
If therefore we place a concept of privacy in the responsibility of a
private-other as a digital requirement, what Deleuze saw as the passive
dangers of computers come to be of far larger importance to the concept
of privacy. The systems designed to maintain a constant handling of the
divide, have a potentiality to go from one to the other without human
interaction or analogue self-responsibility. We place a digitally-based trust
that the system will conduct the handling of the divide for us, with only
superficial guarantee. Theorist Charles Fried makes the case that, one
does not trust machines or animals; one takes the fullest economically
feasible precautions against their going wrong45. In looking to third
parties, our digital self-image invests rather than trusts a system on the
bases that it may economically achieve privacy closer resembling isolation
over deprivation. Yet Fried also states that there can be no trust where
there is no possibility of error46. These systems of storage exploited in
The Others therefore greatly require a consideration of trust both in
marketing and accounting for fault. What is formed is a concept of privacy
that evokes the right to betrayal, that privacy might grant the falsehoods
and fantasies of potentiality and consider the digital just as capable of the
errors of the human.
Eva & Franco Mattes produce a statement so clearly throwing out the
window a concept of privacy that appears both in the ability to access and
the ability to control a digital self-image across a complex divide of private
and public. The digital platform their work details demonstrates a
treatment of a concept of privacy that appears taken from us, yet in fact it
is simply the exploitation of a betrayal we had previously accepted as the
way of a digital world. We now require a reliance on others who see us
better than we see ourselves, others who conceptualize a privacy possibly
no longer ours. It was never that the concept was stupid for Mattes, but
that so few where clever enough to see it coming.
45 Charles Fried. Privacy. The Yale Law Journal. Vol 77 No3. (The Yale
Law Journal Company, 1968) 486
46 Charles Fried. The Yale Law Journal. Vol 77 No3. 486
14
Images Arent Circulated by Parrots
The idea the self-image may come to be no-longer ours is not just old
but artistically methodical. Its been incredible common within
contemporary art to find the gallery walls lined with advertiser imagery,
found object and mass reproduction; taking someone and making them
something else. With the boom in digital production, everyone has gone
mad with the idea: putting beach photos on mountain scenes, swapping
faces with one another or sharing the statues of someone youve never
met. More and more we find the digital self images of other people being
used by artists and anybodies, suddenly the embrace of your husband on
the dockside is the uniform fantasy to laugh about with friends. These
scenarios get considered that actions of an oversharing society47. Where
the analogue figure behind the digital self-image is no longer always the
sharer, where a dockside embrace with his husband may be shared with
47 Hal Niedzviecki. The Peep Diaries. 3

15
family, it may be furthered by the a total stranger. Suddenly the image

can move, can be a part of someone elses understanding of privacy.
Where these digital self-images are handled elsewhere, they no longer
posses the specific set of requirements that constructed their original
scenario. These contexts change, they are repositioned outside the hands
of the analogue figure, producing images that witness how information
sharing is inherently contextual48. It is easy to assume that this
recontextualization of the image will always form a threat to privacy, that
to loose the control of the self image in all ways is to be violated.
Nevertheless through the artists use of recontextualization, we will
explore the validity of this negative impact and question the importance
of the messy, overlapping of context creations to a concept of privacy49.
Where the digital can produce everything in perfect copy, distort the
conception of the original and still be changed; it also exists as an
environment that is infinitely combinational. Self-images can be
incorporated from different sources, recontextualized through
combination, either because of programme compatibility or the bringing
of images back into the analogue world. This was the common issue of
databases, the combination of the self-image available in data, that
combined information could give a greater picture of the individual
without choosing too. Writer Philip Brey explains this process as data
aggregation, a collecting of different sources of information including the
complex personal records that constitute a digital self50. This process is
one he finds often violates the trust that people have that information
appropriate to one context will not be used in a context for which it
[wasnt] intended and in which it is not deemed appropriate51. Something
considered private knowledge in one context such as the information for
48 Michael Zimmer & Anthony Hoffman. The Reputation Society. 180

49 David J. Phillips. Locational Surveillance: Embracing the Patterns of
Our Lives The Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics. Edited by Andrew
Chadwick & Philip N. Howard. London, UK: Routledge, 2009) 347
50 Philip Brey, Ethical Aspects of Facial Recognition Systems in Public
Places Readings in Cyberethics. Edited by Richard A. Spinello & Herman
T. Tavani. (Massachusetts, USA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2004) 597
51 Philip Brey. Readings in Cyberethics. 597
16
bank records or medical files, could became an issue of privacy not

because it was made public, but because it was treated as acceptable for
the widest publicity52 of new digital contexts and private-others.
Nevertheless, where this aggregation by a private-other may have still
gone on behind closed doors for the database, something of an outcry was
caused when artist Dries Depoorter placed combination in the public eye.
Tinder In (2015) combined the public profile-pictures of users on the love-
life app Tinder, with those used for the career network LinkedIn in a side-
by-side comparison. What had been combined was the self-image
produced for a romantic or sexual context, with that of a professional
working environment producing a new understanding of the subject in
both contexts. A conception of privacy that caused public outcry here was
based on two principles, firstly that Depoorter didnt ask permission 53 of
those involved to use their images, and secondly that the contextual
information was combined in such a way as to change the perception of
the subjects.
The first principle is based similarly in our previous discussions around
control and access, that the analogue figure behind the self-image had
their concept of privacy damaged based on the detachment from the
decisions over access and their control over over the images. Depoorter
attempted to justify the act by including himself as part of the project 54,
that in some way a concept of privacy can be lowered against someone
else in the act of a apparent privacy self-harm. In fact, it can be seen as
irrelevant to his other actions, that his own representation can be the only
one not to violate any moral understandings of privacy as its his self-
image to control. He was free to do as he wish with his own image under
the importance place on the private single unit to control the self-image.
Its an act we see that works a concept of privacy into a hollow justification

53 Lisa Bonos. What would your Tinder and LinkedIn profiles look like side
by side? The Washington Post. Published 19/11/2015. Accessed
28/04/2016.
54 Dries Depoorter. Tinder In driesdepoorter.be. Accessed 28/04/2016
17
of action by the artist through mutual combination, ignoring the

imbalance of power between the artist and other private subjects.
The second principle is in part that behind what Helen Nissenbaum
explains when she says we dislike when others know more about us than
we want them too or when they draw unjustified conclusions about us55.
The combination allows information from the LinkedIn format that isnt
available through Tinder, making it possible that love-interests learn of
your social media and place of work, or that colleagues can become aware
of a persons relationship statues or make judgement about some
presumed promiscuity.
Judgement for writer Daniel Solove is particularly key to a conception of
privacy, that we make judgements based on fragments of information
taken from context. If we knew everything, we might find it hard to judge
others at all56. Privacy as a concept allows each subject to maintain this,
to allow someone the possibility to influence or prevent judgement
against them by those on the outside. The level which someone is judged
is dependent on their contexts, that which you newly discover alters your
perception of someone but is only judged in accordance with your
relationality to that person57. That relationality comes from the context
you conduct yourselves and therefore your placement of privacy. Theorist
Charles Sykes expresses that taken individually, each piece of
information is probably harmless. But in context they become something
else58 proposing that though any of the information from either platform
is unlikely to effect you independently, where it is found develops
judgement and a requirement of a concept of privacy. It is fair to agree
with Solove that although more information about a person might help
enrich our understanding of that person, it might also lead us astray, since
we often lack the whole story59. Hence where an understanding that a
self-image subject is single is on its own issueless; where a worker might

56 Daniel J. Solove. The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumour, and Privacy
on the Internet. (Connecticut, USA: Yale University Press, 2007) 67
59 Daniel J. Solove. The Future of Reputation. 67
18
identify this in the working context because of the combination of

Depoorter, judgement could lead to a belief in the subjects promiscuity
because of the popular understanding of the Tinder context, based on a
lack of understanding of other information that isnt disclosed in the
working environment. Where a concept of privacy has protected the other
information in this context it both finds itself violated and preventative of
publics fully understanding the situation often leading to gossip, false
accusation or the need to reveal more of the self.
What Depoorters recontextualization therefore presents of Charles Sykes
privacy in the relationality of context, is further theorized by writer Helen
Nissenbaum as privacy as a concept of contextual integrity. Rather than a
bases of access and control, Nissenbaums conception looks at which
information is presented and whether society of the time considers that
information a norm of that context. These context-relative information
norms define and sustain essential activities and key relationships and
interests and protect people and groups against harm60. Characterized by
four key parameters: contexts, actors, attributes and transmission
principles61 the relevance of a privacy concern can be calculated both
presently and historically, acknowledging a normative value methodology
applicable to identifying visible change. Michael Zimmer & Anthony
Hoffman reinterpret Nissenbaums concept as people behave differently
with different people in different situations in order to maintain privacy62.
Because of the criteria available, they show that Nissenbaums concept is
able to tackle more complicated boundaries due to the multitude of
combination. She explains that the overlaps need not necessarily involve
conflicts63 but that it is the presence of information-norms within the
overlap that clash. Because of the vast difference in information-norms
combined by Depoorter as society is situated now, a concept of privacy
was considered to have been violated as it is considered not to match the
norms of the two situations. Equally however, the work sits

62 Michael Zimmer & Anthony Hoffman. The Reputation Society. 178
19
recontextualized in an artistic context, producing conflicts and agitations

to the concept of privacy separated from both sets of self-image norms, in
a context considered to offer normalised freedom of representational
norms.
Nevertheless, the combination of contexts is not always present when
the self-image is recontextualization into the artistic context. Chat
Random (2014) by Celia Hempton produced oil paintings of consenting
figures found whilst using an open webcam chatroom, a system that
began with a utopian incentive to provide a global platform for human
interaction and has largely evolved into a site used for sexual encounter
or exposure64. Hempton is directly placed in the sharing of information
from its original source and in the presence of the of the digital self-image
as produced in real time. Nissenbaum explains that informational norms
have three placeholders for actors: senders of information, recipients of
information, and information subjects65. The artist plays the role as both
recipient and sender of information, in which the subject behaves as both
sender of information and information subject. Within the original context
of the webcam chatroom, Hempton as recipient is witness to a concept of
privacy put forward Reiman in that privacy is a condition of the original
and continuing creation of "selves" or "persons"66. Each subject has the
right to pass on without giving away any more information other than the
temporal representation or appearing in the street. I
Additionally, the frame of the chatroom interface and webcam forms a
context by which the subject can express a concept of privacy immaterial
of specific recipients. Writer Michele White points out that this power is
structured uniquely because operators run, control and depict themselves
on their webcams67, there is no possibility of the transmission method
giving away more information to Hempton than intended. Some choose to
present their face, others choose to present their midriff or genitalia under
64 Southard Reid Gallery Celia Hempton: Chat Random 10 October 15

November: Press Release. Accessed 28/06/2016.
67 Michele White. The Body and the Screen: Theories of Internet
Spectatorship. (Massachusetts, USA: The MIT Press, 2006) 68
20
the right to do with my body what I wish, and the right to control when
and by whom my body is experienced68. The concealment of the face is
considered an action of privacy that formulates a private that the
presentation of the detached body does not. Much like the sexualized
image69, the removal of the head objectifies the image and defends the
individual an increased level of anonymity regardless of the presence of
the self-image.
The idea of anonymity is seen by Charles Sykes as our need to cover
and hide ourselves an act that not only defines our sense of self, but
create the boundaries that separate public and private70. By choosing to
display the body using the webcam, it would appear the subjects dont
hide in anonymity however, they cover what is considered most
identifiable. The subjects are able to be painted by Hempton with far less
ramification because they pose far less obtainable information of the self
image than the profile pictures of Depoorter. In Tinder In, Depoorter later
found himself backing down and choosing to blur the faces of those
included in the series71. The presentation of their bodies for the purposes
of art was consider less an issue of privacy because it was less identifiable
in the public space. It builds into what Brey considers in that many
people who willingly show their face in a public place would not willingly
participate in lineup at a police station72. The face therefore becomes
considered far more valuable than the presence of the body when
considering the concept of privacy surrounding the self-image, something
investment in facial recognition and file upon file of head-shot
documentation has demonstrated. This anonymity through presence takes
privacy in the relatively generic identity of the body, re-imposed by the
desire of the self for markings and tattoos. Equally this generic anonymity
spreads to what Domenico Quaranta see in "our faces and bodies
reproduced by a webcam are not the face and body of our identity on the

69 Michele White. The Body and the Screen. 82
70 Charles J Sykes. The End of Privacy. 185
71 Dries Depoorter. Tinder In. Accessed 28/04/2016
72 Philip Brey, Readings in Cyberethics. 598
21
Net, merely part of the data comprising it73. Therefore the fractured,
framed and objective presence of the body rather than the identity of the
face presents a concept of privacy in the anonymity formed through
control over self-presentation74.
Hempton herself however must also feel some attachment to the
identifiable nature of her subjects. In producing the paintings, Hempton
uses large strokes, blocks of color and minimal detailing to produce figures
blurred and somewhat featureless. The webcam though capable of poor
quality in its digital presence75, is designed to reproduce a digital image
almost as clear as the copies used in Depoorters work yet, Hempton
chooses not to recreate this. Her recontextualization adds a level of
anonymity, most noticeable upon the subjects that position there face
before the camera. This action begs a similar question to that posed by
Ruth Gavison in that the question is not whether we should edit, but how
and by whom the editing should be done76. In recontextualizing for the
far more public gallery setting of her work, she responds by respecting a
sense of intimacy and privacy surround her personal private experience
with the subject77. Though the chatroom is a public platform just as seen
with the apps of Depoorter, the one-to-one experience is kept between
the artist and the subject.
In a sense her paintings increase a sense of privacy higher than that
offered as offered by the subjects self-representation. Everything of their
representational identity is understood as available information to the
other, the subject even grants permission for their identity to be
recontextualized as it is, yet she still raises privacy. In doing so she goes
against the principle that individuals have the right to determine on their
73 Domenico Quaranta. MMGalleries. (Originally Published Fabio Paris Art

Gallery, 2007) Accessed 13/04/2016
75 Hito Steyerl. In Defence of the Poor Image. e-flux. Published 11/2009.
Accessed 04/05/2016.
77 Southard Reid Gallery Celia Hempton: Chat Random 10 October 15
22
own what the good is and to pursue it in their own way78. Gavison in
asking this question would not presume Hemptons actions. She asserts
there should be a presumption in favour of the individual concerned79,
that the privacy should be the place of the subject to increase not the
artist. Nevertheless, Nissenbaum points out that while self-presentation is
an important reason for supporting subjects control over personal
information, there are important contexts in which, because it may hinder
the attainment of goals, purposes, and values, it must give way to
alternative principles of information transmission80. Theoretically a
subject may have their privacy increased or decreased in light of someone
elses intention. A parent for example would have the right to impose a
greater amount of privacy upon there small child so as to protect them
from harm or equally invade their private items so as to ensure they are
safe. Hemptons goal is not to identify the webcam subjects, in fact it
would not depict the concept within the artistic context that she wants to,
hence increasing the subjects privacy is to her benefit.
Both Hempton and Depoorter end up depicting their work with equitable
levels of privacy. Where Hempton increases a privacy through blurring the
images of people happy to depict themselves in perfect clarity; Depoorter
reduces a privacy through combination breaching a societies impression
of privacy, their blurred identities no longer pose violation. The concept of
privacy can therefore lie with the recontextualizer; the artist is responsible
for the treatment of the self-image of the other. Though the concept can
be seen to always lead back to a subject or individual self, in a digital or
analogue setting a concept of privacy can just as much be the
requirement of someone else. Equally the analogue self does not
necessarily formulate the optimum concept in all situations a concept can
be applied too. What is present is that the concept of privacy in fact may
rely less on the individuals own autonomous handling of a digital self-
78 Suzanne Duvall Jacobitt. International Political Science Review. Vol 12

No 4. 282
23
image, and more on the digital self-images contextual presence as it

moves through the world.
Means Nothing on the Wall
In all the finding of the digital self-image, it can be so easily overlooked

that its presence as part of the digital age is forever traditionally indebted
to the camera as a producer of digital representation. Online chat-rooms,
cloud storage, identity cards, advertising, security systems; all still
incorporate the representational image of the self. In these situations,
privacy is often only challenged in the treatment of the cameras
products, protection of the image as an object that contains, rather than
explore the camera itself. It would appear that something of technological
progress has mislaid the camera, its survival in becoming a requirement of
generation-upon-generation has done nothing more than mark it
unchanged. Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis pointed out back in the
24
1980s that instantaneous photographs and newspapers enterprise have

invaded the sacred precincts of the private and domestic life; and
numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the predication
what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-top.81
And today this is still true, the cameras continued integrated necessity for
multitudes of other technologies, reproduce themselves as powerful
interfaces for the digital self-image. Considering the camera in its present
physical capabilities, we will explore whether the camera as an object
relates differently to concepts of privacy of the produced image and to
what extent the artists use of its physicality reformulates discussion of
digital self-image privacy.
The camera is often considered a tool additional to the body and
therefore embodies conceptions of privacy identical to those associated to
the analogue self. Contrary to this, I prefer to look at the human relation of
the camera in the same way as Rodney Giblett, that the eye of the
camera is fixed and static until the human body moves it around, so the
human body becomes a prosthesis for the camera to enable it to get
around.82 Gibletts consideration, opposed to the understanding of a
camera as enlarging the capacity of the human body83, better takes into
account the wider variety of present camera methods. Quite often it isnt
as simple as a camera improving the capabilities of the body but that the
human engagement with the camera alters that capabilities of the device,
such as with cameras that use automatic tracking84. It makes a clearer
81 Samuel D. Warren & Louis D. Brandeis. The Right to Privacy: The

Implicit Made Explicit in Philosophical Dimensions of Privacy: An
Anthology. Edited by Ferdinand David Schoeman. (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1984) 76
82 Rodney J Giblett. The Camera Photography and Landscapes. Edited
by Alfredo Cramerotti. (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2012)
41
83 Rosalind Krauss. The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism
Illuminations: Women Writing on Photography from the 1850s to the
Present. Edited by Liz Heron & Val Williams. (New York, NY: I.B. Tauris
Publishers, 1996) 90
84 Andrea Prati & Rita Cucchiara. Ambient Intelligence in Urban
Environments Intelligent Environments: Methods, Algorithms and
Applications. Edited by Dorothy Monekosso, Yoshinori Kuno & Paolo
Remagnino. (London, UK: Springer, 2009)
25
possibility for the understanding of Temenuga Trifonovas reading of

Deleuze that the human eye looks through the non-human eye the
camera but is not identical with it85. The camera can be seen to differ
from the human eye, producing a different relation to the subject with a
better in a sense of visual detail86. For todays devices this is becoming
more and more apparent with the instillation of front mounted cameras.
These are not looked through in a traditional sense to produce the self-
image, but rather the camera looks for us so as to produce something
already seen, inward and not observable. The camera in a Giblett-
Trifonova sense allows the human element of photographic and filmic
production to be separated from the camera in the complexities of
perception. In it having its own eye utilizing the human as the prosthesis,
the camera is able to constitute its own relation as an interface between a
public and private, dealing its own private relationality to a public, private
body and private-other.
This ability to behave as a threshold for the production of the self-image
with different relationality than the human eye questions a conception of
privacy put forth by theorist Ruth Gavison. Her three main characteristics
of privacy based on a wider understanding of limited access posits that a
loss occurs when either information is obtained about a person, attention
is payed to them or access to them is gained87. Gavison apples this to the
human-to-human conduct of these elements which would refer the
camera to a tool that otherwise doesnt posit this alone. In being its own
eye, it is in some sense paying attention to those whom walk in sight. The
idea it can be tooled to specifically pick out someone from a situation so
as to gain information is a specific after effect of the cameras ability to
already pay attention indiscriminately with potentiality to produce the
self-image.
85 Temenuga Trifonova. Deleuzes Time-Image: Getting Rid of Ourselves

The Image in French Philosophy. (New York, NY: Rodopi, 2007) 228
86 Dziga Vertov. Kinoks: A Revolution in Kino-eye: The Writings of Dziga
Vertov. Edited by Annette Michelson. Translated by Kevin OBrien.
(California: University of California Press, 1984) 15.
26
Gavison insists the ability to watch and listen, however, is not in itself
an indication of physical access88, that the actions of the camera can only
be associated to the principle of attention. However, this physicality is
only in referent to an understanding of solitude89 as a physically tangible
and human experience. As we understood earlier though, solitude is a
total situation that requires understanding of no outside referent to exit
completely without potentiality. The camera as a physical object can
access and move in relation to that access it achieves physically either
through human prosthesis, as Gavisons human relation accepts, or as I
posit, a non-human physical access through human potentiality and
interaction. Giblett even describes that the camera is a device for
shortening the distance between a photographer and his/her object90,
which within Giblett-Trifonova thinking, could be seen as the physical
access of the lens because of its own potentiality for positioning and
movement. Writers Kevin Robins & Frank Webster consider this
phenomenon in earlier writing, considering the camera one of a few
distance-shrinking technologies91. They explain that these new vision
technologies seem to make distance meaningless,92 impacting the object
and the conceptions of privacy such that, devices in there physicality can
produce the same impacts expected of being close in body at previously
accepted distances.
This places cameras such as closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance
in an interesting position, in that the physical presence of the device on
the wall, could be seen as a physical access intrusion to public levels of
privacy. The Faceless Project (2002-2008) by Manu Luksch, which

90 Rodney J Giblett. Photography and Landscapes. 46
91 Kevin Robins & Frank Webster. Times of the Technoculture: From the
Information Society to the Virtual Life. (London, UK: Routledge, 1999) 241.
Cited in Rodney J Giblett. The Camera Photography and Landscapes.
Edited by Alfredo Cramerotti. (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press,
2012) 46
92 Kevin Robins & Frank Webster. Times of the Technoculture. 241 Cited in
Rodney J Giblett. Photography and Landscapes. 46
27
orientates multiple elements around the Manifesto for CCTV Filmmakers93,

takes this possibility as practice. As a major element to the project, the
film Faceless (2007) was produced entirely through CCTV cameras as the
filmmaker is not permitted to introduce any cameras or lighting into the
location94. Specific CCTV cameras where selected for the filmmaker to
perform in front of, forming a narrative to be collected using the Data
Protection Act 199895. The camera within CCTV in these scenarios is
primarily designed to record everybody under equal observation only
altered by human interest in particular character, such as the filmmakers
interest in themselves, once the image is produced. CCTV without this
interest forms a physical object that treats a public with equal intention.
Helen Nissenbaum nevertheless suggests that public is not synonymous
with up for grabs, that even if something occurs in public space or is
inscribed in a public record there may still be powerful moral reasons for
constraining its flows96. Therefore, where the camera physically
possesses no intention, it treats a public as totally transparent without
self-determined capability to change flow.
Intention is however used to produce Faceless, as the previously public
member is considered a private individual in retrieving the images for use.
Every other persons representational self-image is removed in light of the
understanding Nissenbaum displays surrounding the public. By covering
the faces and heads, the public is protected by a produced level of privacy
that sees anonymity in the presence of their bodies. Where the concept of
privacy therefore falls problematic is in the collection of all that is
inherent in the camera connecting to the private-other distributing the
self-image. Here there is no anonymity of the body without identity, any
form of intention can be applied by the private-other or institution of
power such as the police to the image collected. In recent years, this has
also been further complicated by the cameras digital capabilities of
93 Manu Luksch. The FACELESS Project (2002-2008) ambienttv.net.

Accessed 23/04/2016.
94 Manu Luksch. Manifesto for CCTV Filmmakers The FACELESS Project.
(2004) Accessed 23/04/2016
95 Manu Luksch. The FACELESS Project. Accessed 23/04/2016.
28
algorithmic mediation discussed by John Gilliom & Torin Monahan. The

camera can now conduct the capture of the self-image and erase people
or objects from video feeds in real time97 without direct human
awareness. This produces a physical camera object that can actively
discriminate on a basic algorithmic analysis of representation,
undermining the collection of all present within the lens. This produces a
camera that doesnt change its conception of privacy concerning the
collection of all through the lens; but forms an invasive tool of information
and attention, that can increase and decrease a privacy of inequality
without private interpretation.
The approach taken for producing Faceless also comes into interesting
relation to what might be seen as unpopular thinking of David Brins
transparent society, a concept of privacy built upon the collection of all
placed as a value of society as well as the camera. Charles Sykes explains
Brins democratic thinking that a society in which we all carried cameras,
watching and recording everyone else, would be both a polite and an
accountable society.98 Nissenbaum equally marks the total integration of
surveillance as an accountability stating that individuals are equipped to
monitor and track one another as well as authorities99. Yet Brin suggests
that everyone should have total unfiltered access to every public camera
within the urban environment as a form a maintaining society in totally
open surveillance100. Though he understands the moral loopholes of his
thinking such as issues of obsessive stalking101, a project such as Faceless
would in fact allow you to produce narrative concerning anyone.
The camera as a physical object that forms the collation of all, produces
a false-self both self-formed as defence and as a recontextualized
production. In opening up a society to the nature of privacy within the
97 John Gilliom. & Torin Monahan. SuperVision: An Introduction to the

Surveillance Society. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2013)
121
98 Charles J Sykes. The End of Privacy. 239
99 Helen Nissenbaum. Privacy in Context. 24-25
100 David Brin. The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to
Choose Between Privacy and Freedom. (New York, NY: Perseus Books
Group, 1998) 4
101 David Brin. The Transparent Society. 298
29
camera, the human imbalances of intention still act upon the self image.
What we see is Brins self-confessed realization that if two sides have
equivalent information, there will still be inequality in their ability to act
upon the data.102 If anything the physicality of the camera can appear to
demonstrate a conception of privacy that acts so as to address power and
more precisely power thats imbalanced103.
Power however can also be wielded behind more traditional forms of
camera with human prosthesis, such as is seen in the physical impact of
the journalistic methods of self-image collection. Taking a concept of
privacy from a camera physicality moves the invasive quality away from
the photographers distance from a subject onto the amount removed by
the camera itself. Dougie Wallace in his photographic project Harrodsburg,
produces journalistic snap shots of the wealthy and affluent non-resident
shoppers. The camera here is very much directed by the actions of
Wallace, Thought in part by Judith J. Thomas as an acceptable act. She
explains it seems to me that if you do go out in public, you waive your
right to not be photographed and looked at. But of course you, like the
rest of us, have the right to be free of annoyance in public places104 There
is a mild contradiction here that positions itself within the disjuncture
between the cameras physical presence and the human eye. To be free of
annoyance is to associate with the closeness and intention of the human
prosthesis of the camera, an action in using the physicality as a tool but
not inherent in it. The device itself stands to represent the public position
as photographable subject potentially captured by the cameras eye, even
if not yet a representational image. This would appear to suggest that
even in the tool between person and object, the cameras physical position
infiltrates a concept of privacy only becoming issuable in the intention of
the human prosthesis allowing it to move.
Interestingly, Wallaces intention for the camera highlighting the
inequality and anonymity the vast wealth closely links to a conception of
102 David Brin. The Transparent Society. 83

103 John Gilliom. & Torin Monahan. SuperVision. 130
104 Judith Jarvis Thomson. The Right to Privacy. Philosophy and Public
Affairs. Vol 4 No4. (Princeton University Press, 1975) 311
30
privacy by political writer Christian Fuchs. Fuchs socialist conception of

privacy focuses on surveillance of capital and the rich in order to increase
transparency and private protections for consumers and workers105.
Finances are politically presented as the cornerstone to private property
and as such finds financial information of all kinds considered the privacy
of property.106 It is what Fuchs calls the anonymity of wealth, high
incomes and profits [that] make income and wealth gaps between the rich
and the poor invisible and thereby ideologically helps legitimate and
uphold these gaps107. In fact, this statement could be used to express
either Fuchs or Wallaces intentions in the challenging of privacy.
Nevertheless, their means to produce this revelation differ their outcomes
and successes. Fuchss conception of privacy looks to remove the
anonymity of factual information that forms the self-image, that which can
be used by a working class evidentially to hold accountable their
superiors. What Wallace challenges is that anonymity mentioned by
Gavison as part of her concept of privacy, one similar to being lost in a
crowd.108 The camera allows Wallace to depict the divide in wealth as
appearance in the street, a conception of privacy as based on the
representational surface information of the individual. Though this self-
image might represent wealth, it is a completely different image to that
which Fuchs concept of privacy wishes to make visible. The camera can
produce false-images as its physicality can only collect all that is
presented to it in the hope of unearthing some sense of true self109.
Someones outside appearance will not necessarily equate to a disparity
between their wealth and anothers, that is to say a king may dress like a
pauper. Those Wallace discovers through the camera are already removed
of some concept of privacy surrounding their wealth in the agreement of
its public visibility mentioned by Thompson. What Wallace conducts with
the physicality of the camera therefore, is a permanence of the
105 Fuchs, Christian. Political Economy of Privacy on Facebook

Television and New Media. Vol 13, No2. (Sage Journals, 2012) 141
106 Fuchs, Christian. Television and New Media. Vol 13, No2. 140
107 Fuchs, Christian. Television and New Media. Vol 13, No2. 140
109 M. Masud R. Khan. The Privacy of the Self. 292
31
information already provided to a temporal public. He in fact challenges a

privacy unrelated to wealth, rather than what Fuchs looks to with a
socialist conception in unveiling a level of financial information, Wallace
merely enacts a permanence of representation not within the choice or
control of the private subject.
Most importantly however for both considerations is that the physicality
of the camera does not necessarily require the function of image
production. It was seen in The Faceless Project as part of the process to
retrieve footage that at one point he advised me there was a technical
fault with the CCTV machine and that when the engineer was called he
confirmed that the machine had not been working since its instillation.110
Though the image could not be collected, the device was still performed
to by the filmmaker. The physicality influences peoples behave in a space,
a form of correctional surveillance in the potentiality of self-image
production111. The fact that an image is produced is consequential, the
individuals concept of privacy is still considered in the possibility of the
digital self-image. Equally, though Wallace was taking the photos to reveal
a financial anonymity, the camera itself posses a concept of privacy as a
device designed to see more than the eye in permanence and private
control. Had it not actually taken anything, it would still have removed a
distance between the subject and possible self-image that shows a
conception of privacy in the potentiality of self-imaging. This placebo
effect of physicality surrounds all sorts of scenarios, such as the unease of
a being alone with a portrait or the use of puppets. Placebo cameras are
not actively produced as the potentiality that allows them to work, once
disproved, produces an imbalanced concept of privacy and corrective
influence dependent on awareness112.
110 Manu Luksch. I wish to apply, under the Data Protection Act, for any
and all CCTV images of my person held within your system. I was present
at [place] from approximately [time] onwards on [date]. The FACELESS
Project. Inkjet Prints in Wood Light Boxes. 150x37cm. (2006)
111 Bernard E. Harcourt. Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital
Age. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015) 20
112 Hank Prunckun. Counterintelligence Theory and Practice. (Maryland,
USA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2012) 108
32
It would therefore appear the physicality of the camera produces sits

firmly with a concept of privacy Gilliom & Monahan explain giving voice
to the vital human desire to be left alone113. With its own eye and digital
age independence growing, the camera as a device of the artist and the
state is separating itself from the concepts of privacy produced by the
image. Its limits may allow for a privacy upheld in false representation yet
the culture surrounding the use of the self-image presents this simply in
its physical existence. As a device it can remove and re-instate a privilege
of a privacy lost in the lens, a negative to many and yet still produces
itself as one of the most vital objects of digital age accountability and
liberty for thousands.
Conclusion
Art as a structure has allowed us to open up a world of privacy

conceptions, a complexity laying bare the battlefield of conflicting and
united ideas in the materials and intentions of a digital age of artists. With
both the normative charge and the descriptive value of concepts, the
digital self-image is falling through the cracks in the conceptions, allowing
us to see what these where and could be.
113 John Gilliom. & Torin Monahan. SuperVision. 128

33
Privacy in its most basic sense can be attached to the public and private
divide that the analogue figures digital self-image navigates. Where the
concepts of privacy become complex is in our modern societies indistinct
placement of this divide. Public spaces under private surveillance, digital
networks as new age public realms, the divide is no longer certain, clear
and applicable. Our everyday functions see us abandoning the negotiation
ourselves, leaving the digital self-image to the protections of private-
others that now hold us ransom against ourselves.
Where this divide is seen as a concept of access to the digital self-
image, such as is theorised by Ruth Gavison and Jeffery Reiman, we see a
weakness we now accept. We face being undermined either by others
active intentions or by passive fault of the system at hand. Online storage,
social media and bank records now exist as part of a network where we
create our digital self-images in nothing more than access. Where the
control of a concept of privacy seen by Paul Schwartz and Alan Westin
used to sit with the private self, its now out of reach, capable of locking
us out from our own depiction or preventing us from being left alone in
constant connection and secret data. The control that artists Eva and
Franco Mattes where able to produce within their knowledge of the digital
platform, acquired through experimentation, has been lost to the Web 2.0
era of digital corporations. Building upon systems where the economic
capability can out-weigh the intentions of an analogue self and their
privacy, the everyday now stands a point dependent on a system with
pre-made models and systems with strict foundation. This one-sided
system is not designed to allow us to think about the concept of privacy in
private terms. The digital self-image started off in a reality of free-
software, where now it sits as an access of users to a virtual designed
position with less privacy.
As we accept this, we turn to the digital self-images of others to create
ourselves, utilizing an interconnected world to share and distribute. Where
we do this we become the controllers of a concept of privacy for other
people, we become the private-other. This moment of control in mutual
understanding that anyone can be anyone, we see a right to treat others
34
images as we would treat our own, a digital reality that sees itself so far
removed from its analogue counterparts forming a great divide in this
treatment. As Celia Hempton and Dries Depoorter showed us, the good
and the bad of anothers respect for the digital self-image forms very
different results. As a society, are we so addicted to the world of gossip,
betrayal and unveiling of a digital self-image as entertainment and
expectation, that a concept of privacy could never be considered a publics
responsibility? False-appearances form as a concept of privacy for defense
in this society we are addicted too. But this defense disregards those who
choose to be a true-self in the digital self-image, that those behind aliases
and avatars can be in the world shielded from a public invasion of their
privacy yet still be perfectly true in the eyes of a private-other.
What this constant movement and falsehood of the digital self-image
does produce is a relevance of context for a concept of privacy. Where
Helen Nissenbaum formulates a concept of contextual integrity in light of
Charles Fried, we begin to see a complexity of privacy understood as
many elements. Where this multidirectional consideration is found in what
the information is, who it is for, where it is communicated and how, we
start to understand that a concept of privacy need be broken down in far
closer relation to its scenario of application. Where technology is now able
to act without human interaction, we are producing ourselves in referent
to a possibility, having our conceptions challenged by the potentiality of
an image. Where technology to continue to a point of total self-
dependence, how do we design privacy for cameras, scanners and digital
self-images for a complexity we dont even see ourselves?
We find ourselves loosing a battle to maintain a conception of privacy
that we thought we always had yet, might have already lost in light of
cleaver thinkers, digital changers and non-human eyes. These people may
be artists, they maybe programmers or governments. Whichever they are,
they show us privacy is an art, and if we want it to understand its
complexity, then we better get to work.
35
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Philip Trotter 33327830 BA Dissertation Word Count: 10352

Only the Clever Are Stupid

Images Arent Circulated by Parrots

Means Nothing on the Wall

For something so presently disputed, what does a concept of privacy

1 Helen Nissenbaum. Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy and the

expressed by them6. Snapchats, passkeys and data banks produce an

5 Jeffrey Rosen. The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in

to completely remove their personal influence12 in taking an approach that

12 Friedrich Nietzsche. Part 1: On the Prejudices of Philosophers Beyond

Only the Clever Are Stupid

The digital platform has a three-word concept: privacy is stupid. Or at

13 Michael Zimmer & Anthony Hoffman. Privacy, Context, and

14 Hannah Arendt. The Human Condition. 58

defined it is no longer isolated. Life Sharing would therefore appear to

19 Helen Nissenbaum. Protecting Privacy in an Information Age: The

observation of us or access to information21. By information not

21 Jeffrey H. Reiman. Privacy, Intimacy, and Personhood Philosophy and

as social bodies, society conditions the way privacy is expected to be

24 Jeffrey H. Reiman. Philosophy and Public Affairs. Vol 6 No 1. 34

Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker further explain this intention

28 Alexander R Galloway and Eugene Thacker. The Exploit: A Theory of

digital allows far more permanent information to be recorded for inclusion

control or access to themselves. You would produce an entirely public

37 Ruth Gavison. The Yale Law Journal. Vol 89 No 3. 423

control. It may still harm a persons autonomy in that privacy no longer

42 Gilles Deleuze. October. Vol 59. 6

Images Arent Circulated by Parrots

47 Hal Niedzviecki. The Peep Diaries. 3

family, it may be furthered by the a total stranger. Suddenly the image

48 Michael Zimmer & Anthony Hoffman. The Reputation Society. 180

bank records or medical files, could became an issue of privacy not

52 Hannah Arendt. The Human Condition. 58

of action by the artist through mutual combination, ignoring the

55 Helen Nissenbaum. Privacy in Context. 50

identify this in the working context because of the combination of

60 Helen Nissenbaum. Privacy in Context. 3

recontextualized in an artistic context, producing conflicts and agitations

64 Southard Reid Gallery Celia Hempton: Chat Random 10 October 15

68 Jeffrey H. Reiman. Philosophy and Public Affairs. Vol 6 No 1. 42

73 Domenico Quaranta. MMGalleries. (Originally Published Fabio Paris Art

78 Suzanne Duvall Jacobitt. International Political Science Review. Vol 12

image, and more on the digital self-images contextual presence as it

Means Nothing on the Wall

In all the finding of the digital self-image, it can be so easily overlooked

1980s that instantaneous photographs and newspapers enterprise have

81 Samuel D. Warren & Louis D. Brandeis. The Right to Privacy: The

possibility for the understanding of Temenuga Trifonovas reading of

85 Temenuga Trifonova. Deleuzes Time-Image: Getting Rid of Ourselves

88 Ruth Gavison. The Yale Law Journal. Vol 89 No 3. 433

orientates multiple elements around the Manifesto for CCTV Filmmakers93,

93 Manu Luksch. The FACELESS Project (2002-2008) ambienttv.net.

algorithmic mediation discussed by John Gilliom & Torin Monahan. The

97 John Gilliom. & Torin Monahan. SuperVision: An Introduction to the

102 David Brin. The Transparent Society. 83

privacy by political writer Christian Fuchs. Fuchs socialist conception of

105 Fuchs, Christian. Political Economy of Privacy on Facebook

information already provided to a temporal public. He in fact challenges a

It would therefore appear the physicality of the camera produces sits

Art as a structure has allowed us to open up a world of privacy

113 John Gilliom. & Torin Monahan. SuperVision. 128

Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago

Baumgrtel, Tilman. [net.art 2.0]. Germany: Institut fr moderne Kunst

Blakstad, Matthew. As Government Launches Verify Scheme, Our Digital