Sehen sie uns?

We know little about what information our digital devices collect about us. And we know even less about what digital service providers do with this data. The second edition of the »Digiloglounge« explores under the title »Do They See Us?« how digital devices and services construct a model of us and our surroundings as well as the options for action opening up in connection with these technologies.

How can we benefit from personalized digital services while protecting our privacy? What do we need to know about the various forms of automated recording of our behavior – "tracking" – in order to make informed decisions, about the use of digital devices and services? As much of our communication and work becomes impossible without smartphones and computers, these questions take on greater urgency.

The »Digiloglounge« is the exhibition format of the interdisciplinary research project »digilog@bw« (Gesellschaft im digitalen Wandel - Digitalisierung im Dialog), combining scientific and artistic perspectives.

Two installations developed at the KIT | Institute for Information Systems and Marketing (IISM) and the KIT | Institute for Telematics (TM) offer visitors the opportunity to test eye-tracking applications and thereby contribute to scientific research. The artworks shown in the exhibition address the fact that most of the digital services that make our lives easier – from unlocking the smartphone by facial recognition to household robots – rely on observing us and creating a model of our behavior and environment. How do these machines see us? On what assumptions are the models they create based?

»Trust^AI« (2020) by Bernd Lintermann and Florian Hertweck allows visitors to find a personal answer to the question of whether we can trust artificial intelligence by talking to an AI. The film »HOMESCHOOL« (2019) by Simone C. Niquille / Technoflesh addressing the training of household robots raises questions about categories and cultural biases that enter our digital domestic environments. Katja Trinkwalder and Pia-Marie Stute's »Accessories for the Paranoid« (2019) suggests how we might disguise our digital identities when using digital devices.