The Neglect Of Hands

When I think about watching and surveillance, the first thing that comes to mind is spying on someone. I did not want to do a concept that pertained to spying on one person but rather, watching of one specific thing. I decided to focus on watching the everyday interactions of hands. I chose hands because I feel they are an afterthought in many people’s minds. A person uses their hands constantly and without them, one would essentially have to change their way of living. Hands are a source of identity but not one that is familiar to the human eye. In other words, it’s hard to identify someone just by his or her hands (of course fingerprints are the best form of identification but just forget about that feature for this project).  While reading Philip E. Agre’s article on surveillance, I noticed how the article always went back to identity of a person or thing. I wanted to become more specific with the idea of “spying” on one’s identity by focusing only on their hands, and how their hands interacted and functioned doing common, everyday things.

In the Richard Woodward article, there is a quote that seems to be very true for today’s networks. “Today, the negligible cost of making pictures and uploading them to networks gives anyone with a cell phone the chance in theory to appear instantly before an audience of billions on seven continents.” This quote makes me instantly think of flickr. We are posting projects on flickr that anyone that has a flickr account can see. That makes me feel somewhat exposed (funny that it’s the title of the article). Knowing that anyone can see my photos, and not just classmates, makes me become much more aware of how I present myself and my work in the network world.