Cathy the hacker from nelly on Vimeo.
"In this short film, the central character Cathy is compelled to wear a biometric monitor. It broadcasts a stream of data to an unseen agency - this could be an insurance company with vested interest in Cathy's health, or a medical institution implementing a service designed to extend the life-spans of it's users. Either way, the function of the implant contrives an intrusion upon Cathy's life. It erodes her personal freedom, enforcing a structure tailored for the production of the right 'kind' of biometric information.
So, Cathy devises a series of elaborate deceits, allowing her go out with friends, or just put her feet up, while still providing optimal data. A three legged cat is coaxed into wearing the device, hopping around the flat to generate fake activity. The closing spin cycle of the washing machine also does a good job. Cathy then skilfully disassembles the device and links it to a foot pump, to be reluctantly operated by her daughter.
These sequences are interrupted with footage from a conversation with Olive Murphy, a researcher at the IBE. Olive speculates how data generated by the sensing devices developed through her own research (an implantable blood pressure monitor) might be circumvented. "Once it's implanted it's always there" explains Olive, and we follow Cathy into a lift where she rests, to prevent transmission of her data. "
Human Futures: Art in an Age of Uncertainty, edited by Andy Miah and published
by Liverpool University Press is available from the FACT shop on 30 October.
This project was finally done in two parts.
The first one explores how design can be a tool to communicate around subject such hard as euthanasia. I made "Imperfect objects" with the hypothesis that they will help me in a context of an interview to get information that I couldn't get if I was asking the question. The process was really foggy as I already planned my interview with a terminal ill nurse: Sue Morgan and Cathy Johns, working at the RCA library, that I met occasionally, without being sure of where I wanted to go and what would be the angle the conversation would take. When I was making these objects I didn't know what they were except the context that I wanted to purpose them.
I was surprised to see that both were answering positively to these strange tools, such as a Rorschach test, the objects brings them on areas that I wouldn't be able to bring "on the table". I had big hopes with these interviews before they had started. I was believing that they will generate content to help me to decide at the end what angle I wanted to explore more than an other. Also they were a way for me to make the subject less dramatic and start quickly to experiment.
From these interviews (Didier Hoch, Sue Morgan and Cathy Johns), I come back with the idea that biotech don't have its place in end of life. And that I should better focus on what I find very powerful in an act such as euthanasia which is expressing your free-will. You are free to decide when you want to end your life, nobody has to discuss that.
Healthcare nowadays is very stressful, lifespan has to be long, but sometimes what doctors purpose you is just not right as it reduces your free will.
To me, that's the main problem with the DNA analysis. We will be able to know when we are going to die, but do we really need this information? Isn't it a new need that pharmaceutics company create?
Also one you get an implant which send data all the time to your doctor, you're not free anymore, you can't take it off "once it's implanted it's always there" said Doctor Olive Murphy. Everything start to be predictable, but this is not human, your life is made of hazard and you might don't want to know for at least one hour what is going on in your body!
So the second part of the project explores how you can hack your blood pressure implant which somehow should expend your life but reduce it as well. This part was done with Doctor Olive Murphy who is creating that implant. That's was one of the best experience of this project, she completely get the idea of "one hour freedom" and explored what could be the different ways to hack her invention.
Also I decide to focus on a character such as Cathy Johns with very strong principles on what she wants and don't want from healthcare. Not everybody will react like her....