private <i>


2024
Interactive film, filmmaking, video editing, game design, research project
Description (CONTAINS SPOILERS):

private <i> is an interactive film highlighting the extensive amounts of surveillance, data collection, and human labour powering generative AI systems. The film is recorded with a smart home CCTV camera, and the audience progresses through the narrative by clicking through viewpoints in the camera’s interface.

I was inspired to make this work when researching the myth of soul-stealing photography. According to UK jurisprudence, photography is a particularly intrusive medium because it exposes one’s image to a mass objectifying gaze beyond their control. With unauthorised tools designed to scrape, store and sell our image data, how can we protect our image when cameras are ubiquitous in the digital era?

Made in 2024, the work is set in a near future of 2026, where the audience is recruited by a mysterious VidiArc to collect data on a Person of Interest seen on screen. As VidiArc’s demands get progressively intrusive, they reveal their identity as an AI tool using the audience’s labour and human vision to create a digital voodoo doll of the Person of Interest to predict and control her behaviours, habits and desires.

private <i>


2024
Interactive film, filmmaking, video editing, game design,
research project




Description (CONTAINS SPOILERS): 

private <i> is an interactive film highlighting the extensive amounts of surveillance, data collection, and human labour powering generative AI systems. The film is recorded with a smart home CCTV camera, and the audience progresses through the narrative by clicking through viewpoints in the camera’s interface.

I was inspired to make this work when researching the myth of soul-stealing photography. According to UK jurisprudence, photography is a particularly intrusive medium because it exposes one’s image to a mass objectifying gaze beyond their control. With unauthorised tools designed to scrape, store and sell our image data, how can we protect our image when cameras are ubiquitous in the digital era?

Made in 2024, the work is set in a near future of 2026, where the audience is recruited by a mysterious VidiArc to collect data on a Person of Interest seen on screen. As VidiArc’s demands get progressively intrusive, they reveal their identity as an AI tool using the audience’s labour and human vision to create a digital voodoo doll of the Person of Interest to predict and control her behaviours, habits and desires.

This film is available to play on desktop only.
Please use your mouse, and not your keyboard, to click through the options.



You have been recruited by VidiArc to solve a mystery.
Choose your motive from the four options: Knowledge, Money, Justice or ???, and follow VidiArc’s instructions to investigate the person-of-interest.

When presented with VidiArc’s thesis, will you choose Synthesis or Antithesis?