All posts by pfry

BSc Digital Arts Computing, Inspiration, Students

Art project uses ‘Snooper’s Charter’ surveillance tech to data mine your life

better-forever

A downloadable plugin that mines your browser for data – then builds a profile of your personality and lifestyle – has been created by Goldsmiths Digital Arts Computing student Joe McAlister.

Joe’s project, entitled You Probably Live in Horsham, asks: If the government’s ‘Snooper’s Charter’ legitimises mass surveillance, can we use the same technology to study ourselves?

An art piece with a strong political theme, Joe has combined a visual spy-like aesthetic with the programme’s ability to generate eye-opening reports on the user’s mind-set, creating a feeling of shock, awe, and a slight sense of unease.

Designed to promote discussion around the paper trail we leave on the internet, and how safe that data is online, You Probably Live in Horsham also asks the user to compare their online identity with how they see themselves in real life.

“In our materialistic society many people’s lives have become intertwined with the internet to such a degree it’s become hard to imagine the boundaries between virtual and real,” says Joe – a first-year Digital Arts Computing undergraduate who’s set to graduate in 2018.

“I want to prompt people to look at their lives from a new perspective. When important elements of your identity appear in a list in front of you, it becomes de-humanising. You become just another person on a piece of paper, or in this case, a computer screen.

“I want people to see it, step back a second, and consider a completely different side to their identity which they might not have previously seen.”

“The Home Secretary’s Investigatory Powers Bill demands web and phone companies log the IP addresses, URLS and connection times for every citizen for a year. Theresa May has emphasised how ‘terrorists’ are using the internet to evade detection and by using blanket surveillance they can help prevent this. But at what point does this ‘harmless’ state surveillance become the precursor to something resembling a totalitarian state?”

Behind the scenes of You Probably Live in Horsham it’s a complex system: after the user installs a plugin, it injects a Javascript file into every website that’s visited. This script will then use JQuery, Javascript and Ajax to collect the IP address, URL and timestamp of every web address.

The data is then formatted into a storable format, and individual parts of it analysed. Given the project’s purpose in raising awareness of data security, all data is stored locally in the user’s browser, with only small elements sent temporarily via encrypted ‘https’ to remote servers run and secured by reputable companies.

Install the plugin
Click here to download the plugin. Once loaded simply press ‘add to chrome’. The extension should now be installed and the eye icon should be visible in the top right hand side. The eye will move when it analyses a page. You don’t need to do anything to prompt the analysing of a page just browse like normal. To view your paragraph as it generates click the eye icon. The longer you use the plugin the more accurate the data will be. I suggest using it for a few days before taking what it says seriously.

After running the program for a short time on his own computer, Joe’s report proved remarkably accurate, guessing among other facts that he went to Goldsmiths, travelled from Horsham in around 72 minutes, worked a lot late at night and was probably thinking mostly about “Southern Rail or big data”.

joe_mc
Joe McAlister caught on camera

The gathering of data then allows further assumptions to be made manually, even by people who don’t know you. For example, the programme shows that Joe owns a Mac and travels a lot so it’s likely a lightweight version like a MacBook; he likes the artist Yayoi Kusama so it’s likely he also likes other installation art; he’s a computer programmer, appreciates art and goes to Goldsmiths, so he’s likely to be studying Digital Arts Computing.

“The personas we display to people across our idealistic online lives and our more realistic lives can be very different,” adds Joe. “This programme might generate a report for you that reflects your online escapism, or you’ll find more of your real personality comes out.

“From just a few dozen URLS, You Probably Live in Horsham can generate huge amounts of data, and the longer you use the plug-in, the more accurate that data will be,” adds Joe. “And unlike your inclusion in the government’s data retention scheme, it’s entirely optional and easy to stop.”

Adapted from a Goldsmiths News story published on 20 April 2016.

Events, Staff profiles and activity, Students, Videos, Women in Computing

Thu 21 April: EAVI XVII electronic & experimental music night

EAVI_17

EAVI Nights celebrates its 17th edition with performances from electroacoustic visionary Simon Emmerson and glitch pop pioneer AGF – plus French art pop, post-USSR loops and live AV performance.

Where: Amersham Arms, 388 New Cross Road, London SE14 6TY
When: 8pm – late, Thursday 21 April 2016
Tickets: £5. Buy advance tickets at eavixvii.eventbrite.com

Supported by Goldsmiths’ Annual Fund

Full line-up for 21 April 2016

AGF

www.poemproducer.com
international laptop glitch-pop dance pioneer

Simon Emmerson
britishmusiccollection.org.uk/simon-emmerson
electroacoustic visionary and computer music innovator

Sandra Ka

sandra.unmute.eu
Looping – Abstracting – Resonating / Echoing the Post-USSR

yug.alma

yugmusic.bandcamp.com
audiovisual initiation rites from ever-mutating art pop french duet

FRANTICØ
frantic0.com
embodiment and multimodality driving live audiovisual performance

DJs

  • Spacer Woman (Chooc Ly Tan)
  • Team GBH
  • VJ Joey Holder
Inspiration, News, Staff profiles and activity, Women in Computing

Goldsmiths mentors winning team of robot-builders

A team of London schoolgirls have scooped four prizes at the national VEX IQ challenge, thanks to mentoring from Goldsmiths Computing.

The Cyborgs – four Year 9 girls from Henrietta Barnett School – competed in the VEX IQ challenge to design and build a robot.

Early in the process of constructing the robot, one of the girls – Elli Gaver – came to Goldsmiths and talked with post-doc researcher Perla Maiolino. Perla helped Elli figure out how to make the basic design she wanted. This was a great foundation for later improvements – and by the time Nationals came along, the entire robot had been made and remade several times over.

After qualifying at the regionals in London, the Cyborgs travelled to Birmingham to compete against 40 of the top UK teams who had qualified at their regional competitions. The Cyborgs ended up winning four of the ten top prizes:

  • Excellence Award for the best robot in the competition
  • Teamwork Challenge, for amassing the highest total of points in a series of trials that involved being paired randomly with other teams to cooperatively try to clear a field of balls
  • Driver Skills, in which they got the highest number of points driving alone in the same ball-clearing challenge
  • Programming Skills for programming their robot to autonomously do the same task

The girls are now busily improving their robots’ hardware and software in preparation for their trip to Louisville Kentucky to compete in the Internationals on 20 April – 23 April 2016.

Goldsmiths Computing have contributed to the team’s travel expenses – and we wish them the very best luck!

EAVI, News, Staff profiles and activity, Videos

Download Goldsmiths’ new audiovisual memory game

shapetones

ShapeTones, an accessible audiovisual memory game for iPhone and iPad, and developed at Goldsmiths, is now available to download for free.

The game resulted from a collaboration between two research projects – Enabling AudioVisual User Interfaces (at Goldsmiths) and Design Patterns for Inclusive Collaboration (at Queen Mary, University of London).

Nuno Correia, part of the Goldsmiths team, describes the game here.

“The game can be played by anyone, including players with hearing or visual impairments. A sequence of three shapes and tones (we call them ShapeTones) is played, and the player tries to reproduce it with three taps. Tapping different areas of the screen triggers different ShapeTones.

“The game starts with three ShapeTones. As the game evolves, more ShapeTones become available. When a new ShapeTone is added, a trial screen is shown to demonstrate where each ShapeTone is triggered. Some surprises happen along the way!

“As a one-player game, the sequence is created automatically. As a two-player game, one player creates the sequence, and then passes the device to the other player, who tries to repeat it. They then swap the roles.

“The collaboration between the two universities aimed to create an audiovisual game accessible to sound or vision impaired users, and allowing for multiple players. The research results from ShapeTones will be presented in May at CHI, the top conference for Human-Computer Interaction, in San Jose, California.”

shapetones

ShapeTones resulted from a collaboration between the research projects Enabling AudioVisual User Interfaces (AVUIs) and Design Patterns for Inclusive Collaboration (DePIC).

Nuno Correia from Goldsmiths’ Embodied Audiovisual Interaction (EAVI) group participated with the Enabling AVUIs project, and the DePIC team consisted of Fiore Martin, Nick Bryan-Kinns, Oussama Metatla and Tony Stockman from Queen Mary University of London.

Events, News, Staff profiles and activity

Computing & Entrepreneurship Business Club

digital-entrepreneurship

Following three successful sessions in 2015, Goldsmiths Computing are running three more free drop-in workshops on the first Tuesday of February, April and May 2016.

Come to all, or come to just one. Participants will work in groups to complete a series of business computing & entrepreneurial challenges. All welcome, but especially suitable for people considering studying business or computing at university.

“Thank you kindly for your informative and inspirational lecture. We really enjoyed ourselves and found the content to be extremely relevant and timely.”

5pm-7pm Tuesday 2 February 2016
What’s in a tweet? How do businesses use social media like Twitter to understand customer behaviour? Register for What’s in a Tweet

5pm-7pm Tuesday 5 April 2016
You can do it, but is it ethical? An introduction to social, legal and ethical issues of digital entrepreneurship. Register for Is It Ethical

5pm-7pm Tuesday 3 May 2016
How can I make it? What are the traits and approaches of successful digital entrepreneurs? (rescheduled from 1 March) Register for How Can I Make It

Events, News, Staff profiles and activity, Students

Wed 6 April: Postgraduate Open Day

openday6

On Wednesday 6 April, our staff and students will be representing Goldsmiths Computing at the university’s Postgraduate Open Day.

Where: Great Hall, Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths SE14 6NW
When: 4pm – 7pm Wednesday 6 April 2016

Please join us if you’re curious about any of our postgraduate and research degrees. We’ll be in the Great Hall throughout the evening – and invite you to degree programme talks where you’ll meet current students and hear from course tutors.

5pm-5.30pm

6pm-6.30pm

We will also run regular tours of our physical computing, motion capture, audiovisual, exhibition and games programming facilities. Just meet us in the Great Hall to find out when the next tour is leaving.

Inspiration, Students, Videos

Recent computer games created by Goldsmiths students

To celebrate the beginning of spring, we present six games recently made by our first and second year BSc Games Programming students.

Led by Jeremy Gow, our BSc Games Programming degree prepares students for a career programming in the games industry, in sectors including mobile games, casual games, social media games, and AAA console game development.

Sandrunner

sandrunner

Harlon Staple-Campbell, Yuvesh Tulsiani, Jack Wang and Karen Yeung (Introduction to Digital Media)

Sandrunner is an addictive 8-bit side-scroller for Android in the style of Flappy Bird. Press to jump and collect the coins, but avoid the fuzzy pink balls! The team focused on a simple concept and playtested it until they got the right balance of fun and frustration. Made in Processing. Download Sandrunner from the Android Play store.

Scribble Defence

Carlos De Oliveira do Amaral Leitão, Michael King, Rodrigo Endo, William Meaton and Yuvesh Tulsiani (Introduction to Game Development)

Scribble Defence is a tower defence game for Android. Protect the cookie jar from wave after wave of monsters by positioning your turrets carefully around the maze. A fantastic art style and the game itself is really well balanced. Made in Unity. Download Scribble Defence from the Android Play store.

Speedy Cat

Damian Hon and Liam Robinson (Introduction to Game Development)

In Speedy Cat you control our eponymous hero as he flies through the sky picking up snacks and avoiding meteors and bad apples. All with a soundtrack of pumping dance music. An insane concept, but fun! Made in Unity.

20 Years Later

Andrew Tao, Christian Tanap, Daniel Stokoe, James Mackessy and Jeffrey Gillespie (Software Projects)

20 years ago you were a student at Goldsmiths… but you return to find the campus has been overrun with mindless zombies! 20 Years Later is survival horror game where you find yourself trapped in the depths of the Richard Hoggart Building. Can you escape? Made with Unity.

Monster Rush

Andrea Fiorucci, Calvin Fuss, Brian Rocha Confessor and Yuvesh Tulsiani (Game Development Group Project)

Monster Rush is a fast-paced shooter where you take on hordes of colourful monsters. Still under development. Made in Unity.

The Midnight Man

Damian Hon, Dmitrij Potapcik, Fabio Peres Filho and Liam Robinson (Software Projects)

The Midnight Man a survival horror game where the player is defenceless against a malevolent entity, but safe as long as their candle is lit! They must solve puzzles and gather clues while the candle burns down. Made in Unity, using Maya, Blender and Audacity.