If you have ever wondered where your online data goes, The Glass Room, a free pop-up exhibit in Nolita, is a good place to start. Passersby may mistake the gallery for an Apple Store, but the shiny interior, replete with strategically placed iPads and whitewashed walls, houses a lot more than the latest tech.
Free to the public through December 14th, The Glass Room is a collection of artwork, ongoing projects, and sensory experiences that explore life in the internet age. The exhibit is timed to coincide with the end of Cyber Monday and the beginning of the holiday shopping season, a time when shoppers are handing over heaps of personal information at checkout counters. People who wander into The Glass Room in the midst of shopping won’t be able to purchase a holiday gift, but they will come away with a deeper understanding of the way personal data is used for profit.
Curated by Tactical Technology Collective, the show is meant to educate visitors on the myriad ways their data is used. The artifacts on display range from amusing, like an alphabetized collection of 4.6 million leaked LinkedIn passwords, to terrifying, like a remote-controlled fertility chip that might one day be used to control fertility rates in developing countries. At the back of the exhibit, a bar of “inGeniouses,” a play on the Apple Genius Bar, teach visitors how to avoid aspects of 21st century surveillance. You can learn how to encrypt emails, track your own data, and lighten your digital footprint.
The show is not meant to discourage people from using the internet. Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski, the curators of the exhibit, see the pop-up as a place that brings “questions to life about how technology changes social interactions in our society by making them both fun and accessible.” The exhibit is sponsored by Mozilla, which like most browser builders, has its share of security issues.
The Alphabet City.
The Glass Room
The Glass Room contains 54 artifacts arranged in four distinct categories, beginning with personal data collection and ending with government-sanctioned surveillance methods. The examples of surveillance on display grow more disturbing as you walk further in.