Ring
In 2020, Christina Battle invited me to participate in a colaborative research project with 221A. Christina’s work was interested, in part, in imagining new systems of exchange. We spoke specifically about subscription models, which have continued to grow in recent years (some would say to the point of exhaustion). As I researched different subscription models and different businesses that offered subscription-based service, I became acutely interested in Ring, a “smart home security” company owned by Amazon. In many ways, Ring—and Amazon more broadly—seemed to embody one of the most frightening versions of surveillance capitalism that we’d yet encountered. (The company has since aquired iRobot, the company that makes the Roomba. This acquisition should be equally concerning.) From my research, I produced a series of short texts, interpsersed with photographs taken of my own computer screen. The images all feature footage taken by Ring cameras, which I easily found online.
You can view the work here.
You can download a PDF of the project here.