On the outside looking out: An interview with the institute for applied autonomy (IAA)

Abstract

This interview with members of the Institute for Applied Autonomy is a discussion of their critically intervening projects and products -projects and products that boldly dip into and out of the socio-technical landscapes that comprise contemporary surveillance systems. Their projects range from constructing robots for activists so as to avoid identification, to building websites for looking up "paths of least surveillance" in Manhattan and London. Threaded throughout the interview is a discussion about the rise of urban surveillance and the rapid transformation of public spaces into privatized places, i.e. “mollification” syndrome.