From June to November of 2002, I was the subject of a FBI investigation as a terrorist suspect. I was reported to the police as “an Arab that had explosives who fled on September 12”. As I returned to the US on June 19, I was met at the airport by an FBI agent who rigorously interrogated me regarding my whereabouts and activities. I spent the next 6 months frequently meeting FBI agents and having to justify each and every move that I had made around 9/11. After repeated questionings and 9 polygraphs, I was eventually cleared and to the relief of friends and family, I am officially no longer considered a terrorist threat. These experiences have led me to voluntarily develop a work of art, which in fact opens just about every aspect of my life to the public. I have actively decided to cooperate with the FBI to a point where the current work now borders on an unauthorized collaboration with them.

In Tracking Transience the network device generates a database of imagery and locative information that, combined with a web-enabled companion, tracks me and my points of transit in real-time. Currently, the device allows uploads of images tagged with exact GPS coordinates of where the original image was shot to my server, which then sends the GPS tag to USGS which returns an aerial surveillance image of my exact location. My server then compiles this map with my uploaded image and thumbnails of the used images into a web based file, which is then accessed through any computer with net access. These uploads are currently done manually with an average increment of once every half hour or so when I am inside the US. Outside the US, while the uploads are still possible, they are a little less frequent as some of the data required for mapping internationally is not yet fully accessible and are often dependent on local laws of foreign access to surveillance images.

Using the powers of the web and new technologies originally intended for military use and their alternate uses for surveillance, I hope to bring to light the political ramifications of such a project and its repercussions on an individual level, using myself as subject.


Links: http://elahi.rutgers.edu/prixars.html

Hasan M. Elahi (US), born in1972 in Bangladesh, is an interdisciplinary artist with an emphasis on technology and media and their social implications. His research interests include issues of surveillance, simulated time, transport systems, and borders and frontiers. Currently he is an Assistant Professor at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey in the USA.