Artistic Explorations of Data Protection and Surveillance

User Content? Panel Discussion

We are not always aware of what happens to our data when we engage with online apps or services, and we are generally even less aware of the legal framework that exists to protect our data. The exhibition User Content? at Belfast Exposed Gallery from 25 October to 2 November explores and exposes the capacity of the law to control digital technology processes for the good of our society.

Two very different professional spheres — legal tech scholarship and creative practice — combined in this interdisciplinary collaboration to examine the surveillance of personal fertility and pregnancy data and, more broadly, how our data are shared when we sign up to use social media. The works have been created in direct response to aspects of legal scholarship in these areas.

In this discussion, a panel of collaborating colleagues will respond to Prof. Eugene McNamee’s prompts covering the challenges of the law to control the way our data are shared, the opportunities created when responding to specific legal scholarship and the creative process of interpreting legal tech ideas and concepts.

The panel consists of legal tech specialists and artists:

• Belfast School of Art: Dr Emma Campbell, Dr Laura O’Connor, Daniel Philpott and Dr Kyle Boyd
• School of Law: Dr Katie Nolan and Dr Anna Pathé-Smith (now Open University)

Attendees are encouraged to view the exhibition before the discussion at Belfast Exposed. There will be an opportunity to put your own questions.