Data Pools - Adam Harvey Studio
DataPools is a Wi-Fi geolocation spoofing project that virtually relocates your phone to the latitudes and longitudes of Silicon Valley’s elite. It includes a catalog and a SkyLift device with 12 pre-programmed locations. DataPools was produced for the Tropez summer art event in Berlin and in collaboration with Anastasia Kubrak.
Weren’t invited to Jeff Bezos’s summer pool party? Peter Thiel still ignoring your emails? No problem. DataPools uses the SkyLift device to emulate the Wi-Fi network infrastructure at 12 of the top Silicon Valley CEOs causing your phone to show up, approximately, at their pool. SkyLift’s Wi-Fi spoofing overrides the core geolocation services on iOS and Android smartphones relocating all apps and the metadata they generate, to the backyards of Silicon Valley’s elites.
Data Pools is a metaphor for a store of wealth that is private. The luxurious pools and mansions of Silicon Valley are financed by the mechanisms of economic surveillance and ownership of our personal information. Yet, the geographic locations of these premises are often concealed, hidden, and removed from open source databases. What if we could reverse this logic and plunge into the pools of ludicrous wealth, both virtually and physically? Could we apply the same methods of data extraction to highlight the ridiculous inequalities between CEOs and platform users?
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