Phala Network：I Don’t Believe in Your “User Agreement”
At a recent interactive installation in Hangzhou, ArtGee, who focuses on the subject of “Encryption X Art”, noticed a work of interactive art, “I Don’t Believe in Your User Agreement” from Phala Network, which reminds people of the “end of privacy”.
Nowadays, consumerist society is dominated by Internet services, and people are using them all the time. Such a digital world also brings corresponding problems: the online virtual world and the real physical world have been integrated, while the sacrificial data also binds every real person and the digital world tightly.
If the digital world does evil, the real world will be in hell as well.
When entering the digital world, we all click “Agree” on the User Agreement. Under such an agreement, Internet companies would have clear access to all information from the database. However, this kind of mandatory digital control is different from the relationship between the buyer and seller. In this state, human social self-consciousness is weakened, and instead, we are forced to be stuck in the digital information framework and accept false value recognition. And that sense of oppression is what people have to bear.
It was like a modern version of Faust, who sold his soul to Mephistophilis (the devil) in exchange for twenty-four years of wordly glory and power. He stabbed his own arm for blood, to write with it in manner of a deed of gift. Unexpectedly, his blood congealed and he could write no more. On his arm two lines of Latin appeared, “Homo, fuge” (better escape quickly). Yet shall not Faust fly, he was blinded by greed long before. The pact was made, and all covenants and articles came into effect. Twenty-four years flew, at last he could only self-complained, “Faust, curse thyself, curse Lucifer. That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven.”
On 「2020 Hangzhou International Blockchain Week」held by BaBite (a bitcoin media platform), almost all the stalls were selling their programs and sparing no effort in commercial propaganda. Phala, however, turned their “stall” into a “wasteland”. They presented a creative work of interactive installation art, which alerted attendees to the arbitrary violation of users’ data privacy in the digital era.
Hugh m. Daves, an American art critic, believed that installation art could even be traced back to the primitive Lascaux cave paintings in France. Installation art is an echo of ancient human cultural traditions in contemporary art. The primitive artists did not depict isolated objects, instead, they made movable works to reflect the environment of a certain religion or witchcraft — therefore, various religious temples and churches are also considered as the forerunners of installation art, in which the intervention and participation of the audience is an inseparable part. Installation art is an extension of people’s life experiences.
This interactive installation「I don’t Believe in Your “ User Agreement “」consists of three parts: an agreement wall, a voting machine and a result panel. Among them, the agreement wall is a complete replica of the familiar Internet privacy policies — from wall to floor. It’s such a visual shock that tells you directly: not so many people have the patience to read User Agreement thoroughly, even if the companies do so intentionally. In the Internet world dominated by big tech companies, we have to bend to these rules, habitually click “I Agree” and “voluntarily” reveal our privacy to platforms.
As to the voting machine and the real-time result panel, they further express users’ concerns about privacy issues as more vivid refutations. The device, ArtGee learned from Phala Network, is intended to use interaction and graphics to demonstrate the conflict between the privacy of ordinary users and the interests of large corporations. Facing the opportunity to present on International Blockchain Week, Phala Network hopes to stand out in the way of “No Program Propaganda”. By passing on the “Privacy Concept” to all participants, Phala Network can better express their mission as a blockchain privacy protection team.
Phala’s founder, Marvin, claims that his decision to focus on “User Agreement” and “Privacy Protection” stems from his personal anger over privacy leakage. At present, high-tech means such as remote shooting, drone tracking shooting, pinhole secret shooting and perspective shooting emerge endlessly, which can sincerely invade privacy. Especially with the development of monitoring devices, wearable devices, application collection and other technical means, it is possible to collect biometric information widely, which makes the protection of privacy highly coincide with that of sensitive personal information.
He wishes his work can inspire everyone at the conference. In his view, the encrypted world should be radical, idealistic and with as little compromise as possible. Since art can lead the vanguard of avant-garde thought, it can be fun to be different in a business environment.
It is worth mentioning that unlike traditional art, which is keen on expressing the motif of “love, desire and death”, new media artworks are more interested in talking about the “Disease of the Times” caused by modern technological society. This kind of art category combines technological means and other forms such as sound, light and electricity. Since its emergence, it has created more cross-boundary expression contexts because of its variability, flexibility and interactivity. Some artists use it to warn people about data privacy and disclose the modern living state without privacy.
The rise of installation art can also be seen as a reaction against “minimalism art”. If the directness and simplicity of “minimalism” (nihility) reflect the worship of speed and efficiency in the post-industrial society, then in installation art, the concept of “the more, the better” forces the audience to slow down the pace. Therefore, installation art seems to meet the physiological needs and psychological balance of busy contemporary people.
According to ArtGee, Phala Network’s design is a tribute to the work of Israeli artist Dima Yarovinsky. Dima has created a privacy space by printing user agreements from several platforms (WhatsApp, Google, Tinder, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram). Like unwrapped toilet paper, these protocols seem to imply that our precious personal information is packaged and sold in conspicuous and cheap ways.
Admittedly, the privacy of Internet users is much more emphasized today than a few years ago. In 2018, artist Yufeng Deng held a contemporary art exhibition in Wuhan, which presented 346,000 pieces of personal information that he bought on the black market, to expose the terrible state of we “data person” in the Internet age. The exhibition was closed in two days after held, and similar public discussions aimed at promoting information protection always collapse on their way.
In terms of the use of space, although limited by the crowded booth on that day, squeezing the wrapping design into the narrow space still brings similar effect to Bing Xu’s work “Book of Heaven”: the vast space is full of books that cannot be understood so that it can directly thrill the audience through participation.
It’s like McLuhan’s cry: The Medium is the Message ! Bing Xu is always creating and demonstrating games that challenge stereotypes: distorted text, visual tricks, the transformation of “small” and “big”. He became famous for his work “Book of Heaven”, which was made out of more than 4,000 Chinese characters as a symbol of Chinese contemporary art. But now, users’ attention to privacy is obviously different from the past. The “Endless” User Agreement produced by Phala Network has the same spirit with “Book of Heaven”. By the inherent absurdity of the work, it forces the audience to reconsider the importance of “meaning”, not only considering the meaning itself, but also the carrier of information:
Would you like to choose “Agree” via app, or “Disagree” via encryption?
Contributor: Angelina
About Phala
A Substrate-based confidential smart contract blockchain on which you can develop confidentiality-preserving and privacy-first blockchain apps. Member of Substrate Builders Program starting lineup. Recipient of Web3 Foundation Grant. Phala will be a parachain of Polkadot, freeing the privacy computing power of countless CPUs to provide confidentiality-preserving function for all blockchains.
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About ArtGee:
ArtGee is an online gallery dedicated to cryptographic art curation. Based on online curation, ArtGee provides cryptographic art collectors with the introduction of the most popular cryptographic artworks and relevant information services of the cryptographic art market. We will fully update news for cryptographic art enthusiasts from many dimensions, such as daily theme curating, broadcasting cryptographic art news, and joining cryptographic artists’ latest trends. In the future, ArtGee will become an online cryptographic art gallery that supports free and secure trade.
