the Suspect Backpack
About
The Suspect Backpack is a wearable mobile sonic media art experience providing an individual user with the opportunity for first-person interaction and engagement.
photos: Danielle Wilde
Intended for use in public space, members of the public become an unwitting audience, meanwhile creating a personalised and intimate environment for the individual user. Proximity between individual (user) and public (audience) is explored while inevitable shifts in distance alter the resultant audio heard by the user (on headphones) and the public (on portable speakers). The two sonic experiences concentrate on social anxiety (for the headphone user) and "fear of the other" (for the public audience), arousing suspicion about a potential terrorist threat.
photo: Christian Malejka
Based on the case of David Mery and his subsequent research on profiling, the Suspect Backpack is designed to blend into a crowd. Using an ordinary backpack with "protruding wires", curiosity and possible concern are only raised when members of the public move close enough to see the exposed cables or are within audible range.
Technology implemented in this work includes sonar proximity sensors, an Arduino microcontroller, headphones and speakers plus small laptop running a MaxMSP patch.
AudioVisual Documentation
- supect backpack - alexanderplatz [quicktime mpeg4 video]
- internal space (headphones) - excerpt [mp3 audio]
- external space (speakers) - excerpt [mp3 audio]
More
For information on the creation process and associated research and writings, see the project working blog: suspectbackpack.blogspot.com
This project was developed as an honours project supervised Mitchell Whitelaw at the University of Canberra. Greatly appreciated technical assistance was provided by Nick Mariette.