Introduction

In her role as Svetlana, Rechichi explicitly gathered demographic information and data about the viewing behaviour of visitors as they watched the video. Additionally, Svetlana performed close observation and note-taking during the period of participation. These processes are analogous to those typically used in website membership forms, which gather demographic details and log users’ navigation on the site. As such, OTE enacts a version of the twenty-first-century social contract in which participants are offered a free experience if they consent to surveillance. 

The work’s title, Only the Envelope, is a reference to the public debate that played out for a short time in Australia regarding the passing of new legislation surrounding data retention. The Australian Government’s Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Act 2015 requires telecommunications companies to retain and secure certain records for a period of two years. Then-Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, memorably defended this new depth of data surveillance by using the analogue-era metaphor of the personal letter; the material to be gathered is the metadata, akin to the material on the front of the envelope, while the contents of the letter remain private.[2] We need not worry about invasions of privacy, the analogy implies, because it is only the envelope that is gathered. In the television interview in which the proposed legislation was first explained, Abbott made an error, later clarified, by referring to web-browsing history as metadata when it is, in fact, content.[3] Abbott’s confusion is indicative of the public’s limited understanding of large-scale data gathering, also known as big data, with which we are now all complicit. 

Significant to this work is its ironic performance of faith in technological science, embodied in the character of Svetlana with her powerful eye-tracking device. In response to the polite-but-invasive requests for information by the ‘scientist’, the artist had hoped to invite resistance or reflective decision-making among visitors, as a way of exploring their own feelings on the matter of data retention.

There was little evidence of this among those who gave their consent to participate in the work, although more defiant responses were observed in those who simply observed the work or refused to be involved. Consent and participation in OTE are discussed at length elsewhere revealing that, in this work, the process of gaining informed consent is associated with a loss of power and knowledge.[4]

This exposition is primarily concerned with the audiovisual documents created through a re-enactment of the visitor’s experience. Once OTE was underway, but before the work was archived, the artist stepped into the role of a visitor and engaged with Svetlana, and this interaction was captured by the head-mounted eye-tracking device worn by the artist. The audiovisual material extends the work’s artistic outcomes, as well as provoking questions about the relationship between the artwork and its documents in the context of liveness in performance, addressed elsewhere.[5] However, this exposition takes the artwork status of the re-enactment as a given and seeks to explore its values and meanings. While the surveillance technology of the eye-tracking device generated data about viewing behaviour, which will be discussed in ‘Making the Work’, engaging in OTE as artistic research led to unanticipated findings. The eye-tracking device was redeployed as a head-mounted camera, capturing a re-enactment of the viewer’s experience, which created new audiovisual documents. These documents can be aesthetically analysed as images that form part of the work, and analysed as data that provide additional evidence for behavioural findings made within other methodological domains.

Only the Envelope (OTE) combines research methodologies to investigate the ways we share personal information in the public sphere. In this exposition, we interpret audiovisual documents generated by eye-tracking technology within an artistic research context. The artist (and co-author of this paper), Vahri McKenzie, created a performance for a gallery space, in which a ‘scientist’ offered visitors the opportunity to be involved in an ‘experiment’, in which they were invited to view an original video while wearing Tobii Pro Glasses 2, a wireless eye-tracking device.[1] The artist employed an assistant, Rachelle Rechichi, to play the role of the ‘scientist’ Svetlana, who gave her single-character performance to each visitor to the installation work. Rechichi is a writer and musician who had received training in the use of Tobii Pro Glasses 2.