Peter Yang - Data Privacy Projects

Performance ArtData Privacy

Overview

Where I Started

Conceptual Starting Point

The project began with the idea of Big Brother from George Orwell's 1984, then connected that image of surveillance to contemporary data monopolies and smart device ecosystems.
As daily life becomes digital information, it becomes difficult to know who can access personal data, when they access it, and for what purpose.

Project Context

Large technology companies collect search behavior, clicks, emails, videos, app usage, and device interactions under the promise of convenience.
During the prolonged COVID-19 period, relationships, work, and private routines moved further online, making data leakage, recommendation systems, and ambient device monitoring feel more present in everyday life.

What I Did

Projection Works

Created Data Rights Projection as a graphic projection action inside a real smart device retail environment, using the store context to question how consumer technology frames data collection.
Built Digital Panopticon as a spatial projection work that makes smart device use feel watched, turning the private room into a visualization of invisible data surveillance.
Used projected graphics, spatial placement, and documentation video to translate abstract data systems into a bodily and environmental experience.

What It Visualized

Surveillance

Made data collection feel spatial rather than abstract, placing the viewer inside the logic of monitoring.

Autonomy

Questioned how convenience-driven smart devices can also become systems that limit privacy and self-determination.

Data rights

Framed personal information as something political, embodied, and contested rather than a hidden technical setting.

What I Learned

Key Insights

Projection can make invisible digital systems easier to feel because light, scale, and space turn data surveillance into a physical atmosphere.
A familiar retail or bedroom environment can become critical when the graphics reveal the monitoring systems usually hidden behind smart-device convenience.

Critical Constraints

Because the work relies on public and private spatial contexts, documentation has to preserve the feeling of being watched without flattening the experience into a static graphic.
The concept needs careful wording so the critique stays focused on data power, privacy, and autonomy rather than making unsupported technical claims about a specific device.