Inserted into urban environs, Unintended Emissions captures, dissects, maps and projects radio emissions invisibly shared by our portable wireless devices.
Employing two arrays of directional Yagi antennae the project attempts to determine positions of Wi-Fi devices in the vicinity.
Along with the X,Y coordinates, Unintended Emissions reveals meta-data such as make of device, networks the device previously connected to and Internet connection requests transmitted by the device out into the air.
Similar to surveillance and tracking systems such as StingRay, Unintended Emissions places mobile Wi-Fi users on a 2D map indicating the kind of device user has, time of appearance, user’s network activity and other user-specific meta data. This information can be further analyzed to determine the user’s identity and movements within a locality and the Internet.
Using methods and technologies known to be deployed by federal, surveillance initiatives, the intervention seeks to engender a "healthy paranoia" in the interests of an increased techno-political subjectivity.
