Who am I?

Winter semester 2018/2019

In search of the data-me

In May 2018, the new General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union came into force, allowing anyone to request their data profiles from companies and organizations. This allows for the first time an insight into the data that companies collect about us. Anyone who has ever requested his data from Google, for example, realizes that these are huge data packages that you first have to filter for yourself. During the semester project students got to know tools to read and analyze their data. Then they started to tell their own stories and design them visually as software or data sculptures. The process started with an extensive data research and was documented by the students. Which personal data does which company or organisation have about me and what do they do with it? What format does the data have? How can I make them understandable? Which questions remain open? The semester has produced very different results: Hourglasses make it clear how much time passes on Facebook and Google, an analog Facebook calendar shows unexpected connections, a website examines the connection between weather data, account status and Netflix consumption. Can digital data profiles be compared with a Stasi file? Do voice messages characterize a person?