This is the first post in a long time. Over the next two months I will add one every day while I’m working on a new stage of an ongoing project I began in Berlin in 2010. I haven’t posted like this in a while. I find it extremely helpful to share and collect research, create an arc for the work, and of course to stay focused. While the project will evolve as I add content to this space, I’ll share the essential bits from my plans here:
This proposal for a DAAD grant will support research and a series of writings and visualizations that examine how the technological inventions of the East German Ministry for State Security preempt Facebook, the NSA, and the world of Big Data. I will work at Humboldt University and the Stasi Records Agency (BStU) in Berlin and the Museum at the Round Corner in Leipzig, researching and documenting the schematics and actual machines developed by the Stasi for surveillance. With this knowledge I will frame an investigation that uses the analog devices of the Stasi to lend insight into the methods implemented today as software by social media, advertising groups, and intelligence agencies in the service of domestic surveillance and censorship.
I feel super fortunate to be able to continue this project I started almost seven years ago thanks to support from the German Academic Exchange Service or DAAD (German: Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) and Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Ernst at the Institute of Musicology and Media Studies at Humboldt University Berlin.
Stasi files at the BStU. These are not the personal files the Stasi collected, but notes, diagrams, and parts lists detailing the inventions and processes developed during the Stasi’s almost 40 year reign.
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