The Black Box Bellagio
Welcome to the Black Box Bellagio - an unusual casino that won’t take your money, but is after your freedom, integrity and private data instead. Play with the (un)fairness of expected values, predicted risks, and giving up your identity. Disclaimer: The house always seems to win.
The internet services we think of as free are often paid for with our data: it is the price of access, and is used to determine our treatment and advantages. Our data feeds the algorithms which can unfairly or wrongly categorise, exclude or discriminate against us. The Black Box Bellagio uses the dynamics of a casino to communicate the asymmetry of this relationship. At this casino, like on the internet, your personal data determines the advantages you get, the luck and misfortune you experience, and how much it really costs you to play.
The Black Box Bellagio has been developed by Roos Groothuizen (1992, NL), an Amsterdam/Utrecht-based designer and artist, who cares about digital rights. Fascinated with the unfair distribution of information and how online algorithms systematically discriminate us, her work reflects on in-depth research and recent developments, often with interactive or game-like elements. The Black Box Bellagio has been realized in collaboration with Ymer Marinus and the Waag.
Film documentation from De Nieuwe Anita (May 2018), by Jimena Gauna for Waag:
The Black Box Bellagio at de Nieuwe Anita / Aftermovie
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 732546. The Black Box Bellagio is organised as part of DECODE, a project developed by 14 European partners. Through this casino DECODE aims to engage a new group of people in conversations about personal data, privacy and data commons.
Pictures by Jimena Gauna for Waag
More picture and information: Click here
