This project actually started out as a school project for Vincent Leclerc's Physical Computing and Tangible Media class at Concordia University. It was called Zero Privacy, and I made everything with Marc Beaulieu. I've taken it from there and boosted the Website, and (as of 2009) rebuilt the electonics inside the station.
What it's about
“You have zero privacy anyway, get over it.” - Scott McNealy
Iamclean.org is a critique of social networking sites and devices. I was talking to a friend on msn Messenger earlier, and after pointing out that she had spent the whole day at the computer doing nothing, she added "msn, aim, icq, facebook, myspace and music. Enough to waste complete days". More specifically, this project takes aim at the idea of online "status", where you can let people know where you are at any moment in time very easily with the help of a computer and a little Internet.
Most of the works I've seen dealing with this issue were essentially rants that attacked the idea by directing all the hate they could at these devices and their makers. In a sense, I thought they were not completely effective in their critique since they do not seem to address the fact that people DO use these sites, and there are clear advantages to using them - It's just that everything has gone a little too far in terms of invading people's private space if you ask me. I wanted to use the system itself to make my critique, instead of simply denigrating it, which is a whole lot easier.
Since the Web 2.0's immense development, it seems like the emergence of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and MSN Live appears unstoppable, and people are defenitely tuning in to make the most of the interactive awesomeness. Brand new web development tools such as Action Script 3.0, Ajax, etc. make the interactive experience very stimulating for our brains, which explains the addictiveness of it all.
How it works
I have in my room this beautiful docking station (made of plaster, covered in paint with a shiny coating - made by Marc again) which actually looks a lot like an iPod docking station. It is very curvy, completely white and reminds me a little of an altar, giving the central object a god-like aura. On the other side is a slick little green status LED on the side. But instead of having my iPod or a cellphone charging there, it is actually holding my deodorant stick. I strongly suggest you go to the media section and have a look at it.
Every time I take the deodorant out of the docking station, the status LED goes on, and the installation knows I'm applying deodorant on. After a dozen seconds (usually) I'm finished, and put the deodorant back in its neat little slot. At the back of the installation, there is an RJ-45 (Ethernet, or Internet cable) jack, which lets me to plug it into any router or internet source. This allows the information to be sent out to my website instantly, where a live visualisation makes it available for the whole world to see which days I have put deodorant on, and for how many seconds (click on the "launch" button on the main page). You can also search for a certain date, and reorganize the days as you please.
One fun thing about this is the instantaneous quality of it. There is also the fact that the station can be either AC-powered or battery-powered with four standard AA batteries. So I can carry it around if I want to, plug it into any working Internet jack and tell the world I am putting deodorant on. It doesn't need any kind of configuration, and has a very high working percentage (around 98-100%).
Obviously this is a parody, and I would love to see the concept being expanded - I though of making the device wireless, or adding to this another "monitor" for my shower or teeth-brushing activity, to have some kind of "web-based central hygiene system".
For more in-depth details as to how the actual hardware/software configuration works, see the technical section.