Beyond the Algorithmically Amplified: Recap of Eavesdropping
By Laura McLean
SUSAN SCHUPPLI, The Missing 18 1/2 Minutes (Listening to Tapes), 2012, archival photograph. Courtesy the artist.
Comprising an exhibition at the Ian Potter Museum of Art in Melbourne and a considerable public program of lectures and performances spilling into Sydney and Brisbane, “Eavesdropping” was the result of a collaboration between curator, researcher and sound artist Joel Stern and James Parker, a researcher at Melbourne Law School. Extending an early definition of the eavesdropper in William Blackstone’s book Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765) as one who “listens under walls or windows, or the eaves of a house, to hearken after discourse, and thereupon to frame slanderous and mischievous tales,” the project examined the technics, legalities and politics of what it might mean for someone or something to be listened to.
