Exhibition: User Content?

The exhibition User Content? is the output of the first ideas collision of LawTech Collider. Facilitated by Dr Lucy Royal-Dawson & Prof Eugene McNamee, members of the Legal Futures Research Project connected with colleagues in the Belfast School of Art to collaborate. Dr Katherine Nolan and Dr Anna Pathé-Smith, who conduct research on data protection law and the surveillance of fertility and pregnancy data by health monitoring apps, devices and associated devices, worked alongside Fine Arts academics, Dr Emma Campbell and Dr Laura O’Connor, and Interaction Designers Daniel Philpott and Dr Kyle Boyd. Based on their exposure to the legal research and their own experience, the creative practitioners developed their own works. The work has been exhibited twice, with some changes in between:

1.Belfast Exposed Gallery, Friday 24th October to Saturday 2nd November 2024.

2.Public Record Office of Northern Ireland Gallery, 7th April to 23rd May 2025.

The Works:
Terms & Conditions by Daniel Philpott & Dr Kyle Boyd - digital on foamex & digital on card.
Depicting common user journeys in user agreements of social media apps, the displays are an experiment in delivering a simplified format of the critical content areas related to how our data are collected and used.

Fairy Code by Dr Emma Campbell - digital photographic collage - and Digital Brace by Dr Emma Campbell – sculpture.
Viewed together, these works are a metaphor of being enclosed or restricted by a ‘one-size-fits-all' approach of generalised data used to advertise around, diagnose, and even dismiss sexual and reproductive health concerns. Biases that can result in data gathering can then be magnified, when utilised on a global scale, ignoring subtle but important differences.

Privacy Policy by Dr Laura O’Connor - video installation
Privacy Policy is a performance to camera video work where the artist reads the policy terms of a fertility tracker app and device to camera whilst engaging in a makeover of sorts, resulting in her disappearing into the wall.

Cultural Methods by Dr Laura O’Connor – multi-media installation
This installation is a living thing controlled by fertility data. A modified medicine cabinet houses 84 individual shamrock plants which are kept alive by water, oxygen and light, delivered according to instructions from a Raspberry Pi computer programmed by fertility data collected by Laura’s fertility bracelet.