Zoom Obscura 2021

Zoom Obscura is an artist‑based design research project responding to the ubiquity of video‑conferencing as a technical and cultural phenomenon throughout the Covid‑19 pandemic. As enterprise software such as Zoom rapidly came to mediate even the most personal and intimate interactions, we supported and collaborated with seven independent artists to explore technical and creative interventions in video‑conferencing.

We invited critical interventions that would help users counter and regain agency over how personal data is captured, transmitted and processed by these platforms. In this design study we analyse, post‑hoc, how each of the seven projects employed aspects of counterfunctional design to achieve these aims. Each project reveals different strategies for counterfunctionality in video‑conferencing software and highlights opportunities to design interactions and experiences that challenge prevailing norms and expectations.

I developed A Map of Zoom, to inspire the artists to intervene in various layers of the Zoom assemblage.

Outputs include a reflective blog, photographic and audiovisual documentation, speculative artefacts and modest interventions intended to make visible the often‑hidden labour and negotiations that occur when private life is mediatised. See the project blog.