FAKING PERSONAL DATAS
Biobots criticises the policy of large multinationals that collect and trade personal data through smartphones, relating to their customers’ health. Selling this information to certain institutions would have serious consequences. For example, a health insurance company could deny a claim to a person who, based on his or her personal data, might be deemed not to be working on their fitness sufficiently. By simulating the activity of a perfectly healthy individual, Biobots presents itself as a collection of objects of resistance to this collection of personal information, a scrambler that helps people keep control over their personal data.
CARDIOBOT
Cardiobot is a device designed to fool a mobile application into studying your heart rate. Normally designed to process the video stream from a camera on the skin, the application analyses the frequency of shades of red seen by the camera as the blood passes through. Cardiobot reproduces this red sequence by spinning a disc covered with flat patches of different shades of red. The smartphone’s camera, which is then placed against the rotating disc, perceives subtle changes in the red tones. Since the speed of rotation of the disc is regular, the application deduces that the heart rate is very stable and healthy and records this data as that of the user.
SLEEPBOT
Sleepbot is designed to house a smartphone under its glass cover to isolate it from ambient noise. Placed next to a speaker broadcasting white noise, it is immersed in a sound environment similar to that of a bedroom in which a person would be sleeping. At regular intervals the speaker emits noises that simulate the movements of a sleeping person during a shallow sleep phase. In such a context, the sounds captured by the smartphone are those of a perfect, restful sleep and make the user appear to have very good sleep patterns.
PODOBOT
Podobot is a motorised swing for smartphones. With this swinging movement, the automaton mimics the movement of a device in a person’s pocket while walking. The smartphone’s pedometer then captures a long walk at a steady pace and records this walking data in the application, simulating that the user is in good physical shape.
