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The government of India has repeatedly blocked Google Street View from operating in the country, citing privacy and national security concerns. But they cannot prevent individuals from taking their own images and uploading them to the platform, whereupon Google applies the same recognition algorithms it uses for its own images. The misalignment that occurs because each image is taken with different equipment and from a different angle leads to ‘glitched images’, which are at the heart of Joe Paul Cyriac’s ‘Abyss’. The images disrupt the illusion of perfectionism of the techno-optimists.

‘Abyss’ is about the surveillance state and surveillance capitalism. The curbing of Google Street View foreshadowed stricter government control over the Internet in India, which has the highest rate of Internet blocking in the world. At the same time, the constant accumulation of data points to an insidious form of surveillance by both governments and private companies, who turn everyday experiences into data for the purpose of manipulating and shaping our behaviour.

Courtesy of 25 x 25 Initiative of the India Foundation for the Arts, supported by the Kshirsagar-Apte Foundation, Titan Company Limited, and Priya Paul and Sethu Vaidyanathan.

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