Project Alias wants
you to be able to
SPEAK FREELY
TECHNOLOGY – It is arguable that today,
more than ever, we need to watch what we say.
The reason? Not state-sponsored surveillance
but convenience capitalism. Many of us have
eagerly installed AI-enabled listening devices
from the likes of Amazon, Apple and Google
into our homes, trading diffuse (and largely
unconsidered) invasions of privacy for the
seamlessness of voice-user interfaces. The
speed of uptake is unprecedented. According
to market-research company eMarketer,
9.5 million UK residents used such ‘smart
speakers’ in 2018, a staggering growth rate of
98.6 per cent over the preceding year. These
figures are mirrored across the majority of
Western countries.
Although the most these devices usu-
ally do is give you a weather update or allow
you to reorder washing tablets hands-free,
several instances have proved more nefarious,
such as the recent case of a Portland womanwhose Amazon Alexa secretly taped her and
sent the recordings to one of her contacts
without her authorization. Last year the same
company filed a patent to allow its devices to
eavesdrop on your conversations continuously
in order to better target its advertising.
Designers Bjørn Karmann and Tore
Knudsen are keen to help concerned smart-
speaker owners push back. Their Project Alias
system consists of a microphone and speaker
connected to a tiny Raspberry Pi board that
sits atop your existing speaker like a tumor-
ous growth. It plays white noise, blocking the
host device’s microphone and preventing it
from eavesdropping until it hears a predefined
name. The design of the unit is a visual meta-
phor for the project’s intentions. Karmann
and Knudsen: ‘We looked at how Cordyceps
fungi and viruses can appropriate and control
insects to fulfil their own agendas and were
inspired to create our own parasite for smart
home systems. We started Project Alias to
demonstrate how maker-culture can be used
to redefine our relationships with smart home
technologies by having designers delegate
more power to a product’s end users.’ With-
out a doubt, physical and virtual spaces will
continue to overlap, and digital DIY devices
will grow in importance as consumers look to
belatedly wrestle back some control over their
domestic environments. – PM
bjoernkarmann.dk
toreknudsen.dk22 OBJECTS