A talk of interest to COR community….
COR/INFORMATICS SEMINAR
Kelly Gates
Associate Professor
Department of Communications & the Science Studies Program
University of California, San Diego
Date: Friday, April 10, 2015
Talk: 3:00 PM
Location: 6011 Donald Bren Hall
Refreshments: 4:15 PM, to be served in the 5th floor lobby
Talk Title: The Work of Wearing Cameras: Body-Worn Devices and Police Media Labor
Abstract:
The work of wearing cameras is fast becoming standard police practice. For a growing number of cops, cameras have become parts of their professional identities, now pieces of their uniforms that they attach to their bodies along with their badges, guns, tasers, handcuffs, radios, and other devices. But the wearable camera is not an isolated gadget or fashion accessory. It is a node in a distributed network of other cameras and bodies, standards and protocols, docking stations and data centers, police agencies and private companies. In this talk, Kelly Gates discusses the police body-worn camera phenomenon for what it reveals about the evolving socio-technical dimensions of policing in these times, arguing for an understanding of both police work and police power as simultaneously embodied, technical, infrastructural, performative, interpretive, and mediated.
Bio:
Kelly Gates is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and the Science Studies Program at University of California, San Diego. Gates specializes in the study of surveillance, digital media, and visual culture, from an analytical perspective that bridges science and technology studies and cultural and media studies. Her first book, Our Biometric Future: Facial Recognition Technology and the Culture of Surveillance, is a critical-cultural study of the automation of facial recognition and facial expression analysis, focusing on the applications of these experimental systems in policing, security, social media, and affect measurement. In her current research, Gates is investigating the emerging professional field of forensic video analysis, looking at the ways in which new visual imaging and archiving technologies are being incorporated into, and transforming, modern investigatory and evidentiary practices.