Category: Log

The Burqini/Veilkini/Modest Sea Alternative Swimwear etc. are brilliant outfits for the beaches of tomorrow. As the ozone layer shrinks these outfits will be recommended for everyone spending time in the sun.

I’m curious about the Islamic clothing code. According to the Islam and clothing wikipedia article, there are different guidelines for “clothing inside and outside the house”. I’m curious to learn how social medias have affected these guidelines. Social media’s mix private and public spheres and harvest personal data for their databases (biometric data, location data, photos used by mobile phone security applications for facial recognition services etc.). For example, mobile phone photography applications often allow user to backup images to private online folders, which are only accessible for the user. At glance the are private spaces but the “terms of use” of these cloud based storages allow some companies, to use the data any way they see fit. Photos that people allow software companies to use, are being fed for artificial intelligences (which try to learn how to recognize objects in pictures) and facial recognition software etc. This means that computers look at the photos people take in private spaces and even interpret them! I’m curious to learn how people who dress according to the Islamic clothing traditions approach these services. How is biometric data and data about the user’s body movement (which I think exposes us more than images) seen in this perspective?

I’d also like to learn if are there of guidelines concerning housing cooperatives and condominiums where occupants share some living spaces with other occupants. How does contemporary architecture of Helsinki approach these kind of sensibilities? In the past the city has not been concerned if I see into my neighbor’s livingroom. Houses have been built so close to each other that citizens can monitor each other. I could argue that the possibility to monitor neighbours is even a part of the design of our cities: Making both work and living spaces transparent for the public eye is a common agenda for our architecture and technology. From the perspective of economics there is no difference between the inside and outside of the house. Both sites have been pierced by the same technology.

A culture can be called “civilized” only when it’s discovered a cure for hiccups. 

I should just hang out and drink beer for the rest of my life. The results are more uplifting than my work as an artist.