Thought Crimes, Installation, 2007

Thought Crimes is an interactive installation about the privacy concerns in this digital age.
Every time we go online we leave trails of information that are gathered up either by private companies, our
governments, or individuals. Often times this information is processed by large programs that build profiles
of us without our knowledge. Sometimes these profiles are harmless, deciding what ads to show us on a
website, and other times they're more dangerous, giving us credit reports or red-flagging us for the CIA.


Thought Crimes sought to reveal this system in a funny but also scary way. I wrote custom software to
track anybody stepping into the room, displaying a thought bubble that followed them around. Some
thoughts were harmless quips, and others were more sexual or embarrassing. There was also a
fictional movie that was played to explain the system, and how it gathered information to determine your
thoughts. Although the thoughts and movie were humorous, they were realistic enough to show that some
day a system like this could be implemented in real life.

Although it is not shown in the video, Thought Crimes is capable of tracking multiple moving targets.

Thought Crimes was written in Processing