“Tell all the truth, but tell it slant,” said Emily Dickinson. When it comes to art, that’s the dictum. How can an artist express something that we all know, but has either lost the ability to move us, or never accumulated that power in the first place? That’s what artist Niklas Roy is attempting to do with his interactive public art piece, “My Little Piece of Privacy,” a piece that, for all its whimsy, tells a truth about privacy and data tracking — but tells it slant. Here’s more from COLOSSAL:

To stop passersby from peeping into his workshop, he strung up a white, lace curtain stretching only partially across his window. Titled “My Little Piece of Privacy,” the ironic project from 2010 was established to offer seclusion to the artist, while recording those who walked past his space. Each outside movement triggers a motor to position the thin fabric in front of the person attempting to look inside. The resulting footage shows various strategies people use⁠—think rapid arm waving and hopping from one spot to another⁠—to try to trick the mechanism tracking their positions.

Niklas Roy

See more!