The project “Made to Measure — I is a Search Engine” examines how tech companies develop strategies to profit from human weaknesses and insecurities by analyzing user data.
Since 1979, Ars Electronica has been doing pioneering work—building bridges between disciplines, serving as a platform for new alliances, and providing impetus for an open, inclusive dialogue about our future. In collaboration with artists from around the world, we realize and present projects that challenge conventions and anticipate developments.
For this series, we ask members of the Ars Electronica team to delve into our archive—the world’s largest of its kind—and select a project that has personally touched, inspired, or provoked them, and to tell us why this project is relevant today. Together, we embark on a journey to milestones of the so-called digital revolution. Milestones that were cutting edge.
In this issue, Veronika Liebl, Director of European Cooperation and Head of the Festival/Prix/Exhibitions Department at Ars Electronica, gives us insight into a project that shows how much our digital footprints reveal about us—and why the conscious handling of data, privacy, and responsibility is more important today than ever before.
Which project did you choose?
I chose “Made to Measure — I is a Search Engine” by the Laokoon collective (Cosima Terrasse (FR), Moritz Riesewieck (DE), and Hans Block (DE)). The work was commissioned as part of “Ars Electronica Journeys,” which we developed during the pandemic to support artists and give our audience the opportunity to experience art. As part of the Ars Electronica Festival 2021, “Made to Measure — I is a Search Engine” was then presented via stream. The whole project was financed by Creative Europe and the European ARTificial Intelligence Lab, which highlighted the legal, cultural, educational, and ethical dimensions of AI.
Tell us what this project is about.
The starting point for “Made to Measure” is the question of whether it is possible to create a doppelganger from a user’s Google data and, if so, how close this doppelganger is to reality.
In the summer of 2020, Laokoon called on people to submit their data anonymously. More than 100 people responded to the call. After reviewing all the submissions, the artist collective chose a data set that comprised more than 100,000 data points and documented five years in the life of a woman. Using algorithmic analyses, the artists created a comprehensive personality profile and then reconstructed places, crises, relationships, and intimate moments step by step—they wrote the story of a person they had never met.
Why is this project so outstanding?
In theory, we know that our data is valuable. However, “Made to Measure” shows very specifically how our lives can be reconstructed in their entirety from seemingly insignificant digital data—sometimes not quite accurately contextualized, but alarmingly close to reality. It shows how easy it is to create personality profiles of us that reveal very personal things such as our sexual preferences or mental illnesses such as eating disorders. All of this, in turn, forms the basis for numerous business models that exploit addictive potential, opinion manipulation, and dependencies in a targeted and unscrupulous manner for monetization—as experts who were also part of the project explain in interviews.
“Made to Measure” makes it clear that the question of data power is not a science fiction story about an omniscient superintelligence, but that it is about very concrete mechanisms in the here and now. I believe that we are far too unaware that the shift in economic power through the systematic collection and analysis of data has long been a reality. And this data power follows profit-oriented logic that serves the interests of shareholders – not the common good. Those who have access to data control markets and influence entire industries.
Of course, all of this is ambivalent. Collecting and analyzing data also helps us to improve climate models, refine medical diagnoses, and make traffic flows more efficient. Problems arise when access to data is concentrated in the hands of a few corporations or is even misused—when privacy is undermined, opinions are manipulated, or democratic processes are destabilized.
Projects such as “Made to Measure” make it clear that we need clear and democratically legitimized guidelines for handling data. With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of 2018 and the AI Act of 2024, the European Union has taken important steps in this regard; and in the coming years, the focus will be on how these legal frameworks are implemented in practice. Informational self-determination, the right to privacy, the safeguarding of freedom, and protection against discrimination must be the cornerstones of a functioning digital society. Anyone who has seen “Made to Measure” understands why these principles are non-negotiable—because they mark the boundary between technological progress that serves us humans and a development that subjugates us.
To what extent is it relevant today?
Data is the currency of the digital age—but who owns it, who uses it, and who profits from it? Without effective regulations, power continues to shift toward large, private tech companies that know more about us as citizens than our democratically elected governments.
“Made to Measure” demonstrates how easily the insights gained from our digital footprints can be used against us and why it is so important who has control over data: Data protection is not a technical issue, it is a matter of democratic protection.
Added to this is the political dimension, because when we talk about data, we are also talking about power. And there are voices that should really wake us up. Peter Thiel, for example—co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, early investor in Facebook, and one of the most influential Silicon Valley investors of all—openly rejects democracy because he believes it slows down innovation and entrepreneurial freedom.
This is highly problematic because it shows that influential players have long been working to undermine democratic values such as participation, transparency, and equality, and to put their own economic interests above everything else. The data economy plays an essential role in this: those who have data control not only markets, but also people—their habits, preferences, and weaknesses.
And that is precisely why it is so important to democratically regulate data power. “Made to Measure” makes this tangible in a way that leaves no one cold.
Veronika Liebl – thank you!
Veronika Liebl
Veronika Liebl is Director of European Cooperation and Head of the Festival/Prix/Exhibitions Department at Ars Electronica. She studied economics and business administration at Johannes Kepler University Linz with stays at Harvard University and the University of Fribourg. She has been working at Ars Electronica since 2011 in cultural management and European project development. She is also a member of the Linz Cultural Advisory Board, the board of UNESCO City of Media Arts Linz, and the Content Innovation Council of the Frankfurt Book Fair. For over ten years, she has been implementing cooperation programs with partners from the arts, science, and business, and has led EU projects such as the STARTS Award and the European ARTificial Intelligence Lab.