Engaged Cinema: Home Smart Home

Smart home technology promises to make life more convenient - but who are the invisible guests we're inviting into our private environment?
Since the mid-20th century, the “smart home” has symbolised a vision of utopian domestic futures. However, recent advancements in smart home technology have raised new concerns, as these innovations are increasingly being used as tools for domestic abuse. Internet-connected devices—such as locks, speakers, thermostats, lights, and cameras—marketed as conveniences are now sometimes exploited for harassment, surveillance, revenge, and control. For victims, the experience is often exacerbated by a lack of understanding of how smart technology operates, which can give abusers a way to assert power even in their physical absence.
Home Smart Home is a new media artwork that aims to investigate a new pattern of behaviour in domestic abuse cases tied to the rise of smart home technology. The work establishes a dialogue with “The Horla”, a short horror story written by Guy de Maupassant in 1887 that unfolds the mental degradation of an unnamed narrator haunted by an invisible creature. Drawing on the analogies carried by the story, the artwork by Morger, Zerbst and Ranfagni articulates a contemporary examination of the power dynamics embedded into the new technology, as well as the psychological effects of the new form of digital harassment.
Goethe-Institut Glasgow invite visual artists Martina Morger and Lukas Zerbst as well as curator Tommaso Ranfagni to present parts of their work-in-progress art film "Home Smart Home". Taking the video as a starting point, a panel joined by experts from the field of media ethics and gender-based violence will critically discuss the growing prevalence of smart technology in homes and its (un-)intended consequences, and how its technology has become a tool of domestic abuse.
Trigger warning: Please note that the event will discuss risks of domestic violence. If you have any questions with regards to this please get in touch.
The production of the art work "Home Smart Home" is supported by Swiss Cultural Fund UK.

Host or Publisher Goethe-Institut Glasgow