marc b�hlen

conceptual artist Marc Bohlen, UB assistant professor of media study. His medium is not oil or bronze, but robotics and site-specific data, and his practice combines the structured approach of scientific investigation with artistic intuition, spiced with a deliberate and effective dash of good or bad taste.

Visit his online archives at http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~mrbohlen/ and you will find hungry chickens chasing a motorized food supply, digital video cameras that monitor rare plant species and a conceptual electronic device that would measure the bad breath of carnivorous humans and also …

The Open Biometrics Project and its Keeper (2002 – )

The Open Biometrics Project and its Keeper challenge hard and fast classification of biometric data. Numerous government and private agencies are working towards large-scale biometric identification systems. Visitors to the United States are now routinely finger-scanned at border crossings. In the near future, no official government document will be issued without a fingerprint or an eye-scan. But are you really who they think you are?
The Open Biometric Project and its Keeper crack open the clean fabrication of automated biometric identification at its root. The Keeper calculates and prints characteristic points together with their coordinates, type code (ridge or ending) and color-coded likelihood as a probabilistic Idcard for your reference. Keep this pint-out with your official documents. It will allow you to question other non-transparent biometric readers.