Abstract
Blast Theory’s piece Karen (2015) is here to help you sort your life: Karen is a life coach you can download as an app. But your frequent one-to-one sessions over a period of 9 days soon take an unexpected turn, as Karen appears to be psychologically volatile, confused, and disrespectful of professional boundaries. A hybrid between game and drama, the piece raises questions about privacy and control at a time when technologies increasingly permeate every aspect of our lives. Karen prompts you to question how you use media, what information you leak through this usage, and what is at stake in doing so—useful life advice if ever there was any.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Benford, Steve, Chris Greenhalgh, Gabriella Giannachi, Brendan Walker, Joe Marshall, and Tom Rodden. 2012. Uncomfortable Interactions. In CHI ’12 Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: 2005–2014. New York, 5–10 May 2012. Available from: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.591.5009&rep=rep1&type=pdf. Accessed 2 Mar 2016.
Blast Theory. 2016. Blast Theory Website. Available from: http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/projects/. Accessed 2 Mar 2016.
Chatzichristodoulou, Maria. 2015. Blast Theory. In British Theatre Companies: 1995–2014, ed. Liz Tomlinson, 231–254. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama.
Chatzichristodoulou, Maria. 2009. How to Kidnap Your Audiences: An Interview with Matt Adams of Blast Theory. In Interfaces of Performance, ed. Maria Chatzichristodoulou, Janis Jefferies, and Rachel Zerihan, 107–118. Farnham: Ashgate.
Eagle, Nathan, and Alex (Sandy) Pentland. 2006. Reality Mining: Sensing Complex Social Systems. Personal Ubiquitous Computing 10 (4): 255–268.
Fuchs, Mathias, Sonia Fizek, Paolo Ruffino, and Niklas Schrape, (eds.). 2014. Rethinking Gamification. Luneburg: Meson Press.
Hood, Laura. 2013. Google’s Terms and Conditions are Less Readable than Beowulf. The Conversation, October 17. Available from: http://theconversation.com/googles-terms-and-conditions-are-less-readable-than-beowulf-19215. Accessed 2 Mar 2016.
Khan, Nora K. 2015. Managing Boundaries with your Intelligent Agent, Rhizome Blog, April 7. Available from: http://rhizome.org/editorial/2015/apr/7/boundary-management/. Accessed 2 Mar 2016.
Koh, Adeline. 2014. The Political Power of Play. Keynote Address Re: Humanities 2014 Conference, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, 3 April 2014. Available from: http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/journal/political-power-of-play/. Accessed 9 Mar 2015.
Lyons, M.H., R. Ellis, J.M.M. Potter, D.A.M. Holm, and R. Venouziou. 2006. The Socio-Economic Impact of Pervasive Computing—Intelligent Spaces and the Organisation of Business. In Intelligent Spaces: The Application of Pervasive ICT, ed. Alan Steventon, and Steve Wright, 19–35. New York: Springer.
Montola, Markus, Jaakko Stenros, and Annika Waern. 2009. Pervasive Games Theory and Design: Experiences on the Boundary Between Life and Play. Amsterdam: Morgan Kaufmann.
Motson, Elliott. 2016. The Snoopers’ Charter: A Government Invasion? Liberal Democrat Voice, March 5. Available from: http://www.libdemvoice.org/49655-49655.html. Accessed 6 Mar 2016.
Richardson, Ingrid, and Larissa Hjorth. 2014. Mobile Games: From Tetris to Foursquare. In The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media, ed. Gerard Goggin, and Larissa Hjorth, 256–266. New York: Routledge.
Secretary of State for the Home Department, UK. 2015. Draft Investigatory Powers Bill, November 2015. Available online: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/473770/Draft_Investigatory_Powers_Bill.pdf. Accessed 2 Mar 2016.
Smithers, Rebecca. 2011. Terms and Conditions: Not Reading the Small Print Can Mean Big Problems. The Guardian, May 11. Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/money/2011/may/11/terms-conditions-small-print-big-problems. Accessed 2 Mar 2016.
Tandavanitj, Nick. 2016. Phone Interview with Author. 18 January 2016 (unpublished).
Tandavanitj, Nick. 2015. Karen: Telling Tales with Data. Talk Data Bodies Symposium, Watermans, London, 14 Nov 2015.
Wark, McKenzie. 2004. A Hacker Manifesto. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Chatzichristodoulou, M. (2017). Karen by Blast Theory: Leaking Privacy. In: Broadhurst, S., Price, S. (eds) Digital Bodies. Palgrave Studies in Performance and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95241-0_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95241-0_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-95240-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-95241-0
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)