Data is everywhere

2021

A collaboration with PhD Martin Skrodzik and artist Tiz Creel for the Online Correspondence of EU Digital Futures by Polis 180 and the Goethe Institute.

We created an experiment to infer participants’ personal biometric data from seemingly innocent questions, things we often share on social media. Two questions were formulated and designed to enable us to infer information without the participants knowing.

We inferred participants' ages using two factors: the year of the first kiss and the Chinese zodiac sign. Most people have their first kiss between the ages of 12 and 15, according to multiple studies. The Chinese zodiac signs are repeated every 12 years, giving us leverage to expand the average age of the first kiss to between 10 and 21 years old. The formula predicts participants' ages with 90% accuracy. The survey also includes multiple questions about data and personal information.