The visitor to the latest exhibition of the Fundación Telefónica in Madrid bursts out laughing when he sees his own image on the screen, but treated with the parameters of big data. “54% chance of being a foreigner.” “32% chance of living in a suburban neighborhood.” It’s normal to smile, it seems like a joke. Then the smile fades and the questions arise: “Is this how you see me?” big data?” And above all: “Who uses it big dataOr better yet: “A report from this leviathan will end up in the hands of an HR manager who will decide on my hiring tomorrow?” The visitor sighs, it’s just a work of art. But then he discovers the next room, plastered with the passwords of thousands of Madridians that were discovered during a security breach two years ago. “Will mine be written on this wall?”
The digital world is curious. We accept cookies like someone who eats a biscuit without looking at the label: quickly, safely and, above all, without thinking too much. In the meantime, let’s leave the family photos in that eternal and ethereal amber, pleases and comments like a digital breadcrumb trail. We do it in automatic mode, as if our time spent on the Internet leaves no trace. Little creatures.
This is why exhibitions are popular Today is a good day to talk about Digital Rights They arrive at the right time. In an ecosystem where Infoxationcyberbullying and data leaks are our daily bread, this exhibition reminds us – sometimes gently, sometimes uncomfortably – that in life online We also have rights (and responsibilities). Inspired by the 2021 Digital Bill of Rights, the exhibition covers seven major digital territories. It does so with humour, with everyday examples and with installations that shake you inside, signed by artists (Noemí Iglesias Barrios, Roel Heremans, Miguel Rangil, Domestic Data Streamers, Marc Lee, Hasan Elahi…) who know how to convert data, screens and algorithms into necessary questions.
A screen shows the groups, sexual or racial, that have found ways to gain visibility on the Internet. Opposite, an electric hammer drills into the wall as fast as words are used on the Internet. Negro OR whorea sign that hate speech is also growing in this digital Wild West in which we live. Two sides of the same coin, neither of which should be ignored.
Curated by the artistic collective Domestic Data Streamers and Fundación Telefónica, the exhibition offers a broad overview of the work of artists and technologists reflecting on seven rights: freedom of expression and truthful information, privacy, identity, decent work, the right to be forgotten and digital inheritance, access to the Internet and human decision versus AI. Almost nothing. The proposal, also promoted by the Digital Rights Observatory, is not intended to scare, but to awaken.
Not everything is murky, and to show it there is a button: the summoner Synthetic memories (by the same collective Domestic Data Streamers, 2024), where generative artificial intelligence is used to capture the memories of the elderly in photographs in an impressive creative exercise to which the protagonists themselves give their approval once they have seen the image. But, of course, it also explores the darker side of the metaverse. There is a particularly curious piece in the exhibition, The follower (Dries Depoorter, 2023), which contrasts two complementary realities: on the one hand, on one screen we see famous people influencer posing in one of his selfies on Instagram. On the other hand, and through access to public video surveillance cameras, we see the other camera of the coin: how they tuck their bellies, how they pout, how they believe that no one is watching them. Few ways are as effective as The follower to understand that, in 2025, there is always someone watching, even if we don’t see them.
Browsing the Internet does not have to be an act of faith, but rather a conscious exercise. And perhaps, after visiting the exhibition, you will think twice before accepting cookies like they were free sweets or using the same password for everything. Today is a day like many others to talk about digital rights… but, above all, to start exercising them wisely.
