Team Studio Julia Janssen

Julia Janssen | Founder

Suzan Slinger | Production & General Manager

mEgg Griffing | A robot who writes on sperical and egg-shaped objects

Working with us

Julia Janssen mainly works on self-initiated research projects but is always open to new assignments and collaborations.

We are not actively looking for an intern or new team member, but if you have a nice idea, let us know!

Biography

Julia Janssen ('94) is an Amsterdam based artist, designer and public speaker. Through her art, she researches the influence of digitization on our physical world. Janssen mainly focuses on personal data. By creating awareness for the possible implications of, e.g. Targeted Advertisements and Artificial intelligence – and how those might affect safety, fairness, autonomy, freedom, equality and democracy–  She aims to create a better understanding of data and explore how we can control who knows what about you.

Janssens studied Graphic Design at the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in Arnhem (2012-16). During this period, her interest in data and technology grew. In 2015 and 2016, she started experimenting with privacy- and user agreements, our relationship to social media and methodologies behind the growing online advertising economy.

With her graduation project, 'Bank of Online Humanity (2016), she stated, "We have been enslaved by the data business," pointing to the economic value of personal data and the monetization of people's attention. This project won the Crypto Design Award – audience vote. From that moment, she knew she wanted to dedicate her artistic practice to data sovereignty and the future of the (safe, fair, transparent, sustainable, equal, and democratic) Internet.

In 2017 she received a grant for Talent Development from Creative Fund NL and a Pionier Grant from SIDN fund for Innovation and Internet. For about fifteen months, she investigated different topics around data and profiling and experimented with various media to visualize this research. In 2018, she launched 'The Attention Fair' – An installation with 12 games, visuals, and experiments about the value of personal data. You are no Facebook or Google user, nor an Amazon or Uber customer. Not a Netflix or Spotify streamer. You are their product. You are the product of your own information.

In 2019 she started the project '0.0146 seconds.' A collective read-oud-loud performance of 835 privacy policies that one accepts with just one click on 'got it' when visiting the website of Daily Mail. Janssen travels to events, conferences, and festivals to invite people to read privacy policies out loud in the 0.0146 seconds pop-up radio studio. She documents the whole process in audio and a portrait series of the participants.

The response was overwhelming. After a parade of media (newspapers, television and radio), the project received national publicity. Some participants even travelled specially to places to participate – To raise their voices against the manipulative, exploiting mechanics of the Internet Economy.

Unfortunately, the majority of the 0.0146 seconds tour is cancelled or postponed due to COVID-19. However, we managed to organize some digital or COVID-proof events. The process is still going on, and the goal will remain to finish the book. Janssen hopes to continue the tour as soon as possible.

Currently, she is developing another installation about digital identity and profiling. In 2020 she received another grant from the SIDN fund to research data provenance, a new topic in data science to create a lifeline for data. A data provenance includes the data origin: what happens to it and where it moves over time.

This research resulted in the project Why :i:like Green – 4000 ping pong balls printed with Janssen's data to find out why an algorithm categorized her in the profile; likes green.

Over the years, Janssen had the honour to meet many experts; data-scientist, privacy lawyers, activists, politicians, philosophers, anthropologists, mathematicians, journalists, etc. They all have inspired her way of thinking, helped to crystallize her vision and motivated her ambition to make art about data.

In 2020, during the first COVID-19-lockdown, she started the Dutch podcast 'Achter de klik'. In every episode, she invited a guest to talk about the future of data, AI and the Internet. After eight episodes, she switched to an English podcast series, 'The HyperClick'. She invites internationally renowned guests like Cathy O'Neil, Steven Levy, and Paul Tang to share their stories.

Julia Janssen speaks and exhibits nationally and internationally at events, conferences, talk shows, and festivals.

Parties who funded us

/ Own Your Own Data, SIDN fund for Innovation and Empowerment of the Internet user (2020)

/ Paul Moreno, Head of Cyber Security at Catawiki, former head of Cyber Security at Adyen (2019)

/ Grand for Talent Development, Creative fund NL (2017)

/ Pioneer, SIDN fund for Innovation and Empowerment of the Internet user (2017)

Parties we work(ed) with

/ Dutch Ministry of Interior and Kingdom Relations

/ Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society

/ FreedomLab Institute for redefinition

/ Microphone Media Podcast Agency

Events we exhibited at

(selection)

/ Into The Great Wide Open

/ Todays Art Festival

/ Dutch Design Week | Ketelhuisplein / VEEM

/ Mozfest | Mozilla Firefox

/ The Big Brother Awards

/ I-Interim Rijk | Dutch Ministry of Interior and Kingdom relations

/ De staat van het Internet | Waag society

/ OBA | Public Library of Amsterdam

/ Tolhuistuin Amsterdam

/ MoneyLab | Institute of Network Cultures

/ Beyond Data: Data for Society

/ Data Sharing Days

Audiences we spoke for

(selection)

/ Dutch Future Society | digital meet-up

/  VPRO Tegenlicht, de slag om het internet (The battle for the Internet)

/ Dezeen Magazine Live

/ Fake Me Hard | Podcast

/ De Nieuwe Wereld (The New World) | Talkshow

/ More-IP | Conference

/ Public Spaces | Conference and Talkshow

/ DDW TV Young Talent

/ Annual congress I-Interim Rijk | Dutch Ministry of Interior and Kingdom relations

/ Art & Consciousness in 2020 and beyond | Todays Art Festival, The Hague

/ Symposium Post-Master IT-Auditing & Advisory | Erasmus University, Rotterdam

/ Workshop Innovation in libraries | Cubiss, Tilburg

/ TITL 25th- conference | Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society

/ The Kick - Design for good | karibu Café, Utrecht

/ Fixing the Internet: Privacy and Data Beyond GDPR | Freedomlab Campus

/ Top Names | Talkshow by Platform Fast Moving Targets

/ Weapons of Math Destruction /  with Cathy O'Neil | TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht

/ Design Mattters – Pakhuis de Zwijger, Amsterdam

Awards

/ Crypto Design Award – Winner, audience vote

/ Icarus Award – Nominee