Grindr art row

An art project in Berlin based on the gay chat app @Grindr has set off a debate over the online privacy of geo-location dating services, and the effect they might be having on their users.

For five days in early October, Dutch artist Dries Verhoeven broadcast his Grindr chats onto a projection screen inside a glass cube situated on a public square in Berlin's Kreuzberg neighborhood.

The project, called "Wanna Play," used Verhoeven's Grindr profile to draw chat partners into a discussion about online intimacy.

It was cut short on October 5, however, after some users protested, saying it was a violation of their privacy.

Hebel am Ufer (HAU), a state-funded theater which sponsored Verhoeven's project, later held two town hall-style meetings to discuss the merits and failings of the project.

The damned and exploited?

An American in his 20s who went over to Verhoeven's cube shortly after it opened became particularly irate when he saw his chat messages and photos being read by the assembled crowd.

He has threatened legal action against the artist and HAU, accusing both of entrapment.

The artist maintains the project stoked a necessary debate on privacy and identity online.

GEO-dating apps still appealing

Grindr has become one of the best-known sex navigation apps.

And Verhoeven says few have taken the time to examine the effect the app may be having on their ability to connect with other people in public spaces.

"The feeling we have on the Internet is that we are safe there, that no body is looking at us," Verhoeven says. "We experience a certain sense of secrecy that we share with people whom we don't know. It raises the question: why do we share a secret with people whom we don't know when, on the streets, we could look these same people in the eyes and maybe share the same things with real people?"

But Tavia Nyong'o, a professor of performance studies at New York University, says the project raises a lot of red flags, in particular about privacy.

"That would seem to be what drove people's outrage," Nyong'o says. "Not that they were unfamiliar with the possibility that people would use Grindr for an art project, but that they would use it without their knowledge or consent."

Other Internet art projects

Shaka McGlotten, a professor at the State University of New York who researches the interaction between art, technology and sexuality, says many artists are using the Internet and apps such as Grindr in their work.

But McGlotten stresses the need for an ethical and transparent approach when deploying these tools.

"I'm working with a woman who has a done a similar project called 'Watch me Work','" McGlotten says. "She interacts with cam sex clients in Israel. The similarity is the people with whom she is interacting don't know that their exchanges are being projected onto a screen, or that they are part of an art project. The difference, though, is that none of their identifying information is revealed in the project and in fact she is providing the service that they expect her to provide."

While Verhoeven, the artist, says his intention was to question online anonymity, performance art experts such as N'Yongo'o and McGlotten are left confused by the point of the project.

What's the point?

"I'm not sure what the artist's idea was exactly," says McGlotten. "Whether it was to focus on public sex or the kind of relationship between the private and the public in relation to gay male sexuality? Or if it was - as some of the critics have claimed - a kind of inadvertent, erotophobic sex-shaming sort of thing?"

Verhoeven says he wanted to address the superficiality he sees in online dating platforms.

"When you're constantly under the influence of people who are judging you, is it still possible to show intimacy and to show vulnerability? I think these questions are important to ask today," Verhoeven says.

He also wanted to question the privacy relationship between the user of such apps and the companies that own them - and often, their users' data.

"The apps set the rules," Verhoeven says. "If we want to use them, we have to accept that. We could all stop using these apps, but we don't. We instead go along with this illusion of privacy that we think we have."

For his part, Nyong'o of NYU feels that app developers and users are still trying to find the right balance in terms of privacy.

"The irony of course is that the purpose of the technology is to allow you to be located," Nyong'o notes. "But it's a delicate balance between when you choose to send out your location and when someone can just find it."