GREAT MINDS AND ALL THAT …
When I was first developing the surveillance-heavy
world of 2030 that Jenni-Fur, my lead protagonist in Invent-10n, would be living in I spent a while musing on the
various youth tribes that might be populate the Britain of seventeen years
hence. And one of them was the Slappers, made up of those who were resolutely
anti-surveillance.
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| SLAPPERS |
In Invent-10n Slappers are a disaffected and generally pretty inarticulate bunch,
vehemently against PanOptika (the all-embracing surveillance system of the 2030
British government), Tête-à-Tête (don’t ask) and an ordered society. In order
to frustrate PanOptika’s facial-recognition ability they favour wide-brimmed
hats (to cover the face), unfurled umbrellas (even when it isn’t raining),
ankle-length deconstructed plastic raincoats, hoodies by Dead in the Water and
(of course) wobblers, shoes with a-symmetric heels which change the way a
person walks and thus thwart Gait-ID systems. The picture above is how
Nigel Robinson, the guy who did the design work on Invent-10n, pictured my Slappers (and remember he drew this back in 2009!).
Of course, I did this tongue-in
cheek, never suspecting that the real world would catch up with my fictional
whimsy so quickly. So when I was trawling the web looking for magazines which
might review Invent-10n I was amazed
when I stumbled over this:
Presented by Primitive at Tank Magazine these are a series of
‘Anti-Drone’ Stealth Wear outfits by
Adam Harvey (produced in collaboration with NYC designer Johanna Bloomfield)
intended to thwart surveillance cameras. My Slappers would have LOVED them. The
interesting thing for me was that these designs build on previous work by Adam
Harvey – he calls it CV Dazzle – which is face camouflage aimed at negating
face recognition. Now that I never
thought of!
I think if Invent-10n ever goes into a reprint I’ll ask Mr Harvey if I can
feature his CV Dazzle. My Slappers wearing CV Dazzle warpaint would be terrific.
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