Martin Nadal is the Artist-in-residence 2020 of the European Media Art Platform at Onassis Stegi

“FANGo” is a defense weapon against surveillance capitalism. Disguised as a mobile phone charger, a microcontroller takes control of the smartphone in which it is plugged-in. Making queries to Amazon, Google, and other search engines, uploading videos on YouTube, liking random photos on Instagram, it aims to deceive data brokers and disrupt the data capturing process.

Each time a user charges a mobile phone, the microcontroller simulates swipes and interactions, as if they were made by the user. By adding noise to captured data, it makes it difficult to transform them into predictions, taking away their value for brokers and companies.

Like the rest of Martin Nadal’s work, FANGo looks at the current technological development landscape with a critical eye. The work's main objective is to reflect as we glimpse at the functioning of surveillance and behavioral capitalism.