Airports can be understood as compressors of space and time, they act as a conduit from one physical location in the world to another. But at the same time the extraterritorial zones of airports become an important threshold controlling the flow of people in a free market economy. This space in-between is in fact an abstract space created by a bureaucratic system of inclusion and exclusion within trans-nation states rather than a transition space.

Transit zones at airports emerge because of a complex set of factors: border crossing as well as today’s security and safety regulations. The innumerable thresholds to the transit zones are points of congestion that are governed by an imperfect system of identification. Different mobility patterns of varying relevance circulate in the airport’s structure, and they are distributed within airport architecture according to the typology of various levels of comfort and aesthetics.

At the airport, travellers move through different spaces, and their commodified movements are constantly streamlined and proceduralized. In point-to-point airport traffic technology plays an increasingly important role. Metal detectors, machines to x-ray luggage, quick check-in and other facilities are already a vital part of transnational spaces of control and security.

Since recently, in order to guarantee the highest degree of security possible, airports have been using the latest technology in automated border control. It replaces face-to-face (F2F) interaction between the controlled and those who control. The newest technology is based on biometrics, it allows fast and convenient self-service border checks, and grants entitled travellers unrestricted freedom of movement. This method also allows authorities to be more efficient and accurate when identifying people at airport border crossings. The biometric system of authentication ties access codes to the bodies of travellers. Mobile individuals no longer have to be identified as a whole. The ‘pattern match,’ the algorithmic logic of a database, replaces characteristics of the individual in biometric system of control, inclusion and exclusion. Because they measure and statistically analyze the body as biological data, biometrics is the perfect match for permeable borders, ensuring the verification of the uniqueness of every body.

In this system of relevance the body must be captured, coded and scanned first. Therefore mobile individuals are increasingly integrated into a collective electronic database; a collection of data arranged for easy and speedy search and retrieval.

Transnational spaces of airports continue to face different patterns of mobility that are also concerned to the biometric pattern match. In the nearest future, anyone who resists submitting his or her body pattern into a global network of tracking and control will simply not gain access to transit zones.

What happens when the extraterritoriality of airports will be replaced by a biometric system of border control?

What happens when an electronic system of body authentication will replace the current, imperfect way of identifying mobile subjects?

Could the endless capacity of databases really become a perfect system for classification?

[project description]

Data Record of Mobile Identities is an installation that may be presented in a public space, such as a city or airport terminal, or as part of an exhibition. It is also an Internet-based project. The objective of the project is to create a database of mobile identities that is open to everyone, and draw attention to issues pertaining to the classification of mobile subjects.

The project interface allows for the scanning of photos of eyes into a databank. Persons participating in the project were asked to fill out a "5 minutes Travel Form".The travel form asks for information on, for example, traveler`s mobility patterns, their perception of the airport space and their particular experience with or emotions about airport border controls. Based on the answers personal Data Record Card of individuals were generated.

Political, social, physical and behavioral factors are the criteria that permit navigation of the databank and, at the same time, the reorganization of the pictures collected of eyes. One mouse click opens the personal data card of a selected eye. A demo version of the project presents first results of the ^experiment.The project is developed in association with VI KolegBauhaus Dessau Foundation. Special thanks to Regina Bittner, Wilfried Hackenbroich and Kai Vöckler for their critical insights and advice.

Bettina Boknecht & Monika Codourey Wisniewska