Burkhard Schafer

This paper presents the design, deployment and qualitative study of a large-scale, public, generative art exhibition, through which passers-by could create artworks, and mint a non-fungible-token (NFT). Following the month-long exhibition, during which 229 anonymous participants produced artworks, 69 non-transferable NFTs were minted, we surveyed (33) and interviewed (14) expert and novice participants about their experiences. We explored contemporary challenges of owning digital things, and the extent to which NFTs, and 'Web3' technologies offer meaningful forms of ownership. Our findings describe how the inability to trade this NFT, and its unique circumstances of acquisition, made it meaningful in ways that extended beyond its immediate (limited) utility and offered participants something through which to construct identity. Reflecting on the aspirations, contradictions, and misconceptions of forms of ownership enabled by NFTs, we conclude with proposals for renewed attention in HCI to the nature of digital possessions, and the potential for 'ownership design'.

Our research responds to calls for more engagement with everyday personal data. We used a co-designed, fictional persona called Alex Smith to concretise and represent people's online information to help participants (through role-playing) reflect on data and digital traces. Drawing together four fields of scholarly research concerning personal data: digital traces and the digital self, datafication and dataveillance, mundane, everyday data and the data journey – our aim was to advance understandings of personal data by exploring ordinary people's seemingly innocuous digital traces generated through everyday online interactions. Our paper presents three key findings from our analysis: (1) how ordinary people cope with and manage everyday data; (2) the haunting effects and affects of peer-to-peer surveillance and (3) postdigital identities. We argue that greater attention needs to be paid to everyday digital traces – how they are understood, managed and revealed because this has implications for ordinary people, corporate entities and governments. We contribute to a gap in critical data studies literature that calls for further investigations into ordinary people's engagement with data. We also offer a method that can be adapted for and used with different participant groups, which also supports their awareness of cumulative functions of personal data and potential use by un/known actors.