Installation comprising a reverse-engineered lie detector, three-channel video , stereo sound, (24 min.), desk, chairs, and artificial plants
The Whole Truth is a multimedia installation and audio documentary about the application of voice analysis for lie detection recently piloted by European, Russian, and Israeli governments, and used by border agencies and insurance companies all over the world. This technology uses the voice as a kind of stethoscope to measure internal responses to stress and tension—a material channel that allows the law’s listening to bypass speech and delve deeper into the bodies of subjects.
The documentary, which experiments with the conventions of radio, collects interviews with software developers, anthropologists, and entrepreneurs of the biometric industry from the Netherlands, the United States, and elsewhere. Reflecting on the somewhat arbitrary verdicts reached by these lie detectors, the work simultaneously analyzes the audio interviews in real time via the very same lie-detecting technology.
This work was commissioned by Casco Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht, the Netherlands (2012).
