Stalker Filing Cabinet Chases People Around

You just can't get away from paperwork. It follows you around!

Jaap de Maat, a graduate student at the Royal College of Art, United Kingdom, created a filing cabinet that follows people around. The art piece, titled I Know What You Did Last Summer, looks like a run-of-the-mill two-drawer gray filing cabinet, but when you approach it, it comes to life ... and starts chasing you!

De Maat was inspired to create the stalker filing cabinet to remind people that their online data is basically doing the same thing - just invisibly. "Around the period ... Snowden came out with his bombshell and I was quite shocked people mainly worried about surveillance," de Maat told Wired, "After more research I kind of wanted to make the point not so much people surveying us, but the fact it gets stored forever."

"I thought of the example of a lady that wanted to be teacher, but at the end of her course she didn't get a certificate because they'd Googled her and saw pictures of her drunk on the internet. They said that was inappropriate for a teacher. People need to be aware of online storage."

After acquiring the filing cabinet, de Maat installed wheels, distance sensors and an Arduino board to enable the cabinet to follow people during its exhibition at the lobby of the RCA building. Check out the video clip:

But instead of being disturbed at the fact that their online data is stalking them, people seem to be enjoying the autonomous filing cabinet. "People are having a lot of fun playing with it," de Maat said, "They actually often treat it like a little dog - they stroke it and put food in front of it. They are quite happy and find it funny."

View more at Wired - via Flowing Data