"Faceless Patrons" -- An Augmented Installation Exploring 419-Fictional Narratives

Summary form only given. Scamming is a global phenomenon and victims can be found everywhere with no difference in gender or race. To persuade the victim into paying money upfront, the scammers create story worlds with ´get rich quick´ schemes that seem ´too good to be true´. The scammers draw on emotions like greed, empathy or love. The different narratives are situated in the grey area between reality and fiction [1]. Story worlds can get very detailed and involve several characters and are often related to real life. We wanted to take a closer look on these scam narratives a type of cybercrime stories that we coined ´419-fiction´, ´419´ relating to the criminal code in Nigeria that deals with fraud. These stories reflects the dystopian side of computer mediated communication where the Internet enables a world of false representations, abuse of trust, humiliation and desperation for opportunities. An augmented installation setup consists of five photo-frames hanging on a wall. Each frame connects to a correspondence with a scammer and holds a photograph and a fake cheque that was received as an advance payment for Anna Masquers photos. By using a smartphone or a tablet that can be provided for demonstration purpose the visitor can scan each photograph via a third party AR-Browser. Each physical photograph is then overlaid with an AR layer containing a video compilation of images. These images are the result of an Online search in an attempt to confirm or invalidate the authenticity of the scammers character and his online representations. These images attempt to give a face to the faceless scammer, yet fails while the posed art buyer can be anyone or no one of the persons found within the search. Additionally to the images the video contains a voice over narrating parts of the email correspondence, enabling the visitor to follow the whole narrative paths of the ´overpayment check scam´ scheme.