Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Generative Topic

I wanted to narrow down my ideas about surveillance to ask this question:

How far is it appropriate to peer into people's private lives?

This includes groups such as:
Governments
Artists
School
Work environment
Friends/family members

Friday, April 9, 2010

Surveillance




North-South over East-West
London Bridge, London

Jason Bruges

"On the pavement where people usually leave only footprints, for the duration of the festival they left coloured light ‘shadows’ as evidence of their passing. The intent was to reawaken commuters, encouraging them to be aware once more of the joys of crossing the Thames on their way to work." (www.jasonbruges.com)

This Temporary piece used motion sensors to record all the pedestrians on the bridge and played it back as a matrix of colors on top of Tower Bridge a block away. Furthermore the sensors record individual bluetooth phones and assign each one a different color.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Surveillance/privacy




I think one of the most interesting things pertaining to the idea of Surveillance and privacy is how much the average person is watched everyday. For example in London, there are 1.5 million surveillance cameras watching the general public. That's one for every 14 people. Government officials say that the cameras exist to reduce crime rates and terrorist attacks, however, only 3% of crimes are ever solved using the government surveillance cameras.
Camille Utterback's piece, Abundance, uses cameras and animations to tackle the idea of surveillance. Utterback transforms a city block into a virtually animated map. Cameras track city pedestrians and their path is animated an then projected on to a building. Individuals were portrayed in cool colors and when a group of two or more formed the paths would become warm colored.Also, indiviual paths would erase the animation's background where as the path of a group would fill it in. Furthermore, over time, Utterback started to add graphic elements to the animation that would effect the path of the pedistrans. "white lines were added to the projection which align with slats in the building facade. As participants cross these lines, moon-shaped graphics are released and travel in a trajectory opposite the person’s movement. These flickering nodes become active elements of the composition – releasing further bursts of color when another person moves across them" (www.camilleutterback.com).


There is a hue difference between the surveillance camera in London and Utterback's Abundance. The cameras in London act as an eye for the government and for the apparent safety of the people, while abundance helps the give the people of San Jose a feeling of "ownership of a public space" (camilleutterback.com).