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.

5 comments:

  1. Hello Kaitlin,
    I really liked your contribution to our share in class last week. It is incredible how much computers are watching. It made me think about all the extra footage that could be used in the future to do research or study how we lived. Or for an artist to take advantage of such as Jason Bruges.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's a beautiful piece and a very creative approach to surveillance art! I posted one of the questions on my blog about what is the ethical way to approach surveillance art, and this Jason Bruges piece might be the answer to my question!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Interesting piece. Can you please post your generative topic.

    -jen

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'd love to see this idea rendered in a location where the traffic patterns aren't so linear. When people cross the bridge, they pretty much go straight across, they might stop and linger in the middle for a little bit, but all in all, everyone crosses in the same general pattern. I'd love to see what happens in a stadium, or a train station, where people are more free to wander over a larger plane, instead of limited just to a fairly narrow and straight sidewalk. The effect is cool, but it undermines all the work that went into creating the piece.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I like how this article shows how humans are connected because we pass each other or even walk over the same path as someone else without realizing it. It is also interesting to show if there are any patterns in whether we walk alone or in groups or how many people walk the same way or if people walk more in a certain place during a specific time of day.
    I also like how his piece is actually art more than surveillance.

    ReplyDelete