Surveillance art
Encyclopedia
Surveillance Art is the use of technology intended to record human behavior in a way that offers commentary on the process of surveillance
or the technology used to surveil. Surveillance Art manifests itself in many different forms, from short films to architecture, but all have been shown to provide some type of critical response to the rise of surveillance by various authorities and the technology used to achieve it, especially when dealing with issues of security and enforcing laws.
Benjamin Franklin
provided an early response to British surveillance through his own network of counter-surveillance and manipulation. “He waged a public relations campaign, secured secret aid, played a role in privateering expeditions, and churned out effective and inflammatory propaganda.”
By the early nineteenth century, the American South had a system of surveillance in place to monitor the activity of the slaves that supported the growth of the American economy. Roaming patrols, slave passes, and direct observation and punishment, were just some of the systems used. Not all methods were effective, and the slaves’ responses to this surveillance evolved based on the forms of resistance or circumnavigation available to them. “These devices included lookouts for patrols during meetings, warning signals when patrols approached, slaves who worked in patrollers’ homes sharing information about patrol schedules with other slaves, outwitting patrollers who could not read by using outdated passes, and slaves who could write forging passes.”.
Very few constructive methods of response were available to the early subjects of direct governmental and corporate surveillance during the Industrial Era. One means was to simply avoid life in the more populated urban areas of the United States; however, economic hardships seldom made this practical, especially for newly arrived immigrant workers who helped build the burgeoning industrial powerhouse. Few options for employment existed, other than laboring in the factories under unsafe conditions. Violence became a means of response when pleas fell on deaf ears. Coincidentally, the same uprisings that immigrants intended to make statements with became fuel for the very system that repressed and monitored them, and lead to “scapegoating immigrants as threats to national security."
As the Industrial Era moved into full swing, the business and factory owners of the late nineteenth century implemented surveillance in a new environment. Though the style of surveillance changed somewhat, the end result; observation of the worker body in an effort to maintain productivity, remained the same. Individual quality checks within the factories and company towns, where employees could be watched outside of work, formed new aspects of this system. “Indeed, once individuals undertook work, not for themselves but for capitalists, then their activities needed to be directed and controlled in time and space -- i.e. managed.”
.
Warhol’s movie, Outer and Inner Space, introduced the performance-art possibilities of high-tech surveillance to the modern world. At the same time, it provided the observed subject with the image or knowledge of being observed, in this case the actress Edie Sedgwick
. “On the left, Sedgwick's video image, in full profile, gazes off to the right, looking up as if she were talking to someone standing above her. On the right, the 'real' (or 'live') Edie sits in three-quarter profile facing left, addressing someone sitting off-screen to the left of Warhol's movie camera -- an arrangement which at times creates the illusion that we are watching Sedgwick in conversation with her own image.”
In the late twentieth century, the AIDS epidemic, cancer rates, and other health concerns created a new form of surveillance. Suddenly, the condition of the human body and potential for contagion became an addition to existing systems of observation.
“The ‘my body, my business’ ideal in the clinical setting dovetailed with broader societal concerns about snoops, spies, and surveillance, setting the stage for a fundamental recasting of the politics of surveillance in the last decades of the twentieth century. The encounter over HIV represented the high water mark of patient participation in the politics of surveillance. ”
DeRosa stated: “The national security agencies and their employees are charged with protecting the United States from harm. When faced with a decision about whether to take a step that invades liberties they will not always be able to judge whether it is the only way or the best way to address a problem -- or whether it is simply the easiest way.”
As homeland security issues forced questions of the infringement of civil liberties, the response of various practitioners of surveillance art questioned the notion of privacy. In one of the most notorious cases, the price of innocence and freedom seems to be the willing sacrifice of one’s personal privacy.
The case of Hasan Elahi has also addressed new technologies in surveillance: tracking and tracing of cell phones, the capabilities of GPS technology, and worldwide Internet access by both the observer and the observed. The relationship between the watcher and the body watched becomes an impetus to the artwork itself.
Elahi has stated of his art: “Both quantitative and qualitative information is incorporated into my work, and the entire process results in translations and mistranslations between the physical and the virtual, between the body politic and the singular citizen. The mutual misunderstandings that inevitably occur provide the inertial energy for the continuing activity and effectiveness of the work.”
Beyond biometrics is the integration of cybernetic technology into Surveillance Art. The Canadian filmmaker, Robert Spence, has adapted a miniature camera into his prosthetic eye. In an odd reversal, Spence has finally come full circle with the concept of Surveillance Art: ‘“Originally the whole idea was to do a documentary about surveillance. I thought I would become a sort of super hero … fighting for justice against surveillance,” Spence said. “In Toronto there are 12,000 cameras. But the strange thing I discovered was that people don’t care about the surveillance cameras, they were more concerned about me and my secret camera eye because they feel that is a worse invasion of their privacy.”
team came through. They named the project “Street with a View” which they describe as introducing “fiction, both subtle and spectacular, into the doppelganger world of Google Street View.” Using an array of local residents and actors, scenes included a marathon, a parade, a garage band practice, firemen rescuing a cat, and a sword fight. This was the first time that Google Street View had been used as a means of art, specifically, as surveillance art.
The Surveillance Camera Players (SCP), based in New York City and founded by Bill Brown, are one of the main innovators of this art form. This group of actors stages various plays in public spaces, their first one being Alfred Jarry
’s "Ubu Roi
" on December 10, 1996 at the 14th Street-Union Square Subway station. They have performed other famous works such as Samuel Beckett
’s Waiting for Godot
, Edgar Allan Poe
’s The Raven, George Orwell
’s 1984 and Animal Farm. Their plays are staged in very public places such as subway stations, Times Square, Rockefeller Center, Washington Square Park, Union Square, and various other landmarks throughout the city. Their primary purpose is to create a public spectacle in order to get people to question the role surveillance plays in their lives. These performances may be witnessed by the public, yet the actual recordings of these performances remain inaccessible. Their performances are done in silence. For example, in Waiting for Godot two actors wearing signs that read “ESTRAGON” and “VLADIMIR” kneel or sit below a third actor wearing a sign that reads “TREE.” The two actors proceed to run around the tree and knock each other around. The Surveillance Camera Players have performed in various cities in North America such as Jersey City, Baltimore, San Francisco, and Montreal. The group has also performed internationally in England, Austria, Spain, Italy, and Holland. The SCP is said to have been inspired by the anti-surveillance manifesto, “Guerilla Programming of Surveillance Equipment,” but state that they were not the first to stage surveillance camera theater. They state that it was the invention of comedy writers:
Properly speaking, surveillance camera theater was invented by a comedy writer, not a privacy advocate or a performance artist: i.e., the person(s) who in 1981 wrote the "On the Job" episode of the American TV sit-com Taxi
, in which Alex Reiger (played by Judd Hirsch
) temporarily gets a job as a camera-watching security guard. Bored out of his mind by the isolation and silence, Alex eventually learns to pass the time by improvising silly little skits in front of the surveillance camera and watching himself on the monitor at the same time. When Alex's shift is over, he is replaced by a veteran of the place (played by "Grampa" Al Lewis), who pulls out a ventriloquist's dummy and starts performing in front of the surveillance camera as soon as his shift begins! The implication was that every security guard—when no one (else) was looking—was passing the time in this way. On October 12, 1992, Saturday Night Live
included a skit that imagined that during the night, when everyone else had gone home, the people who worked at Rockefeller Center—not just the security guards, but also the cleaning ladies and the maintenance workers—would amuse themselves and each other by putting on little skits in front of the building's surveillance cameras. As in Taxi, none of these skits had any political content and none of them concerned privacy rights.
The SCP has a wide following around the world and has even spawned sister groups in Arizona, California, Italy, Lithuania, Sweden, and Turkey suggesting how the issue of surveillance is one which transcends nationalities and cultures, bringing people together to make one synonymous public statement.
Some architectural surveillance art pieces involve large screen installations or projections on highly visible buildings in populated areas. Artist Christian Moeller
’s 2006 project, "Nosy," includes a street-level camera which records the active surrounding environment, including pedestrians, cars, and a nearby train in Osaki City, Japan. The real-time video is “displayed in bitmap graphics [and projected] onto three towers covered with white LEDs behind frosted glass panels.”
Artist Camille Utterback
created a similar installation in 2007, called "Abundance," using the domed city hall of San Jose, California, as her interactive canvas. The installation includes a large surveillance camera focused on pedestrians and an abstract art animation, projected onto the city hall building. Pedestrians’ location and movement within the field of the camera are translated into abstract shapes that appear in the projection. As the pedestrian moves, the corresponding shape moves within the animation and interacts with other shapes in the projection. Utterback’s website states, “Movements and paths through the plaza become part of a collective visual record, and transform the building into a playful and dynamic canvas.”
The Los Angeles-based artist team, Electroland, has been dedicated to working on interactive art projects. Many of their projects are architectural surveillance art through the use of light installations or electronic displays. One of their architectural installations, "Enteractive," uses both the inside and outside of a building in Los Angeles. This project, finished in 2006, involves tracking indoor participants’ movements and locations over a large floor light grid. Outside, their real-time locations and movement patterns are broadcast to anyone within view of the colored light grid installed onto the face of the building.
Another of Electroland’s projects was incorporated into the Pedestrian Bridge of the Indianapolis Airport in 2008. The project, named "Connection," is made up of light “dots” that cover the length of the bridge, which light up in different colors as people pass through. The colored dots follow people’s movements and often interact with participants, “exhibit[ing] a range of intelligent and playful behaviors, accompanied by sounds.” Electroland has similar projects, including Target Breezeway, Lumen, and Drive By.
The French art team, Hehe, also works with architectural surveillance art but they prefer to take a “green” approach. Like Electroland, they have also done light installations, like their 2007 project in Luxembourg, "Grandes Lignes." This project includes light installations along a pedestrian footbridge that only light up where a pedestrian is located. Hehe describes the selective lighting as “the personal light sphere, which surrounds the traveler as they move from one end to the other.” Hehe explains the intent behind the project: “The responsiveness of the system functions ecologically and economically – saving energy – and also metaphorically: Your shadow – of light – walks with you and follows you.”
Hehe has also started a set of projects under the title, "Pollstream," all of which are environmentally-focused. Of these, Nuage Vert, or “green cloud” in English, is architectural surveillance art. The 2008 project uses a thermo-sensitive camera and a laser with a green, cloud-shaped beam. Installed on a nearby building, the beam is projected onto the stream of pollution from a power plant in Helsinki, as a constant reminder to residents of their energy usage. Hehe’s focus in this project moves from direct surveillance of people to the surveillance of their factories and plants. Here, humans are being indirectly watched through what they produce, like air pollution. This is potentially the beginning of a move into air surveillance art.
", makes use of surveillance technology such as cameras from the perspective of the participant, allowing the object of surveillance essentially to become the subject. The term sousveillance was coined by Steve Mann
, a noted media artist.
Typical instances of sousveillance as art involve voluntarily recording and broadcasting one’s own activities (via webcam, for example). The expressed purpose for this, in some cases, is to take away the value of the knowledge of the artist’s whereabouts and current activity. Hasan Elahi, an interdisciplinary media artist who was falsely suspected of terrorism and detained by government authorities, has said that the goal of broadcasting his daily life is to devalue information about him since “Intelligence agencies, regardless of who they are, all operate in a market where their commodity is information, and the reason their information has value is because no one else has access to it.” Thus, by increasing access to the information, he is taking away the surveilling authority’s monopoly on it.
The Plays and Arts of Surveillance: Studying Surveillance as Entertainment by Anders Albrechtslund and Lynsey Dubbeld takes an in depth look at surveillance and the roles it plays in art and popular culture. Although Albrechtslund and Dubbeld focus on the entertainment factor of Surveillance Art, they also acknowledge its serious explorations and implications. While Surveillance Art is entertainment, the artists “tend to focus on controversial aspects of surveillance practices or revealing the operation of surveillance technologies.” To illustrate this point, Albrechtslund and Dubbeld specifically referenced installation artist David Rokeby
. “For instance, like several of Rokeby’s other works, ‘Sorting Daemon’ was concerned with revealing the powers of vision and surveillance, and bringing to the fore the discriminatory, judgmental classifications that computers are increasingly producing as they take over human tasks of observation and monitoring.”
It is observed that although surveillance has been prominent in art and other forms of entertainment, it hasn’t been studied in depth by Surveillance Studies scholars. Albrechtslund and Dubbeld see a need for further exploration of this area of surveillance. Surveillance as a form of entertainment isn’t paid as much attention as it deserves because it truly is a diverse field that is continuously developing. “The entertaining side of surveillance is a phenomenon worth studying in itself, and we expect that this type of study will contribute to an understanding of the multi-faceted nature of surveillance.”
In article, "Para-Sights: Multiplied Perspectives on Surveillance Research in Art Educational Spaces," Robert W. Sweeny, an art educator at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, questioned surveillance technologies and the role that visual arts plays with those technologies. He then raised the question of how one would handle acknowledging surveillance technologies in the classroom. He is a firm believer that “Those involved with the visual arts might learn much from studies regarding current surveillance technologies, going beyond the boundaries of traditional research methodologies, informing practices that interrogate the dynamics of power and vision in art educational settings.” While teaching at The Pennsylvania State University, Sweeny used one project in particular to encourage his students to reveal “the power of the gaze” by exploring how surveillance brings about other ways of “seeing:”
With this project, the students not only created Surveillance Art, but by becoming the watchers, or what Sweeny would call the parasite, they were able to see beyond the environment that the museum created with its own surveillance cameras.
In his essays, interactive artist David Rokeby writes about the control and subjectivity that is created by artists who use technologies such as cameras:
Rokeby has also written an essay for students who wish to create interactive art and he goes on to explain his perspective on the pieces he creates.
The Surveillance Camera Players have been the inspiration for others who have gone on to create artistic project that involve some form of surveillance, however, they say that although they are flattered that they inspire others, they’re rarely impressed by the work that is created. Their complaint is that in the videos that are created, the artists usually end up promoting “several of the primary ideological supports for generalized surveillance.” These works of art fail to connect their audiences to the everyday people who are being watched.
National Surveillance is government-based surveillance that aids police officers as well as the community. As far as aiding the community with national surveillance, "all police vehicles are equipped with a hidden GPS locater that has the ability to transmit the position of a police vehicle anywhere in the country." For the community, National Surveillance means that a police official’s vehicle is heavily monitored at all times, causing him to be reprimanded if not at the location reported. From a governmental perspective, National Surveillance is essential for aiding police officials in investigations or simply identifying criminals. The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System
(IAFIS) allows police officials to "fingerprint and receive information on anyone who has ever been fingerprinted in only fifteen to twenty minutes." With the information gathered from an interview with a State College, Pennsylvania police officer, it is clear that National Surveillance has generated a type of “system balance” (between the government and the community) whose purpose with advancements in surveillance technology is to portray “truth.”
Mechanical surveillance, although sharing similarities with National Surveillance, plays a somewhat different role in surveillance as an art form. During the interview with the State College police officer, it was noted that "the camera in a police vehicle begins recording as soon as its emergency lights are switched on whether the vehicle is stopped or in motion." This form of mechanical surveillance plays a huge role in police investigation along with helping create surveillance art. With Internet sites like YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace, people have the ability to create and share any type of video feed that interests them. As an example, the anonymous State College police officer referred to the riots at Penn State University after Penn State beat Ohio State University during the 2008-2009-football season. Several videos were posted on YouTube depicting celebratory acts that quickly transitioned into destructive malicious behavior. First, State College Police referred to these posted videos as police evidence in which they were able to apprehend and fine individuals involved in the riots. On the other hand, however, there are several videos of the riots in which inspirational music was added to portray “Penn State Pride” rather than committing an illegal act. Adding music to these types of videos transforms mechanical surveillance into Surveillance Art by creating an emotional attachment for the individuals who can relate to what the video visually portrays.
Perceived surveillance is a concept of Surveillance Art that is purely territorial and usually created by individuals involved with that particular community. Using State College, Pennsylvania as an example, an anonymous police officer stated that he believes Surveillance Art “creates a presence in the community that lowers the likelihood of crime, portraying a sense of ownership.” With the advancement of technology in today’s society, it has become apparent that it is relatively easier for individuals to create “Perceived Surveillance Art.” The interesting aspect of Perceived Surveillance Art is the fact that it can be anything. Examples of Perceived Surveillance Art can range from a mural on the side of a building to a simple statue of the baby Jesus in the front yard of an individual's home.
"With these created websites, YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace, it has become relatively easy for individuals to post and spread Surveillance Art throughout the world." In some instances, there are highly controversial videos (Rodney King beating and the shooting death of Oscar Grant by police officers) placed on these sites that have been edited to portray a specific individuals perception of that specific event or a different perspective on how that event should possibly be taken. When asking the State College police officer about how these sites affect police investigations, he stated that they “have no bearing on anything having to do with police work.” In fact, the new interpretations presented by the videos on these sites are welcomed by some police officers that like the idea and believe in Surveillance Art.
While discussing surveillance as an art form with a New York City bus driver, it was found to be "impossible for an individual to travel more than three blocks anywhere in New York without being on camera." When considering the three forms of surveillance (national, mechanical, and perceived) as art forms, it is clear that our society has evolved into a technically dependent era in which even the most reliable footage (unedited surveillance footage) can become art by simply transforming or even editing raw footage (adding music, or text) creating new material, resulting in Surveillance Art. Although the amount of surveillance in State College, Pennsylvania may not be as high as the amount of surveillance in New York City, it is interesting and notable that surveillance as an art form exists everywhere.
Surveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people. It is sometimes done in a surreptitious manner...
or the technology used to surveil. Surveillance Art manifests itself in many different forms, from short films to architecture, but all have been shown to provide some type of critical response to the rise of surveillance by various authorities and the technology used to achieve it, especially when dealing with issues of security and enforcing laws.
History of Surveillance Art in the United States
An overview of the history of Surveillance Art requires an understanding of early surveillance reasons and methods, as well as responses by the citizen body being observed and controlled. Colonial America provided the perfect setting for British surveillance of the Crown’s subjects, as well as counter-surveillance by the increasingly disgruntled colonists. Eventually, the growing industrialization of the United States would provide for ever-more complicated forms of surveillance and responses to that surveillance in the form of Surveillance Art.Pre-Industrial/Industrial Eras
Prior to the Revolutionary War, Great Britain maintained its information on colonial activities in America through relatively mundane systems: newspapers, written and verbal reports, and general conversation. Overt use of spies was regulated to wartime, and as America and Great Britain moved closer to conflict, the Empire’s surveillance became more in-depth.Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...
provided an early response to British surveillance through his own network of counter-surveillance and manipulation. “He waged a public relations campaign, secured secret aid, played a role in privateering expeditions, and churned out effective and inflammatory propaganda.”
By the early nineteenth century, the American South had a system of surveillance in place to monitor the activity of the slaves that supported the growth of the American economy. Roaming patrols, slave passes, and direct observation and punishment, were just some of the systems used. Not all methods were effective, and the slaves’ responses to this surveillance evolved based on the forms of resistance or circumnavigation available to them. “These devices included lookouts for patrols during meetings, warning signals when patrols approached, slaves who worked in patrollers’ homes sharing information about patrol schedules with other slaves, outwitting patrollers who could not read by using outdated passes, and slaves who could write forging passes.”.
Very few constructive methods of response were available to the early subjects of direct governmental and corporate surveillance during the Industrial Era. One means was to simply avoid life in the more populated urban areas of the United States; however, economic hardships seldom made this practical, especially for newly arrived immigrant workers who helped build the burgeoning industrial powerhouse. Few options for employment existed, other than laboring in the factories under unsafe conditions. Violence became a means of response when pleas fell on deaf ears. Coincidentally, the same uprisings that immigrants intended to make statements with became fuel for the very system that repressed and monitored them, and lead to “scapegoating immigrants as threats to national security."
As the Industrial Era moved into full swing, the business and factory owners of the late nineteenth century implemented surveillance in a new environment. Though the style of surveillance changed somewhat, the end result; observation of the worker body in an effort to maintain productivity, remained the same. Individual quality checks within the factories and company towns, where employees could be watched outside of work, formed new aspects of this system. “Indeed, once individuals undertook work, not for themselves but for capitalists, then their activities needed to be directed and controlled in time and space -- i.e. managed.”
Modern
With new technology, came new surveillance and new ways of responding to it through artistic media. With the advent of video-recording devices, closed circuit television, and digital cameras, remote surveillance of subjects became possible. One of the most popular figures to adapt these new methods of surveillance to art was Andy WarholAndy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
.
Warhol’s movie, Outer and Inner Space, introduced the performance-art possibilities of high-tech surveillance to the modern world. At the same time, it provided the observed subject with the image or knowledge of being observed, in this case the actress Edie Sedgwick
Edie Sedgwick
Edith Minturn "Edie" Sedgwick was an American actress, socialite, model and heiress. She is best known for being one of Andy Warhol's superstars. Sedgwick became known as "The Girl of the Year" in 1965 after starring in several of Warhol's short films in the 1960s...
. “On the left, Sedgwick's video image, in full profile, gazes off to the right, looking up as if she were talking to someone standing above her. On the right, the 'real' (or 'live') Edie sits in three-quarter profile facing left, addressing someone sitting off-screen to the left of Warhol's movie camera -- an arrangement which at times creates the illusion that we are watching Sedgwick in conversation with her own image.”
In the late twentieth century, the AIDS epidemic, cancer rates, and other health concerns created a new form of surveillance. Suddenly, the condition of the human body and potential for contagion became an addition to existing systems of observation.
“The ‘my body, my business’ ideal in the clinical setting dovetailed with broader societal concerns about snoops, spies, and surveillance, setting the stage for a fundamental recasting of the politics of surveillance in the last decades of the twentieth century. The encounter over HIV represented the high water mark of patient participation in the politics of surveillance. ”
Post Modern
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 sparked a new wave of American surveillance of the citizen body. This was primarily a form of electronic information gathering—monitoring of phones and email, Internet use, tracking and tracing of cell phones and GPS units. In certain instances, the detaining and/or monitoring of U.S. citizens of various ethnicities compounded the already growing debate on the violation of civil liberties. In July 2006, Ms. Mary B. DeRosa, a Senior Fellow of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, testified at a congressional hearing on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. At this point, different organizations within the United States government had been applying separate acts to monitor perceived threats of foreign agents, sometimes at cross-purposes and with varying degrees of rights violation.DeRosa stated: “The national security agencies and their employees are charged with protecting the United States from harm. When faced with a decision about whether to take a step that invades liberties they will not always be able to judge whether it is the only way or the best way to address a problem -- or whether it is simply the easiest way.”
As homeland security issues forced questions of the infringement of civil liberties, the response of various practitioners of surveillance art questioned the notion of privacy. In one of the most notorious cases, the price of innocence and freedom seems to be the willing sacrifice of one’s personal privacy.
The case of Hasan Elahi has also addressed new technologies in surveillance: tracking and tracing of cell phones, the capabilities of GPS technology, and worldwide Internet access by both the observer and the observed. The relationship between the watcher and the body watched becomes an impetus to the artwork itself.
Elahi has stated of his art: “Both quantitative and qualitative information is incorporated into my work, and the entire process results in translations and mistranslations between the physical and the virtual, between the body politic and the singular citizen. The mutual misunderstandings that inevitably occur provide the inertial energy for the continuing activity and effectiveness of the work.”
Futurist
The latest evolution of response to surveillance systems is to become the system. New forms of biometric surveillance—such as heart rate monitors, and facial recognition software—are being utilized for personalized experiences and amusement park rides.Beyond biometrics is the integration of cybernetic technology into Surveillance Art. The Canadian filmmaker, Robert Spence, has adapted a miniature camera into his prosthetic eye. In an odd reversal, Spence has finally come full circle with the concept of Surveillance Art: ‘“Originally the whole idea was to do a documentary about surveillance. I thought I would become a sort of super hero … fighting for justice against surveillance,” Spence said. “In Toronto there are 12,000 cameras. But the strange thing I discovered was that people don’t care about the surveillance cameras, they were more concerned about me and my secret camera eye because they feel that is a worse invasion of their privacy.”
Performance
On May 3, 2008, artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley staged a simulated street scene in a Pittsburgh neighborhood when the Google Street ViewGoogle Street View
Google Street View is a technology featured in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides panoramic views from various positions along many streets in the world...
team came through. They named the project “Street with a View” which they describe as introducing “fiction, both subtle and spectacular, into the doppelganger world of Google Street View.” Using an array of local residents and actors, scenes included a marathon, a parade, a garage band practice, firemen rescuing a cat, and a sword fight. This was the first time that Google Street View had been used as a means of art, specifically, as surveillance art.
The Surveillance Camera Players (SCP), based in New York City and founded by Bill Brown, are one of the main innovators of this art form. This group of actors stages various plays in public spaces, their first one being Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side....
’s "Ubu Roi
Ubu Roi
Ubu Roi is a play by Alfred Jarry, premiered in 1896. It is a precursor of the Theatre of the Absurd and Surrealism. It is the first of three stylised burlesques in which Jarry satirises power, greed, and their evil practices — in particular the propensity of the complacent bourgeois to abuse the...
" on December 10, 1996 at the 14th Street-Union Square Subway station. They have performed other famous works such as Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
’s Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's...
, Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
’s The Raven, George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
’s 1984 and Animal Farm. Their plays are staged in very public places such as subway stations, Times Square, Rockefeller Center, Washington Square Park, Union Square, and various other landmarks throughout the city. Their primary purpose is to create a public spectacle in order to get people to question the role surveillance plays in their lives. These performances may be witnessed by the public, yet the actual recordings of these performances remain inaccessible. Their performances are done in silence. For example, in Waiting for Godot two actors wearing signs that read “ESTRAGON” and “VLADIMIR” kneel or sit below a third actor wearing a sign that reads “TREE.” The two actors proceed to run around the tree and knock each other around. The Surveillance Camera Players have performed in various cities in North America such as Jersey City, Baltimore, San Francisco, and Montreal. The group has also performed internationally in England, Austria, Spain, Italy, and Holland. The SCP is said to have been inspired by the anti-surveillance manifesto, “Guerilla Programming of Surveillance Equipment,” but state that they were not the first to stage surveillance camera theater. They state that it was the invention of comedy writers:
Properly speaking, surveillance camera theater was invented by a comedy writer, not a privacy advocate or a performance artist: i.e., the person(s) who in 1981 wrote the "On the Job" episode of the American TV sit-com Taxi
Taxi (TV series)
Taxi was an American sitcom that originally aired from 1978 to 1982 on ABC and from 1982 to 1983 on NBC. The series, which won 18 Emmy Awards, including three for "Outstanding Comedy Series", focuses on the everyday lives of a handful of New York City taxi drivers and their abusive dispatcher...
, in which Alex Reiger (played by Judd Hirsch
Judd Hirsch
Judd Hirsch is an American actor most known for playing Alex Rieger on the television comedy series Taxi, John Lacey on the NBC series Dear John, and Alan Eppes on the CBS series Numb3rs.-Early life and education:...
) temporarily gets a job as a camera-watching security guard. Bored out of his mind by the isolation and silence, Alex eventually learns to pass the time by improvising silly little skits in front of the surveillance camera and watching himself on the monitor at the same time. When Alex's shift is over, he is replaced by a veteran of the place (played by "Grampa" Al Lewis), who pulls out a ventriloquist's dummy and starts performing in front of the surveillance camera as soon as his shift begins! The implication was that every security guard—when no one (else) was looking—was passing the time in this way. On October 12, 1992, Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
included a skit that imagined that during the night, when everyone else had gone home, the people who worked at Rockefeller Center—not just the security guards, but also the cleaning ladies and the maintenance workers—would amuse themselves and each other by putting on little skits in front of the building's surveillance cameras. As in Taxi, none of these skits had any political content and none of them concerned privacy rights.
The SCP has a wide following around the world and has even spawned sister groups in Arizona, California, Italy, Lithuania, Sweden, and Turkey suggesting how the issue of surveillance is one which transcends nationalities and cultures, bringing people together to make one synonymous public statement.
Architectural
Some surveillance artists choose to use architecture as canvases. The buildings and structures they use are in highly visible areas with lots of pedestrians. The artists install a surveillance system that tracks human movement through and/or around the structure. The system is connected to a viewing format, such as a large screen or light installation, which are triggered by human movement. As one artist describes it, “All the visual elements in the projection result from people’s movements through the space.” Surveillance art elicits interaction from viewers while making them more aware of the pervasiveness of surveillance.Some architectural surveillance art pieces involve large screen installations or projections on highly visible buildings in populated areas. Artist Christian Moeller
Christian Moeller
Christian Moeller is a German architect and artist.He is a professor of Design | Media Arts at University of California, Los Angeles. -Life:...
’s 2006 project, "Nosy," includes a street-level camera which records the active surrounding environment, including pedestrians, cars, and a nearby train in Osaki City, Japan. The real-time video is “displayed in bitmap graphics [and projected] onto three towers covered with white LEDs behind frosted glass panels.”
Artist Camille Utterback
Camille Utterback
Camille Utterback is an interactive installation artist. Initially trained as a painter, her work is at the intersection of painting and interactive art.-Biography:...
created a similar installation in 2007, called "Abundance," using the domed city hall of San Jose, California, as her interactive canvas. The installation includes a large surveillance camera focused on pedestrians and an abstract art animation, projected onto the city hall building. Pedestrians’ location and movement within the field of the camera are translated into abstract shapes that appear in the projection. As the pedestrian moves, the corresponding shape moves within the animation and interacts with other shapes in the projection. Utterback’s website states, “Movements and paths through the plaza become part of a collective visual record, and transform the building into a playful and dynamic canvas.”
The Los Angeles-based artist team, Electroland, has been dedicated to working on interactive art projects. Many of their projects are architectural surveillance art through the use of light installations or electronic displays. One of their architectural installations, "Enteractive," uses both the inside and outside of a building in Los Angeles. This project, finished in 2006, involves tracking indoor participants’ movements and locations over a large floor light grid. Outside, their real-time locations and movement patterns are broadcast to anyone within view of the colored light grid installed onto the face of the building.
Another of Electroland’s projects was incorporated into the Pedestrian Bridge of the Indianapolis Airport in 2008. The project, named "Connection," is made up of light “dots” that cover the length of the bridge, which light up in different colors as people pass through. The colored dots follow people’s movements and often interact with participants, “exhibit[ing] a range of intelligent and playful behaviors, accompanied by sounds.” Electroland has similar projects, including Target Breezeway, Lumen, and Drive By.
The French art team, Hehe, also works with architectural surveillance art but they prefer to take a “green” approach. Like Electroland, they have also done light installations, like their 2007 project in Luxembourg, "Grandes Lignes." This project includes light installations along a pedestrian footbridge that only light up where a pedestrian is located. Hehe describes the selective lighting as “the personal light sphere, which surrounds the traveler as they move from one end to the other.” Hehe explains the intent behind the project: “The responsiveness of the system functions ecologically and economically – saving energy – and also metaphorically: Your shadow – of light – walks with you and follows you.”
Hehe has also started a set of projects under the title, "Pollstream," all of which are environmentally-focused. Of these, Nuage Vert, or “green cloud” in English, is architectural surveillance art. The 2008 project uses a thermo-sensitive camera and a laser with a green, cloud-shaped beam. Installed on a nearby building, the beam is projected onto the stream of pollution from a power plant in Helsinki, as a constant reminder to residents of their energy usage. Hehe’s focus in this project moves from direct surveillance of people to the surveillance of their factories and plants. Here, humans are being indirectly watched through what they produce, like air pollution. This is potentially the beginning of a move into air surveillance art.
Inverse Surveillance/Sousveillance
Inverse surveillance, or "sousveillanceSousveillance
Sousveillance refers to the recording of an activity by a participant in the activity typically by way of small wearable or portable personal technologies.Sousveillance has also been described as "inverse surveillance", i.e...
", makes use of surveillance technology such as cameras from the perspective of the participant, allowing the object of surveillance essentially to become the subject. The term sousveillance was coined by Steve Mann
Steve Mann
Steven Mann , is a tenured professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto.-Education:...
, a noted media artist.
Typical instances of sousveillance as art involve voluntarily recording and broadcasting one’s own activities (via webcam, for example). The expressed purpose for this, in some cases, is to take away the value of the knowledge of the artist’s whereabouts and current activity. Hasan Elahi, an interdisciplinary media artist who was falsely suspected of terrorism and detained by government authorities, has said that the goal of broadcasting his daily life is to devalue information about him since “Intelligence agencies, regardless of who they are, all operate in a market where their commodity is information, and the reason their information has value is because no one else has access to it.” Thus, by increasing access to the information, he is taking away the surveilling authority’s monopoly on it.
Critical Responses
The Surveillance Studies Network is an organization that focuses on surveillance and its various effects on society, and their online journal, Surveillance and Society, publishes academic articles that present different aspects of surveillance. In 2005, Surveillance and Society’s second issue of the year featured two articles that included surveillance as an art form.The Plays and Arts of Surveillance: Studying Surveillance as Entertainment by Anders Albrechtslund and Lynsey Dubbeld takes an in depth look at surveillance and the roles it plays in art and popular culture. Although Albrechtslund and Dubbeld focus on the entertainment factor of Surveillance Art, they also acknowledge its serious explorations and implications. While Surveillance Art is entertainment, the artists “tend to focus on controversial aspects of surveillance practices or revealing the operation of surveillance technologies.” To illustrate this point, Albrechtslund and Dubbeld specifically referenced installation artist David Rokeby
David Rokeby
David Rokeby is an artist who has been making works of electronic, video and installation art since 1982.His early work Very Nervous System is acknowledged as a pioneering work of interactive art, translating physical gestures into real-time interactive sound environments...
. “For instance, like several of Rokeby’s other works, ‘Sorting Daemon’ was concerned with revealing the powers of vision and surveillance, and bringing to the fore the discriminatory, judgmental classifications that computers are increasingly producing as they take over human tasks of observation and monitoring.”
It is observed that although surveillance has been prominent in art and other forms of entertainment, it hasn’t been studied in depth by Surveillance Studies scholars. Albrechtslund and Dubbeld see a need for further exploration of this area of surveillance. Surveillance as a form of entertainment isn’t paid as much attention as it deserves because it truly is a diverse field that is continuously developing. “The entertaining side of surveillance is a phenomenon worth studying in itself, and we expect that this type of study will contribute to an understanding of the multi-faceted nature of surveillance.”
In article, "Para-Sights: Multiplied Perspectives on Surveillance Research in Art Educational Spaces," Robert W. Sweeny, an art educator at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, questioned surveillance technologies and the role that visual arts plays with those technologies. He then raised the question of how one would handle acknowledging surveillance technologies in the classroom. He is a firm believer that “Those involved with the visual arts might learn much from studies regarding current surveillance technologies, going beyond the boundaries of traditional research methodologies, informing practices that interrogate the dynamics of power and vision in art educational settings.” While teaching at The Pennsylvania State University, Sweeny used one project in particular to encourage his students to reveal “the power of the gaze” by exploring how surveillance brings about other ways of “seeing:”
These students chose the museum as a space that is based in looking and the ‘male gaze’, influenced by our readings of the course text, Ways of Seeing (Berger, 1972). Doubling the gaze of the surveillance camera through hand held video, then recording the individual recording the camera, they created a layered experience that lead to confusion. Through a tight editing process, they constantly reminded the viewer of the position of the camera operator (and the apparent laxness of the security guard) through the rapidly shifting camera shots. The images begin to break up as filmed image was filmed, layered with music that approached noise, only to return to a calm denouement, backing out of the doors that introduced the walking protagonist into a panoptic hall of mirrors.
With this project, the students not only created Surveillance Art, but by becoming the watchers, or what Sweeny would call the parasite, they were able to see beyond the environment that the museum created with its own surveillance cameras.
In his essays, interactive artist David Rokeby writes about the control and subjectivity that is created by artists who use technologies such as cameras:
The expressive power of the interface, in conjunction with the increasing 'apparent' transparency of interface technologies raises complicated ethical issues regarding subjectivity and control. Interactive artists are in a position to take the lead in generating a discussion of these concerns, but, on the other hand, are also in danger of becoming apologists for industrial, corporate, and institutional uses of these technologies.
Rokeby has also written an essay for students who wish to create interactive art and he goes on to explain his perspective on the pieces he creates.
The Surveillance Camera Players have been the inspiration for others who have gone on to create artistic project that involve some form of surveillance, however, they say that although they are flattered that they inspire others, they’re rarely impressed by the work that is created. Their complaint is that in the videos that are created, the artists usually end up promoting “several of the primary ideological supports for generalized surveillance.” These works of art fail to connect their audiences to the everyday people who are being watched.
Legalities
Legally, police officials consider Surveillance Art as an extraordinary method of keeping people safe. According to police officials in State College, Pennsylvania, surveillance is divided into three major concepts "national, mechanical, and perceived; all of which have transformed from legally used terms into art."National Surveillance is government-based surveillance that aids police officers as well as the community. As far as aiding the community with national surveillance, "all police vehicles are equipped with a hidden GPS locater that has the ability to transmit the position of a police vehicle anywhere in the country." For the community, National Surveillance means that a police official’s vehicle is heavily monitored at all times, causing him to be reprimanded if not at the location reported. From a governmental perspective, National Surveillance is essential for aiding police officials in investigations or simply identifying criminals. The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System
Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System
The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System is a national automated fingerprint identification and criminal history system maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation . IAFIS provides automated fingerprint search capabilities, latent searching capability, electronic image...
(IAFIS) allows police officials to "fingerprint and receive information on anyone who has ever been fingerprinted in only fifteen to twenty minutes." With the information gathered from an interview with a State College, Pennsylvania police officer, it is clear that National Surveillance has generated a type of “system balance” (between the government and the community) whose purpose with advancements in surveillance technology is to portray “truth.”
Mechanical surveillance, although sharing similarities with National Surveillance, plays a somewhat different role in surveillance as an art form. During the interview with the State College police officer, it was noted that "the camera in a police vehicle begins recording as soon as its emergency lights are switched on whether the vehicle is stopped or in motion." This form of mechanical surveillance plays a huge role in police investigation along with helping create surveillance art. With Internet sites like YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace, people have the ability to create and share any type of video feed that interests them. As an example, the anonymous State College police officer referred to the riots at Penn State University after Penn State beat Ohio State University during the 2008-2009-football season. Several videos were posted on YouTube depicting celebratory acts that quickly transitioned into destructive malicious behavior. First, State College Police referred to these posted videos as police evidence in which they were able to apprehend and fine individuals involved in the riots. On the other hand, however, there are several videos of the riots in which inspirational music was added to portray “Penn State Pride” rather than committing an illegal act. Adding music to these types of videos transforms mechanical surveillance into Surveillance Art by creating an emotional attachment for the individuals who can relate to what the video visually portrays.
Perceived surveillance is a concept of Surveillance Art that is purely territorial and usually created by individuals involved with that particular community. Using State College, Pennsylvania as an example, an anonymous police officer stated that he believes Surveillance Art “creates a presence in the community that lowers the likelihood of crime, portraying a sense of ownership.” With the advancement of technology in today’s society, it has become apparent that it is relatively easier for individuals to create “Perceived Surveillance Art.” The interesting aspect of Perceived Surveillance Art is the fact that it can be anything. Examples of Perceived Surveillance Art can range from a mural on the side of a building to a simple statue of the baby Jesus in the front yard of an individual's home.
"With these created websites, YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace, it has become relatively easy for individuals to post and spread Surveillance Art throughout the world." In some instances, there are highly controversial videos (Rodney King beating and the shooting death of Oscar Grant by police officers) placed on these sites that have been edited to portray a specific individuals perception of that specific event or a different perspective on how that event should possibly be taken. When asking the State College police officer about how these sites affect police investigations, he stated that they “have no bearing on anything having to do with police work.” In fact, the new interpretations presented by the videos on these sites are welcomed by some police officers that like the idea and believe in Surveillance Art.
While discussing surveillance as an art form with a New York City bus driver, it was found to be "impossible for an individual to travel more than three blocks anywhere in New York without being on camera." When considering the three forms of surveillance (national, mechanical, and perceived) as art forms, it is clear that our society has evolved into a technically dependent era in which even the most reliable footage (unedited surveillance footage) can become art by simply transforming or even editing raw footage (adding music, or text) creating new material, resulting in Surveillance Art. Although the amount of surveillance in State College, Pennsylvania may not be as high as the amount of surveillance in New York City, it is interesting and notable that surveillance as an art form exists everywhere.
Notable Examples
These examples are representative of Surveillance Art's methods and effects. Although they use different technologies and tactics, they are united by an interest in the increasing prevalence of surveillance in modern society, and its effects on citizens and communities.- Wireless Intelligent Systems Laboratory, directed by Stephen Wicker, and Human-Computer Interaction Group, headed by Geri Gay, created a Surveillance Art experiment, wherein the movements of visitors at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art are tracked by cameras. Their movements are coordinated, and influence a soundtrack created by professional sound designer Ron Riddle.
- Digital Urban Living and the Digital Aesthetics Research Center hold a conference titled "Sousveillance: The Art of Inverse Surveillance" from February 8-9th, 2009, in Denmark. “Sousveillance”, a term coined by Steve Mann, “denotes bringing the practice of observation down to human level (ordinary people doing the watching, rather than higher authorities or architectures doing the watching).”
- Benjamin Males has created several Surveillance Art projects, including:
- the Target Project, wherein images of people are analyzed to determine and store their racial data, which Males says “exists to critique and raise questions about legislation and the use of surveillance on the public.”
- SOLA, or The Statistic Obesity Logging and Apparatus, a system that can roughly determine an individual’s Body Mass Index via surveillance images.
- Since being detained while entering the US, Hasan Elahi has been required to notify an FBI agent of his location whenever he traveled. Elahi decided to make this information available to the public, documenting his every move on his Web site, even via pictures. He also has published his complete banking records.
- Christian Moeller has worked on several projects regarding surveillance, including:
- “Mojo,” a robotic arm holding a spotlight. Pedestrians walking in San Pedro, California were taped on video cameras and then followed by the spotlight.
- “Nosy,” a camera that randomly recorded people and then displayed them in bitmap graphics on nearby buildings.
- Moeller describes himself as, “an artist working with contemporary media technologies to produce innovative and intense physical events, realized from handheld object to architectural scale installations.
- Artist Camille Utterback uses a video camera in San Jose, California to monitor people, whose movements are translated into animated graphics and projected on to a 3-story rotunda.
- Designer Jason Bruges has created several large-scale examples of Surveillance Art:
- Bruges Studio surveyed the movement of commuters on the London Bridge and projected it as a matrix of colors on the top of the **Tower Bridge, located a few blocks away. Bruges also made his system capable of searching out those on the Bridge with Bluetooth connections and projected a color unique to each connection on the Tower Bridge.
- Bruges studio created “smart” street lamps in Leicester, England that could recreate the colors of passing cars.
- "Real-time tracking and information gathering will only get more sophisticated," he says. "I think it's very important to subvert these technologies and use them in a playful way so people become less scared and more comfortable with this technology that already surrounds them."
- Adam Rifkin’s 2007 film "Look" is shot entirely from surveillance footage, and questions the effect constant surveillance has on our everyday lives. Rifkin describes the film as about "the things we people do when we don't think we're being watched."
Further reading
- Remes, Outi and Skelton, Pam (eds.) Conspiracy Dwellings: Surveillance in Contemporary Art, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010, ISBN 1-4438-1905-0