Surveillance/privacy

Surveillance/privacy


I talked to my group members about what generative topics we could choose. We all seemed to be most interested in privacy and or surveillance. So we did some research on artists who use these concepts. Once artist I came upon is Lee Walton. I spent a lot of time on his web site. He seems like a real lovable guy. His art is really funny. I regards to our topic he does art on facebook. Basically he takes his friends status reports and then films himself acting them out. He posts the films to vimeo and of course onto his facebook status page. This artwork can be viewed here: http://www.leewalton.com/projects/fbook/index.html

In regards to our generative topics we thought about reality t.v., cameras in public installed by the government, what it feels like to be filmed, filming people when they don’t know it, and how we all enjoy watching people on film react to particular situations (when they are unaware of being filmed). It would be fun to do social experiments in public to see how people act in certain situations. For example I know of a guy who secretly filmed himself screaming in downtown crossing and on the film no one came to his aid. People just walked past him.

Also I came across another artist that performed mini plays in front of surveillance cameras. This is very creative. This type of art shows that new media can create a venue for art to to seen that is out of the regular gallery space. Lee Walton’s art can be seen anywhere video is played. Or even anywhere folks can perform status reports themselves. Another artist named Kate pocrass had portable exhibition venues inside her hat and jacket.- contents of wallet She also has an art exhibition where you call a hotline and listen to her instructions on the message. She will often instruct those to go to a special shop, talk to the owner, or view something form a particular vantage point. Check it out here: http://www.mundanejourneys.com/