We have all encountered surveillance cameras and have even grown somewhat accustomed to them, not giving them a second thought, but through our exploration and research into the surveillance art movement; we’ve opened our eyes to new ideas and concepts that we can explore. Surveillance art is not simply an aesthetic category; it is a thematic mode of creative engagement. Responding to this, our approach to this artwork has so far spanned social commentary, futurisms and the absurd, some of our animations in the piece may seem creepy; but it’s asserting the unnatural concept of being watched when in most public spaces by unseen entities. It engages conversations like “Can people on some level be trusted?” or must we be always under scrutiny and closely watched; in case we misbehave, leading to definite punishment. Our artwork asks questions and will open narratives about if we can ever achieve a utopia, in the broad sense of the term. Or is there only a dystopian future with sinister entities and powers that use surveillance to control the population to some nefarious end.
With a focus on surveillance art, we have created connections and interactivity spanning various media and digital platforms. We have imagined and generated a complex system under the hood, but one that’s frictionless and intuitive to the viewer and participant on the front-end. Our artwork; Surveilling the map, involves some curation, as warranted with any online platform that is mostly public facing. Though there isn’t unbridled freedom to post what you want, we encourage maximum inclusivity. The entire artwork is in response to Queering the Map by Lucas Larochelle, where anyone is able to interact with, or contribute to the narrative. Like Lucas, we’re engaging the world to show what surveillance art can be or how it can evolve or be taken into a new light, involving art reflective of the ever increasing gaze of the eye in the sky. We’ve even used some of the satellite technology within the artwork, through the Google Maps API.
These ideas of mass surveillance and social engineering via screen therapy were prevalent in science fiction books like The Clockwork Orange, Brave New World and 1984. New technologies strongly influence utopian and dystopian stories when they are unusual or powerful enough to change how people see the world or understand reality. We wanted to take the affordances of digital interactive online systems to focus on the creative aspects of surveillance art that may not have had a platform to be realised fully, until now.
