Track-the-Trackers
Here is a project that uses community to find the lines between the upper and lower classes as evidenced by the presence of surveillance cameras. Lower classes feel alienated by the security cameras which seem to exist just to keep them under control. People go out into the city and document the locations of any cameras they encounter. There is also an audio component that tells them when they are approaching a previously marked camera.
It is a sort of way of finding public spaces that aren’t really public because they exclude certain types of people and private spaces that aren’t private because they are being watched. It offers people another way to experience and hopefully gain control of public/private spaces.
This is a really awesome project! Thank you for posting this. I am ever increasing my questioning of public/shared/private space. As I understand it today, these terms are purely subjective. What I consider a private space might not be what is legally private, or what someone else might consider private. And as I raise the questions to myself, it is shown here even further how someone else can define what is public and private.
What is the most interesting piece of this whole equation is the element of “control.” We as westerners especially, are concerned with control. We want to believe we are in control even when we are not. I am no different than the rest of my fellow citizens, but this project raises another question for me. Why do I feel like I have the right to gain control over public/private spaces?
Comment by phyllis — February 28, 2008 @ 6:56 am
this is a neat project…have you hear of the the Surveillance Camera Players? http://www.notbored.org/the-scp.html they also do interesting things around urban space and surveillance…they’re like performative interventionists. there is also this mapping project where you can put in two destinations in NYC and it will spit out a route in which you can travel without being watched by a camera…
Comment by michella — February 28, 2008 @ 9:46 pm