Sample Surveillance Feed Capture (click for full image)This is an installation piece consisting of a surveillance camera whose video is fed into a computer and displayed on a security monitor. The system is setup up in a style similar to that seen in many supermarkets, in which both camera and monitor face the shoppers as they enter the store in order to make them aware that they are being surveilled. However, the video feed in this piece differs from commercial surveillance displays as the faces of those being monitored are blocked before output to the monitor. The installation is intended to be displayed at the entrance to an enclosed space.

Installation at Arizona State University (click for full image)The installation should focus and elicit ideas about the role surveillance plays in marginalizing the individual in our society and to comment on the limits of what surveillance can tell us about the people whom we monitor. The non-discriminating surveillance employed by CCTV systems treats us all as suspect and reduces our individuality to very minute differences in physical appearance and location. It implies that the surveillant has very little interest in the complexity of the individual. By blocking the faces of those monitored, the piece magnifies the feeling we experience when seeing ourselves on the monitor--that we are almost anonymous, almost without identity, in our surveillants' eyes.