It's Gotta Be Something That Watches.... Mixed Media, Art Gallery of Regina, Regina Sk 2016. Collaborative work with John Campbell Gluey Group
This work explores surveillance as something we can all be a part of making as opposed to being the subject of. The difference between passive and active surveillance is investigated by turning the often-foreboding concept of being surveilled into a playful, creative, and collaborative experience. To do this, a space is created for viewers to become collaborators with the surveillance tool and play an active role in the creation of the surveillance data rather than be simply a subject of surveillance. To expose this concept, a traditionally passive form of surveillance, the thermohygrometer, is mimicked and altered so that the surveillance is recording the activity of the space. In this way the viewer can become a collaborator with the device, directly affecting the outcome of the surveillance. To do this, a chart recorder that the viewer is accustomed to seeing in the gallery space (normally used to collect ambient gallery factors such as humidity and temperature) was hacked and modified to instead record viewers' movements. This specialized equipment was hybridized with sensors most often associated with human input, such as proximity and movement sensors. In this way, the active space is "under surveillance" rather than the ambient space, thus, allowing viewers to play and contribute to the surveillance rather than simply be a subject of surveillance. The artwork creates a visual printout, in real time, of the surveilled activities, providing the viewer/participant with immediate visual feedback of their activity in the gallery. This creates a space for the viewer/surveilled-subject to become a participant, working with the artwork to actively alter the "data" being collected, and thus contributing to the artwork itself. Through the cooperation of surveillor and surveilled, the artwork itself creates a new artwork, a visual drawing (printout on a long scroll) representing the activity of the gallery space for the duration of the exhibition.
©Ned Bartlett