Panel Statement
Panel: Surveillant Spaces: From Autonomous Surveillance to Machine Voyeurism
In 2002, I accidentally intercepted video transmitting from a wireless security camera that was not intended for my eyes. While viewing live images on a monitor being produced by my own wireless camera, I was surprised to see something else appear. Black and white, ghost-like apparitions, people in aprons, emerged intermittently from the white noise. After some scrutiny, I realized that the video was coming from a camera installed in a restaurant kitchen, two floors down. This chance discovery led to a five year search for more hidden images, found by walking and using a video receiver to scan the streets of 17 different cities. Whether intended or not, a person that uses a wireless surveillance camera becomes a broadcaster who transmits live video that is easily interceptible. These anonymous and unofficial broadcasts create an alternate view of the city and its inhabitants. Within this presentation, I will act as a guide through surveillant spaces formed by private use of CCTV and discuss some of the architectural and performative qualities that are inherent within them. I will introduce several urban interventions that piece together unseen stories from the invisible media present in the city and perform juxtapositions between interior and exterior, physical and mediated, personal and public spaces.
- Michelle Teran (born in Canada) explores the interaction between media and social networks in urban environments. In her work she looks at different aspects of how urban space is defined, occupied and mediatized. She has a social and site-specific practice which focuses mostly on the staging of urban interventions and performances, such as guided tours, discussions, walks and open-air projections as well as participatory installations and happenings. She is the winner of the Transmediale Award, the Turku2011 Grand Prix Award, the Vida 8.0 Award and Prix Ars Electronica honorary mention (2005, 2010. Currently she is within the post-graduate Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowship Programme where she is doing practice-based research at the Bergen National Academy of the Arts. She lives and works between Bergen (N) and Berlin (DE).