des_acontece
des_acontece is an interactive exploration of surveillance technologies, challenging passive observation by empowering users to engage creatively with their surveillance environment. Through a series of interventions, the project reimagines the role of security cameras, transforming them into tools for collective expression and exploration.
Objective of the Work
The aim of des_acontece is to address the contemporary surveillance culture, where individuals constantly find themselves reflected and mediated through cameras. The project seeks to reclaim agency over these surveillance mechanisms, questioning their presence in public and private spaces. Can these cameras be subverted or rendered ineffective? Through interactive experimentation, the project explores the potential of using these tools for collective engagement rather than passive observation.
Development
The user experience begins with accessing the website and navigating through instructions. Upon selecting the "Security Cameras" button, users are prompted to grant permission for their webcam and microphone. Once accepted, users can choose from a selection of live security camera feeds from various locations. The project combines different materials and techniques, including footage from security cameras, image manipulation through GitHub, and 3D modeling, to transform the surveillance experience into a collective exploration.
des_acontece generates various interventions within the surveillance space:
- Form a: Intervening with the user's image and voice captured by the webcam, processed through Touchdesigner.
- Form b: Altering the user's image with different materiality and temporality within the surveillance space, processed with Touchdesigner.
- Form c: Resignifying the use of security cameras by removing individuals present, leaving traces in the image, processed using TensorFlow.js.
- Form d: Intervening with the surveillance space using the user's captured imprint, processed with Touchdesigner.
- Form e: Morphological test of a collective corpus modified by user movements, creating an ever-evolving collective body, processed with vvvv and webcam input.
Theoric work
Note on Inclusive Language: This document was originally written using inclusive language, which was appropriate at the time. However, with the current government in Argentina, such language is no longer legally recognized. In English, inclusive language conventions differ, so the translation will reflect standard English usage.
With the directed gaze of the digital cameras of our electronic devices, we find ourselves inhabiting virtual territories under constant observation. If there is a social practice of surveillance, with its respective social actors, the surveillants, we propose to study and reflect on it, particularly from the perspective of being surveilled. Even where superficialities mix, surveillance breaks the barrier of everyday life, and virtuality immerses itself within urban life. Not only from the public and private apparatus of recording and observation but also from the ways Surveillance Capitalism collects our information to direct our desires towards market interests. We will also analyze how tech conglomerates act as mediators of social practices across the internet. Social networks like Facebook and service providers like Google or Microsoft become the filters through which we conduct our practices online.
We will also study how the surveillant gaze is configured from the perspective of Image and Sound Design. How an audiovisual surveillance system is structured, from urban planning in the placement of police security cameras to the creation of Instagram filters, and how these systems function as control devices and the effects they provoke in us. Finally, we will present our project for the course Audiovisual Project III, in which we, as designers, aimed to construct a website that examines, denounces, and accounts for these naturalized practices.
In early 2020, in March, we began experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to social, preventive, and mandatory isolation. Within the context of the Audiovisual Project III course, from the Campos-Trilnick chair at the Faculty of Architecture, Design, and Urbanism of the University of Buenos Aires, we, a group of five advanced students in the Image and Sound Design program, were proposed to create a fiction centered on the body. Any type of fiction (monochannel, video game, website, installation, etc.) and infinite body (physical, virtual, anthropomorphic human, 3D modeled, etc.). Given the many possible approaches, we decided to start from our concerns related to the context we were living in.
Cut to: We are in the fourth month of social isolation (July), and with it begins the first semester of the 2020 academic year (all academic processes had been suspended, and FADU was one of the last faculties to resume them). Within the course and with the primary goal of creating a fiction project, we began by exploring dreams as an escape route from the physical and concrete impossibilities of meeting others: "Dreams order and crystallize what we still do not understand about the outside" (Makaroff, H. B. and Berón, C. 2021). We thought about that public space that was being taken from us and how it was gradually replaced by virtual space. The context and the chosen theme seemed intertwined, as it led us to reach coincidences, theories?
We lived in times of surveillance and collective insecurity, with cities emptying out: state-mandated control of public space was the only form of prevention. The enemy or danger could be the neighbor who chose "not to take care of us" and go outside (as demonized by the media, they could still carry the virus). Thus, we began to think about spaces where the five of us felt surveilled and lacked privacy due to new social practices.
From there, our first objective emerged for our project process: to reclaim the space collectively. Could we materialize the idea of reclaiming a virtual space?
These dreams we took as an initial point opened another door of investigation about the mirror, which returned an image-other of ourselves, the reflection as collective otherness. Based on this reflection, the curiosity about our image in web cameras emerged. That image, which was ours but also other, generated a hypnotizing estrangement. Due to the new social practices that infiltrated all aspects of our lives, we found ourselves constantly seeing our reflections to carry out any activity: studying, working, having meetings, birthdays, collective funerals, etc. The webcam had become our portal for determining our identity and proving our presence. But no longer physically, rather mediated by this technology, which was, until then, the only way to "democratize" the experience and living through a period of social isolation.
If Foucault's panopticon was the mirror of modernity, with the premise of surveilling the "soul" of the subject through discipline, now, in postmodernity, we can consider that this mirror has entered our homes to play a much deeper role, as Bauman considered "Liquid Surveillance": A way to control what happens and "will happen."
This type of surveillance also operates on bodies and social practices, similar to the panopticon. But in our postmodern society, it is no longer a few who surveil the masses; now the roles are reversed: Everyone can surveil, control, and observe the actions, practices, and relationships of others.
We can think that this phenomenon did not start with the advent of the pandemic and social isolation, but these are practices we have acquired over the years. And these practices are not only correlated with the technological development of devices that enable such surveillance. Adopting a technologist view would be a very reductionist position on the problem we are raising. The devices that make surveillance accessible to everyone (such as the aforementioned webcams) are merely a means to achieve it, but we can see this surveillance elucidated in the practices of the social beings we live with daily. These have infiltrated their everyday attitudes, aligning with a new, more subtle form of surveillance, more internal (at the bodily, social level) and even operating on a symbolic layer.
The Theory of Habitation developed by Roberto Doberti suggests that social practices are: "the organizations of activities that a community validates, recognizes, and exercises, that is, an institutionalized set or group of activities." These practices go unnoticed in everyday life, meaning they become the "natural" ways life is organized.
Based on this, we ask if this new surveillance, which we have been experiencing in an exacerbated way during these recent months, can already be installed within social practices as something natural. To what extent has surveillance been validated, recognized, and exercised in our society? If we consider that it has already passed through this stage and is regarded as another social practice, we must reflect on how to re-signify that surveillance that so discomforts and conditions us. Reclaiming the idea of surveillance makes us ask, what do we surveil? Why do we surveil? When do we feel surveilled?
Those of us who perceive ourselves as surveilled subjects today understand that this happens constantly, but we do not know by whom or when. However, perhaps a fundamental difference from the panopticon is that the surveillance we feel operating on us is not understood in relation to what it is. We are all being surveilled: body, space, gestures, attitudes. Everything is subject to surveillance; everything is a reason to feel exposed. The virtual space is always different, even if we place the device in the same physical location. When you turn off the screen and your image no longer exists, does the surveillance continue? Does our body still feel the external gaze, even if it is not present?
This discomfort and estrangement from our image are the thread guiding our project. It is influenced by our subjectivities, our images, and our physical, spatial, and resource limitations. But when it comes to acting and projecting, we know we need to reclaim the surveillance devices before they reclaim us. Between the real and the virtual, if everyone surveils and everyone is surveilled, is there surveillance?
Can we reverse the logic of certain devices to transform them into tools of closeness? During a period like this, where, due to our possibilities, we have spent most months immersed in virtuality, can we use the devices to our advantage beyond their specific function?
Cut to: Jeremias wrote a reflection related to surveillance and a situation he had experienced a few years ago. Based on that writing, questions arose trying to connect the idea of surveillance cameras with our webcams, which had been the protagonists of our daily lives for months. Suddenly, our subjectivity and behaviors were being seen by others. At what point do we start feeling uncomfortable with the idea of surveillance, and how much of this is created by the virtual universe and context? When we see a surveillance camera on the street but do not see our reflection, it does not terrify or depersonalize us in the same way.
In correlation with these questions, it is worth highlighting what is stated in Stuart Hall's "Encoding and Decoding" about interfaces and how we see and identify ourselves in them: "It is the interface that allows identification with technology to take effect. As a human, I find myself projected onto the interface." If we understand the interface as a necessary construct for our projection, we can then consider it as a necessary means for developing social practices, especially today, when projection is exacerbated to unimaginable limits. Zoom, Meets, work, pleasure, play, study. It is difficult for us to identify with that image of ourselves projected onto the interface and the screen, but that other, which we are not used to, is a sine qua non condition for inhabiting virtual spaces without ceasing to be present.
We think about the idea of inhabiting everyday spaces as new, diverse spaces, giving them new functions in an obligatory way due to the pandemic (understanding that now a room is a classroom, a car or a café can be a space for therapy via video call for privacy), also how we reconstruct spaces in virtuality.
Could inhabiting a link be considered inhabiting a physical space? Or on what plane could we place that location where we can spend hours feeling different emotions, thinking, looking at other faces, but with the click of a button, it disappears?
1. Encoding and Decoding. (Hall, S.)
ABOUT DESACONTECE: “(...)
Rather than setting the parameters for our habitation of the earth, design is an integral part of the very process of dwelling. For the same reason, design refers to the continuous creation of the types of environments in which dwelling can occur
We think of the role of designers as those who, in part, project and think about what is not yet part of life. Without resorting to futurology, our imperative role requires the unexpected, the failure, the constant error to always be in motion and projection towards what has not yet been designed. Having had so many spaces taken away from us, we wanted, through problematizing and reusing surveillance as a social practice, to design a new way of inhabiting. A hybridization of the real and the virtual, our identity and presence in space are reconstructed to propose a more conscious and active way of inhabiting spaces.
As creators and designers, we asked questions regarding the user, such as: How do I feel when participating in an interactive/cooperative work in public space? Could it be taken as a control device to force us to reflect on the loneliness we inevitably inhabit despite escaping it by seeking refuge in the virtual encounter and support of other bodies and voices?
These questions, which arose from the idea of inhabiting virtual spaces, led us to build an interactive web:
Desacontece is a web project that proposes a dialogue between webcams and security cameras to reflect on the image, public and private space, and the way of inhabiting them. We understand the collective reappropriation of spaces as a fundamental part of the project, which is why Desacontece consists of more than one stage and strategy for developing each one. We built this new space using security cameras available on the internet to create spaces for reflection and experimentation with surveillance. We invite users to use their image and actively inhabit that space. To experiment with discomfort, uncertainty, to explore a new dynamic of surveillance: no longer to judge, but to observe and observe ourselves being watched.
For the creation of our project, we contacted a programmer specializing in electronic arts. Together, we developed a website with several possible paths: After accessing it, the user is presented with a pop-up message saying, “We need to identify you,” which aligns with our previous reflections where we maintain that (especially in this recent period) our identity and presence become visible and take on a certain status of truth when our image verifies us. And it is necessary to recognize that all identification has an eminently political character. How we identify ourselves is how we make ourselves known, how others will act towards us, and how we will then be able to inhabit spaces, and in what manner. If the user chooses to accept, they must take a photo to use as their “avatar.” Once this step (ceding their personal image) is completed, they are presented with a map in which they must, without prejudice, choose one of the marked points to enter. This choice, made to begin the surveillance experience, implies a revaluation of the territory with a nomadic attitude, not knowing where it will take them; the user must choose an almost blind point to start their experience. Perlongher talks about wandering between points: “Although the nomad has a territory (‘it follows customary paths, goes from one point to another, does not ignore the points’), that wandering between points is not the principle, but the consequence of the nomadic drift: even when moving between points, those points are a consequence of the journeys, unlike the sedentary space, where the points impose the monotonous force of the journeys.” (Perlongher, N. 2021)
2. Environments for Life. (Ingold, T.)
Once the point is selected, the website will display a set of security camera videos that we have compiled. Navigation on this page is done through face tracking, which recognizes the tip of the nose, allowing movement within the surveillance video map as the user moves their face. This enables the user to explore the map with their avatar (which remains somewhat anonymous as it uses a photograph instead of real-time footage) and observe what happens in these unfamiliar spaces they are "monitoring." Formally, the user must use their physical body so their virtual body can navigate the space and decide what to do with the surveillance/observation presented to them.
The next step involves the concept of surveillance and the trust the user has in this experience. Throughout the journey, a text file recording the user's X/Y positions within the page is generated. This file can be downloaded and, if desired, uploaded to our database to translate these X/Y positions into real cardinal points on a map. This part falls under the Transit path, where users can download routes taken by other users and, starting from their current location, follow the path that others have taken. Our goal is to encourage users to return to public spaces and navigate them in a new way, appropriating the space to subvert the use of surveillance.
This new journey presented to the user offers a chance to reconstruct these spaces and denied social practices. It's crucial to understand that transit emerges from the multiplicity of users who also choose to unfold in the space, explore it with a different perspective, and re-signify and revalue that public space to finally make it their own. As Perlongher (2021) states: “If we are all multiplicities, if writing itself is the conjugation of innumerable multiplicities (‘an infinitely populated solitude’), the ethnographic narrative should include, as Caiafa says, ‘all the vicissitudes of being many in multiple places.’”
What interests us is that users can be those many, in multiple places, and that they can imprint their presence (whether real or virtual) without prejudice, without the inquisitive and vigilant gaze. That they appropriate the spaces and fill them with content. Inhabiting must be a conscious, responsible, and transformative action.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
- PERLONGHER, N. (February 2021). “Territorios marginales”. Moléculas malucas. https://www.moleculasmalucas.com/post/territorios-marginales-de-néstor-perlongher. Originally published in Portuguese in Papeis Avulsos. CIEC, Centro Interdisciplinar de Estudios Contemporáneos, Rio de Janeiro, 1988.
- MAKAROFF, H. B. & BERÓN, C. (January 2021). “¿Vos también soñaste algo raro anoche?”. Revista Anfibia. http://revistaanfibia.com/ensayo/vos-tambien-sonaste-algo-raro-anoche/.
- HALL, S.: “Codificar/decodificar”. In: Culture, Media, Language. Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-79. London, Routledge & The CCCS University of Birmingham, 1996 [Unwin Hyman Ltd, 1980].
- INGOLD, T.: (2012). “Ambientes para la vida”. Montevideo, Uruguay: Ediciones Trilce.