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Viewing as a Journey and surveillance art

Veronica Puleio

nothing can be seen except what exists. Butwhat exists now is not future, but present. When,therefore, the say that future events are seen, it isnot the event themselves, for they do not exist as

yet (that is, they are still in time future), butperhaps, instead, their causes and their signs are

seen, which already do exist. Therefore to thosealready beholding these causes and signs, theyare not future, but present, and from them futurethings are predicted because they are conceivedin the mind. These conceptions, however, existnow and those who predict those things see theseconceptions before them in time present.(ST. Augustine and Outler, 2002)

1. Introduction

Surveillance is a disquieting presence in contemporary societies. This

essay will explore potential ways of using CCTV for creative purposes.

That is, my purpose is not to examine the use of CCTV in every day

life. Nor it is to assess the relationship between CCTV and crime

control. I will rather concentrate on the impact that the technology of

surveillance may have in the arts, and how this technology can affect


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the viewers perception. I have developed a project which illustrates

but one way in which CCTV can be used to enhance the experience of

viewing, allowing the viewer to construct a narrative by travelling

through the sets he watches on CCTV and allowing other viewers to

see him.

In section 2, I examine the significance of surveillance in contemporary

societies. On the one hand it recognizes that surveillance is connected

to the idea of power as domination. Yet, on the other hand, it highlights

the role of artists in using surveillance technology to make visible the

invisible, challenging this social function of surveillance. Section 3

proposes a particular approach to the act of viewing. I argue that

viewing is an active experience, to which the viewer brings its own

ideas, pre-conceptions, memories, etc. Moreover, using the installation

Traffic by the McCoys, I suggest that this experience can be

enhanced by allowing the viewer the possibility to travel through the

settings, becoming also part of what is viewed. The viewer is then

conceived as a traveler, and his experience as cinematic nomadism. In

section 4 I explain my project Viewing as a Journey. I have used

surveillance technology CCTV cameras in London to create a

cinematic journey, in which the viewer has the opportunity to travel

through the real sets in London, thereby creating narrative fragments

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that can tell different stories. The project is intended as an invitation to

reproduce this journey. I have documented it in a flipbook attached to

this essay in which other viewers can see parts of the narrative.

1. Surveillance

Surveillance is often connected with the idea of power. There is a

controller and the controlled. The notion of the all-powerful and

knowing entity whether involving God, superheroes, government,

bosses or parents- is so embedded in our culture as to be

commonplace, and note is rarely taken of it (Ferrell and Sanders,

1995: 138).

In contemporary Britain, CCTV is the most public and widely discussed

form of surveillance. On the streets, at ATM machines, in the lobbies

of our workplaces, in convenience stores and in shopping malls, video

cameras watch us, but where do the images go? (McGrath, 2004:31).

These cameras are essentially crime prevention devices. If we have

done nothing wrong, we should not be concerned. Yet, as McGrath

suggests, the experience of being continually photographed is a

potentially stressful one (McGrath, 2004:31). Michel Foucault has

worked extensively with the idea of surveillance as the central notion

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that constitutes power relationships in modern societies.1 In panoptic

institutions neither bars nor heavy locks are necessary; all that is

necessary is a clear separation between what is observed and the

observer, and the power-relation between them. Accordingly, it is not

necessary to use force to constrain the convicts good behaviour, the

madman to calm, the worker to work, the schoolboy to application

(Foucault, 2004:76). He argues that ours, is not a society of spectacle,

but one of surveillance. We are neither in the amphitheatre, nor on the

stage, but in the panoptic machine, invested by its effects of power,

which we bring to ourselves since we are part of that mechanism

(Foucault, 1975:562)

In this context, the traditional role of the artist in making the unseen

visible has a particularly appropriate meaning. Contemporary artists

using technology can reveal unseen elements and help us look

differently at the experience of surveillance. I have chosen for my

argument the installation Traffic from the McCoys and worked with

the idea of viewing as a journey. The McCoys made their London debut

with Tiny, Funny, Big and Sad at the National Film Institute, an

exhibition that mixes model-making and customized computer

software to reflect on the experience of cinema-going and to re-invent

1 Interestingly, Gilles Deleuze has argued that the notion of surveillance is being orwill be superseded by that of control as the leading strategy for the exercise ofpower.

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the role of the viewer.

Traffic was part of that exhibition. Using homespun hobby skills and

robotic choreography, they created miniature film sets that spy on

themselves and generate their own cinema sequences.2 These

sequences are projected in big screens on the background. The viewer

can then look at them while walking around the real miniature

scenes.

Surveillance plays a central role in Traffic. The McCoys use small

moving cameras, moving set elements, and recorded dialogues to

create a short narrative that is projected in the big screens. At the

same time, [t]he small, dollhouse scale set allows the viewer to

spatially explore what they experience temporally through the video

projection. The McCoys are interested in investigating what they call

film magic, namely, the propensity of even the most sophisticated

viewer to understand and, at the same time, be drawn in by

illusionistic cinematic effects (McCoy and McCoy, 2004). This produces

a very interesting effect. The viewer has significant leeway to choose

what to watch and contribute with his own ideas to the story that is

being told. As the McCoys themselves suggest, from the viewers

perspective, the narrative may never be quite the same twice.

2 http://www.bfi.org.uk/whatson/bfi_festivals/jennifer_and_kevin_mccoy_tiny_funny_big_and_sad las time access april 2009.

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Although the set itself is the same, narrative fragments may joint

together differently on each encounter. The storys tone and event

structure can shift.

3. The act of viewing

The act of viewing is not simply the reception of a message, but a

complex play of experiences and factors that come together within the

viewer to construct a conversation around a given scenario (Connor,

2007:7). While watching a film, the viewer stands in the position of the

panoptic guard, although his position is not literal, but metaphoric. Like

the central tower guard, viewers in the cinema have traditionally been

invisible, subject neither to self-observation nor to surveillance

themselves (Friedberg, 1993). The cameras and microphones which

provide a film with its narrative perspective are also instruments of

monitoring and surveillance, and every cinematic work could be said in

this respect to contain a voyeuristic dimension' (Tiso, 2000). In

Traffic, by contrast, the introduction of surveillance technology

changes the role and the position of the viewer. He can experience

both the role of the object who is watched and the subject who is

watching.

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Digital art has the potential to capture this shift by changing our idea

of what an image is. For example, images of the natural world can be

mixed with artificial images in such a way that they transform our idea

of time and space (Grau, 2003). Artists with interactive digital media

are in a unique position to question, challenge and transform their

viewers perspective (Ascott, 2000). There is an inherent rule when the

viewer is sitting in a cinema or in front of a television screen that the

individuals actors, monsters, etc. will not be able to come out from the

screen, so long as their story is being told cinematically. But what

happens when the boundaries are broken, as in Woody Allens The

Purple Rose of Cairo? The McCoys' installation is a space for cinematic

nomads.3 As a nomad, you can move freely around the film set, find

your own parallels between images, and change your relationship with

the image on the screen. Movement by the observer results in they

obtaining different information (Bruce et al, 2003). The observer is

asked to navigate physically in the way that one mentally navigates

any film or video. Each time you go to the cinema or turn on the

television, you bring your own ideas, interpretations and memories to

the images on the screen. Traffic is a celebration of this cinematic

3 http://www.bfi.org.uk/whatson/bfi_festivals/jennifer_and_kevin_mccoy_tiny_funny_big_and_sad last time access April 2009

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nomadism, and it reminds us that viewing is an adventure, a journey

and a creative act.4

In Traffic, moreover, [t]he media strategy aims at producing a high-

grade feeling of presence (an impression suggestive of being

there), which can be enhanced further through interaction with

apparently living environments in real time (Grau, 2003:7). When

the viewers are static in a familiar environment they require minimal

attention control to redefine their space. But when the viewers are in

movement, their attention becomes more effortful just for the simple

act of evading obstacles and keeping track of surrounding objects

(Barkowsky, 2007). Nonetheless, not only the body of the viewer is in

movement, but also Gardners multiples intelligences are working

together and generating an ideal scenario for learning (Gardner, 1983).

The notion of point of viewing encompasses where we are located in

time and space, as well as our combination of identities, races,

personal histories, etc. [C]ulture situates our understanding of what

we see and what we validate. But the notion of point of viewing is not

limited to the various positions we occupy (Goldman-Segall, 1998:4).

As a Goldman-Segall suggests it is not limited to one point of view or

even to one point of viewing in different perspectives, it is open to

4 http://www.bfi.org.uk/whatson/bfi_festivals/jennifer_and_kevin_mccoy_tiny_funny_big_and_sad last time access April 2009

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include others points of viewing. As a result, there is no isolated

knowledge; we live with our past memories, interacting with others

and the environment regardless of whether they are present or not.

What this work provokes is a journey of viewing. A journey that the

viewers share, in which there is a quest for knowledge and curiosity.

(Please see pictures attached below)

3. Viewing as a Journey

In the McCoys installation you do not feel the overwhelming sensation

of immersion as one could feel, perhaps, contemplating Olafur

Eliassons The Weather Projectin the turbine hall at Tate Modern. Yet,

it is possible to see a certain parallel in the intention of the artists to

make you be there. You can travel the sets as you travel on your

desire of knowing. More, or different things from what you are looking

at are revealed in your journey and the dialogue between the context

and your own thoughts develops a narrative.

My project Viewing as a Journey uses the technology of surveillance

in order to create a situation in which the viewer travels through the

sets he sees on the screen and becomes the object of the narrative

fragments that will then be interpreted by another viewer. First, I

looked for CCTV cameras in London to which I can have free access,

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and I identified the position of the relevant ones and the area they

overlook. I spent some time doing research in weird Websites that are

highly critical of surveillance through CCTV. I found, for instance, an

unrealistic news story about an Alien that had been captured on CCTV.5

Finally, I chose three specific cameras, one in Covent Garden, one in

Leicester Square, and a last one in Trafalgar Square. I spent some time

in my computer looking at how I could have access not only in real

time, but also capture the cinematic image a single picture: an instant

in the narrative. When all the technical bits were sorted out, I had to

find the viewer of the CCTV cameras and two companions for the

journey.

The viewers task was to guide us travelers and take a snapshot of

different moments in the journey. On the day, he experienced the

position of a film-viewer in the sense that he was looking from outside

the image. However, using the McCoys ideas of making the viewer

present, he was able to control our movements as travelers through a

mobile phone. By him suggesting us where to stand, what to do, and

how to move, the narrative was constructed also by his own ideas,

interpretations, and memories. [T]he real and the imaginary [were]

confounded in the same operational totality, and aesthetic fascination

[was] simply everywhere (Baudrillard, 1992:1051). The viewer was

5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npM-tWbyyiI last time access April 2009.

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aware that this reality was just a simulacrum in the sense that the

image is an experience of signs and simulations taken for real

(Baudrillard, 1992). As in The Truman Show, by turning surveillance

into its key narrative device, the entire world inhabited by Truman is a

simulation. His whole life is nothing but a spectacle made possible by a

sophisticated form of surveillance (Weir, 1998). Yet, unlike what goes

on in a film, in our journey the viewer is able to cross the boundary

from being the viewer looking through a CCTV camera to becoming

the traveler and walk the precise settings and create his new

narratives. All this can create an ambiguous loop of viewings and

journeys. Furthermore, as a viewer on the CCTV screen, the viewer has

the option to experience the situation of simulacrum taking the

position of the traveler.

I asked two friends to be my companions in a journey, starting in

Mecklenburgh Square to Covent Garden, Leicester Square and finally

Trafalgar Square. As travelers6 through different sets, we visited

narrative fragments creating a journey, much in the same way that in

a planetarium we share the possibility of travelling to the stars; in a

film, we experience the immersion in different places; or in the gallery

space we can travel through different times (Toom, 2005). Ours, was a

nomadic exploration through the streets of London. The street

6 I use the word Traveler that can be associated with the object of viewing.

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geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space

by the [travelers](Certeau, 1984:117). The small dollhouse set of the

McCoys is replaced by real-life settings, allowing the viewer on CCTV

cameras, to spatially explore them and transform himself in the

traveler. As the travelers, on one hand we will never experience the

exact same situation again of being observed in the same narrative.

And on the other hand, the story will never be the same. We will

encounter a different narrative at each step. Although the sets remain

largely the same, the stories will change, together with their tone and

structure. It will be impossible for both the viewer and the travelers to

reproduce again even a journey that was construed as a simulacrum.

It was a unique experience.

To clarify, as travelers we went to Trafalgar Square, we had a

conversation with a group of tourists, and we bought a cup of coffee

and a croissant. At the same time, the viewer looking through the

CCTV camera was waiting for us to appear in the agreed place. Yet, the

camera was out of order and only showed a fix image of the place, not

capturing any movement. As a result of this, the viewer was frustrated

and disappointed for the inconvenient. Meanwhile, we were chatting

and enjoying our cup of coffee when a pigeon tried to pick up a small

piece of bread, a supermarket bag was flying with the wind, and the

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sunny day was passing by. As travelers, we were not aware of the

stage setting in its totality; yet, we consciously took part in its

transformation. I should also note that as we reached the agreed place

in front of a particular CCTV camera we felt the sensation of being

observed. We entirely ignored the other cameras during our journey. It

was as if the only possibility of being seen had been the three specific

cameras that I had chosen beforehand. Interestingly it is as if we all

experienced some form of unconscious defence to dissipate the

anxiety that being observed normally generates (Wetherell, 1996).

As mode of documentation I made a flipbook where is possible to see

parts of the narrative. As I have mentioned before, this Journey is

impossible to reproduce. It reminds me of those books of my childhood

Write your own adventure in which each reader could choose

different pages for different stories. But in this case the posibilities are

innumerable. Viewing as a Journey is an invitation to experience this

cinematic nomadism by yourself. You can even enjoy your cup of

coffee with friends and look the sunny day pass by.

4. Conclusion

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Every time you open the front door of your home, depending where

you position yourself you can be in a continuous art journey through

the city or under continuous surveillance. It is as if the front door of

your house became the on-and-off button of an old TV set. This essay

and my project Viewing as a Journey are an attempt to highlight this

choice.

Through the experience of cinematic nomadism, I have tried to show

the possibilities of creating multiple narratives by inmersing the

viewer. The viewer becomes a traveler that can explore the settings

and create narrative sequences. My project works with surveillance

technology in order to challenge the position of the viewer as a central

tower guard in a panoptic institution, and puts him in a position of

crossing the fourth wall and entering the narrative. The product is a

loop-like experience in which the viewer-traveler has the capacity to

create innumerable stories through his journey and through bringing in

his memories, ideas, and concerns. This narrative will change every

time this new loop takes place. This journey of viewing, that was

construed as a simulacrum, became a unique experience for

knowledge and curiosity.

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You tube video about Aliens in CCTV

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npM-tWbyyiI last time access April

2009

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