Artists Of Interest

These are a few Artists which use surveilance and technology in their Art work, That I find interesting.

FERNANDO ORELLANO

The Living

The Living draws inspiration from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, which speaks of the nature of our perception and delusion with reality. The six large heads in this sculpture cannot look behind themselves. Speaking to each other with bursts of light emanating from their mouth, they can only look forward and side-to-side. The large light bulbs on their heads are symbolic of both their consciousness and the sun that blinds them from truth. The wheels that are fastened to their cribs allow them the potential to escape at any moment, and yet, they do not; they remain happily anxious in the bliss of ignorance. Artists and spies are loners, operating on the margins. They observe, gather intelligence, surgically intervene, and detect and disseminate artifice. They try to stay ahead of everyone else.

Phoney

Most days we spend a great deal of time watching screens and massaging interfaces. It is only through the looking glass of our devices that we may assume our electronic doppelganger. Wearing it like invisible armor, our avatar helps us navigate and communicate in 21st century collective consciousness. Some have begun to define and customize their avatars, while others are still becoming aware of their image in the electric mirror.Through video phones and a reconfigured mechanical toy, Phoney allows two people to talk to each other on separate sides of a space. When a person interacts with a terminal inPhoneythey see the live video feed from the point of view of the mechanical toy on the other terminal. Similarly when they speak into the phone receiver, their voice makes the mechanical toy on the other terminal dance, causing the video feed on their side to bounce around. If both Phoneyteporminals are in use, a bizarre conversation is ssible.

MEDIENGRUPPE BITNIK

FOLLOWING THE CRISIS 2010

With «Following The Crisis» !Mediengruppe Bitnik, by way of psychogeographical Dérives, re-appropriates the urban environment of the financial centers of Zurich and London. By randomly following bankers and bank customers they explore the financial districts. From this field research they then derive the „Instructions for a Dérive“.

«Following the Crisis» presents exemplary extracts of a growing archive of personal journeys through the city documented via telephone calls. The Dérive works as a symbolic act against the powerlessness in the crisis – a form of appropriation of the inaccessible and closed financial spaces of London and Zurich. The results are subjective wanderings in search of traces of the crisis using the means of observation.

0PERA CALLING 

«Opera Calling» was an artistic intervention into the cultural system of the Zurich Opera. By means of audio bugs placed within the auditorium of the local opera house, the outside public is given access to the performances on stage. The performances are retransmitted to the public not through broadcasting, but by telephoning each person individually.

From March 9th to May 26th 2007, audio bugs, hidden in the auditorium, transmitted the performances of the Zurich Opera to randomly selected telephone land-lines in the city of Zurich. In proper style of a home-delivery-service, anyone that picked up their telephone, was able to listen to the on-going opera performances for as long as s/he wanted through a live connection with the audio bug signal. As soon as the listener would hang up, the telephone machine would call the next random number.