As I’m filming the final footage, I realize how uncomfortable it’s made me to go and film alone. I was looked at a lot, mostly confused faces, some of discomfort. I felt it was a performance in itself to be standing right under surveillance cameras filming everything. I definitely saw people first eyeing me and then noticing the camera over my head. It probably initiated thoughts around the surveillance subject in their minds, which shows how our concept doesn’t only show in the final product but is also a statement in its production.

Here is another edited example, as they’re all quite similar:

I’ve put together our first gif with surveillance footage from Republique. I haven’t cropped it yet as we’re waiting for all of them to be done for us to choose the format size.

Today we’re going to put together more gifs and get some more footage.

We presented our ideas and research that we put together on a Miro Board. All links can be found in the previous research post.

• What cinema has done to our perception.
• Benjamin has a different input than Auge.
• Has a more subjective point of view as he recalls his own past : goes back in time and uses memory, or at least what he subconsciously chose to remember.
• The metro is a collage of experiences and correspondences.
• Compares the metro lines to the lines of the hand.
• Experience changes with habits.
• Dialectical Image: the metro has the mapping and the visible lines, then the whole life and culture under it.

https://assis997.carto.com/builder/9b37e914-6f8b-4cea-b2b5-ae089ba94d75/embed

Maps

https://paris.sous-surveillance.net/

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?gl=fr&ptab=2&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&hl=fr&msa=0&start=800&num=200&err=1&mid=1P5GocaEjGdb9jBb6WM9aXOcxcK4&ll=48.866952896062216%2C2.333412530718533&z=13

Herrman, John. “Google Knows Where You’ve Been, but Does It Know Who You Are?” The New York Times. The New York Times, September 12, 2018. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/12/magazine/google-maps-location-data-privacy.html.

“More often, however, the details of place and movement are being processed in the background, where that information is recorded because it can be, and made available to tools we largely take for granted. These tools are good at showing us what Google wants, as well at what it thinks it knows. It is something else to see what Google has.”

“Where I saw a surveillance file, he saw a biography. Google was the author of both, but for now at least it was interested in neither.” 

https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2015/01/why-police-need-hack-cctv-systems-paris-and-elsewhere/102612/

Sternstein, Aliya. “Why Police Need to Hack Into CCTV Systems in Paris and Elsewhere.” Nextgov.com. Nextgov, December 22, 2016. https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2015/01/why-police-need-hack-cctv-systems-paris-and-elsewhere/102612/.

Gifs

http://68.media.tumblr.com/4d1a15d80075e709125a6721d916e8ec/tumblr_ndmte7S8ji1qhreumo1_1280.gif

https://www.are.na/block/194086

https://www.are.na/block/2173140

Readings

• Meadows, Donella H., and Diana Wright. Thinking in Systems: a Primer. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2015.

A system is a set of interconnected things that produce their own pattern of behavior over time.

3 things : elements, interconnections and function/purpose.

Structure and behaviour relationships make the system better or poor.

Since the Industrial Revolution, Western society relies on science,logic & reductionism (contrary to intuition and holism). The problem is always external not internal, always shifting the blame on others and obsessing over control.

There are always so many outside circumstances, affected by other circumstances, that alter the results.

Every system has a function to ensure its own survival.

“The behaviour of a system cannot be known just by knowing the elements of which the system is made”.

Function/purpose is the most crucial in determining its behaviour.

• Latour, Bruno, Emilie Hermant, and Liz Carey-Libbrecht. Paris: Invisible City. France: Bruno Latour, 2006.

With “ifs we could put Paris in a bottle,” goes the saying in French; with maps we put it in even faster (Plan 6)

Every panopticon is an oligopticon: it sees little but what it does see it sees it well (plan 29)

Society of surveillance (plan 29)

• Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish. Vintage Books, 1979.

“Inspection functions ceaselessly. The gaze is alert everywhere.” (p.195)

“ He is seen but does not see; he is the object of information never a subject in communication.” p200

“It is the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form.” p205

“But the Panopticon was also a laboratory; it could be used as a machine to carry out experiments, to alter behavior, to train or correct individuals.” (p.203)

Herrman, John. “Google Knows Where You’ve Been, but Does It Know Who You Are?” The New York Times. The New York Times, September 12, 2018. 

Art & Design Inspiration

https://www.are.na/hassan-rahim/map-projections

https://scottreinhard.com/Mapping-and-Visualization

http://www.joycekozloff.net/

https://www.are.na/block/1474622

Map of all CCTVS (private and public) in Paris.

pat naldi and wendy kirkup, Search, 1993

Denis Beaubois, Amnesia performance, 1996

• Symbolic metro : subway’s intensity is a function of the schedule of those who make them.
• Changing activity is changing places ( ex change of roles from professional to private).
• Encounters outside of rush hour are more romantic and less anonymous. We actually have the time and space to think about the people around us.
• An identity is linked to its itinerary. And it’s confirmed because you don’t find the same people on each line.
• Levi-Strauss : “ any culture can be considered a combination of symbolic systems”.

-“It is obvious that every day in the metro there are individuals who are taking their first trip and others their last”. It really struck me. It doesn’t mean that the older person would die that day but it does mean that if they get too old for the metro and stopped using it, then I would never see them again otherwise.

• In the subway, the viewer moves and the image stays put with a spectator coming and going.
• You have a singular relationship with the subway. On most occasions you are travelling alone, you are in a car full of people but you’re alone. And you interact with it alone, that means that when you try to navigate it and understand it you follow its lead and talk to it on your own.
• “The image never stops proving the image”. It is a mirror of the outside world, a reminder of where you are and where you’re heading.
• The station is a reflection of the neighborhood and lifestyle above it.

• Very original way to represent the city. Raises the question of stereotypical representations and images that are normally used to attract mass tourism for economic growth.
• I like how thorough the information is, and how well it works together with the narrative aspect. You really learn a lot about all the different systems that work behind the scenes, as well as how they contrast with the everyday experience of a habitant and consumer of these services.
• I admire the fact that these images and interpretations will serve forever as a look into the Paris of 2006: through pictures and stories I see a different modern world than the one we have now. Ruled by technology and gadgets yet with hardware and software that can be considered archaic in 2020.
• I really don’t enjoy the interface, I don’t think this website is user friendly.
• I also have to admit the difficulty I have to understand the all the steps and their names.

K-MART

Name of Korean Seaweed packaging.

In the very few minutes we had, I chose the K-Mart because I wanted to have an objective dissociated point of view on the place. I don’t know much about Korean culture so the representations I chose are really a simplified version of my first impressions on the place.

I wanted to do 3 different representations and I didn’t show them at the same time to try and trick my classmates ( ex word “Japon” on the newspaper ). I loved working with sound and touching all the ramen packagings, as I feel that asian snacks in plastic packaging is what I think of first when it comes to these types of places. I also attempted to “draw” the figures I saw on the packagings: sadly I can’t read Korean so when I went inside all I saw was an abundance of stacked packages with figures all over, it’s almost overwhelming.

This experience was quite challenging as we had to make fast decisions, but I really enjoyed the push to go find somewhere and represent it. In Art we always thrive to represent and translate ideas, so it was quite different to have to translate a physical place and all the associations it comes with. It made me want to get better at it as this was maybe my first time doing so.

This is a self-portrait of me I did in 2017 and I feel like it’s still relevant because it shows that there’s too many sides and personalities.

At this very moment I just came back from a month of holidays where I took a creative break, so I have to say I’m a bit uninspired and in result confused of my current path (that is already in itself a bit unclear because of the broadness of the major).

I also have a problem with lack of confidence: because I’m a passionate perfectionist, I’m very hard on myself and always aim too high, working myself too hard and hating myself when I don’t achieve it.

I’m more design oriented, but I always keep in mind artistic concept.

I love collage, photography, some graphic design, 3d, and most of all interdisciplinary work that mediums.

My favourite Art form for now is immersive art : I love Virtual Reality or installations. I really want to create experiences and that is my ultimate life goal for now.

I definitely want to refine my skills. I know a bit of everything but not enough of one thing and it stresses me out especially for jobs later on.