A surveillance feedback loop

In Surveilling the surveiller visitors can sit down on a chair facing two small security monitors. The images on the monitors are live as you approach it. But as soon as you sit down the monitors show a previous visitor sitting in the place where you are sitting. Instead of monitoring the place, you monitor the visitor before you, who in turn is monitoring the visitor before him etc.

I wish I had his hair

Facemixer is a fun video-projection for festivals where we take pictures of faces of visitors that get mangled up directly on a large projection with the faces of other visitors.

Send a message of love with a real pigeon

In september of 2009  about 100 pigeons spread messages of love through Amsterdam.

The people of Amsterdam were invited to choose a pigeon and leave a message of love on the IDoveYou.org website. As soon as that pigeon with it's special RFID-ring would arrive at one of the three special pigeon houses (at the Paradiso, Vondelpark and Musemplein) this message would be shown and the sender and receiver would be notified by e-mail.

Every city should have it's own pigeon.

For the Stifo@Sandberg workshop Teun Castelein and Sylvain Vriens initiated the Stadsduif.nl project. An inititive to give every city the possibility to design a custom pigeon through a democratic process.

The public may design their own pigeon on the website by changing it's size, form, color, sound etc. They can also post non-visual and audible ideas and wishes. These designs are then taken into a rating process.

From the top-ideas and wishes trends are derived and from these a new pigeon is designed as the 'ideal' pigeon for that city. From there a breeding process is started to create a live pigeon that is as close as possible to the digital one.

The pigeons will be introduced by replacing the old pigeons when they are caught. Most cities capture (and often) kill pigeons on a regular basis. The space that is created by this is normally filled by the remaining pigeons who now have better opportunities produce more offspring, this would be the ideal moment to introduce the new pigeons.

We believe in CCTV as an almost absolute truth, an above-human system literally watching over us. It defines a new urban reality. How do we fit in this panopticonal reality and how do we know if we even exist in it? Does the system register our reality or its own? If we are aware of being watched, are we then still a suspect? Are we then still being watched?

I am always here is a video installation by Sylvain Vriens that deals with CCTV and the way it influences our reality. It features a CCTV-system that monitors the room in which it is present. It does this in real-time, showing the events in the room instantaneous. It seems to show an exact copy of our reality. The monitor and camera hang just above door-height and look down on those visiting the room.

I am always here is a seemingly normal CCTV-system. It hangs fairly unnoticed on the wall of the room and most people will walk past without noticing. But once it is noticed and a visitor looks up trying to see himself, he will only see the surrounding room and just a glimpse of his own image quickly fading out. It is as if he views the room as it would look without him being present.

The CCTV-system creates its own reality by filtering out those things that it finds 'uninteresting'. In the case of I am always here it filters out the people who are aware of its existence. CCTV’s preventive powers are claimed to be based upon awareness. A person looking straight into the camera is fully aware of being surveilled and won’t be seen as a possible suspect and is uninteresting from a surveillers point of view.

move away, leave me alone, step back

ev_lines is a generative interactive video-installation which reacts to a spectator in a stressful way. In 'rest' the screen is black with one line slowly moving across the screen.

As soon as a spectator moves closer the algorithm speeds up, generating more and more lines with increasing speed until the screen is almost fully covered with white lines. As soon as the spectator moves back the system falls back to it’s state of rest with again one line slowly moving across the screen.

The television constantly hums softly and the more stressed the system gets, the louder it hums, up to a loud buzz.

Television, does it influence us or do we influence it?

The In-Sucking Power of the General Excuse is an installation / performance which takes in and processes a live television-signal and outputs new images and sounds. It plays with the narrative and shows the level of abstraction and randomness we have gotten used to.

The performer or user uses a normal remote control to switch channels to generate new images and sounds. Each time the channel changes a new algorithm is triggered. At first the channel will show normally and then gradually the algorithm changes the image and the sound. In some cases this is hardly noticeable, sometimes it is more direct, all depending on the expectations one has of the channel being watched.

Like with regular television, you have no real control on the output. If you don't like what you see and hear you can only change the channel.

Do you find it to dark? You will pump!

An exertion interface which the visitors have to use to keep the lights on.

Visitors use a bicycle pump to 'pump' light into the lamps around the room which will start leaking very slowly, lowering their brightness over time. Every once in a while a visitor has to pump again to keep the lights on the desired brightness.

Four times the same faces staring at you, constantly brushing his teeth. Creepy.

A DVD-loop showing me doing one of the things I could do all day: brushing my teeth.

Always too late. Always too late.

An interactive video installation addressing the issue of always having to be reachable by phone. In an age where everybody has a cell phone, how frustrating do we find it when we can't reach somebody?

The installation consists of an old telephone and an old television. The television displays security-footage of an empty (office) space, switching between viewpoints every couple of seconds.

Two scenarios:

1. The surveillance shows a person entering the room. He sits down and dials a number. He waits. The old telephone starts ringing. It keeps ringing. "Ring" "Ring" "Ring" The man waits. At the moment a visitor answers the phone the man is tired of waiting so long and hangs up frustrated and leaves the room. The visitor is left with an empty room and a busy-tone.

2. A visitor picks up the phone and dials a random number. Subtitles claim the on-screen telephone is ringing. The visitor waits. Waits. Waits. Gives up. Hangs up. And then a man comes running into the room and picks up the phone. "Hello?" "Hello?" He hangs up and leaves the room again.