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.

The three main actors lead the visitors through several screens. Asking the questions, recording the answers and taking their picture to have a photograph with the actors and the visitor printed out at the end.

Images of everyday life that broach wonderful themes

In the large movement everyday life gets subtitled. The audience sits in a small movie theater and see the outside world as if it were a film. Random passersby play the tragic lead role. The world stops and the lonely individuals engage in a jointed choreography.

A theatre-concept by Dries Verhoeven for Theater Festival Boulevard 2006. In 2009 the show was recreated with new software on new locations.

Sylvain created the software which included the simultaneous recording an playback of the outside world and choreographing unknowing passerby by manipulating the live-images from the world outside the theater.

Yesterday was the 'kick-off' symposium for the Stifo@Sanderg workshop at the Public Library of Amsterdam. A day full of lectures about the current and future state of affairs in the movie industry (although not all lectures were that closely related to film)

Among the speakers was Bruce Sterling (USA) who talked about the possible futures of film (which he pointed out in the end are all already there) and which (if any) will dominate the future. And as a sidenote he would like to see one of his science fiction novels made into a bollywood movie.

Ton Roosendaal (NL) gave some insights into the great open source software Blender, what it does, how it s developed and how they are able to survive without selling the software. He also showed some clips from the latest open source / open content movie Big Buck Bunny and the upcoming game Yo Frankie.

The most impessive speaker of the day was Floris Kaayk (NL) who has already created some very very impressive semi-animated films (The order electrus and Metalosis Maligna). He talked about his process of writing, experimenting and post-production. Very impressive to see such a young person who is able to realize his own dreams. He also gave a short sneak peak of his coming animation, his first one with a budget.

Jan-Bart van Beek (NL) gave a really slick presentation about Killzone 2 and how the develop this and about the filmic qualities of modern games, even comparing (or is that implementing) camera work and angles from real movies.

Anne Helmond (NL) gave a nice presentation about the whole blogging phenomenon. Old stuff for me, but the biggest part of the audience being filmmakers and alike a nice and clear lacture anyways.

Geert Lovink (NL) closed with the presentation of the Video Vortex book. Or so I think, everybody was distracted by the best of YouTube video he played during his presentation. Hard to focus. (hmmm he promised to put up the site, but i can't seem to find it right now)

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.

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.