The Surveillance Room at Saatchi

On a recent visit to Saatchi they were taking a look into the different ways that technology is taking over most of our society and begins to make a comment on certain ways this can be monitored and also monitor us. One of the most striking rooms came in the form of a white cube gallery space in which multiple motion tracking security cameras had been placed on the walls along with projectors relaying the feed directly from the cameras. The outcome of all of this was a collection of small segments of footage in which the cameras had locked onto the faces of those closest to them and recorder parts of our movements. This was great fun as on the relayed footage parts you could see yourself as the camera zooms in on you which made me feel like I was playing a game and either made a silly face at the camera or ran away. This was quite honestly a lot of fun but after a while I found my self thinking ‘ok, so do they have cameras like this everywhere? Recording us and watching us constantly?’. This turned what started as an innocent game into something far more sinester. This was quite clearly a comment on the surveillance systems in place in the everyday setting, begging the question of what is the footage used for. Anybody would instantly think that they can use this technology to catch the bad guys, perfect! That is wonderful, but I couldn’t help feel, as I left the hall of smiling faces recently captured, some sort of sickening feeling that it was possible I was being watched in the times I thought I was on my own.