This thought provoking site specific installation was held at New York’s  Park Avenue Armory from June 7 – August 6 in its huge drill hall which had been transformed into  a dark project space where advanced digital technologies  created surveillance conditions  reminding the visitors of  Orwell’s  1984 and Big Brother.  The architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron and the renowned artist Ai Weiwei with his expertise in a wide range of media and personal experience of state surveillance in mainland China collaborated in setting up an immersive interactive installation.  Through recorded imaging, systematically linked interactive drones, infrared sensors, and iPads Herzog, de Meuron and Weiwei created an environment where the visitors transitioned from being the observed and the observer.

Passing through dark tunnel like longish passages, unbeknown to the visitors the image of their faces were recorded before they accessed the drill hall. There, drones flying overhead and infrared sensors captured all the movements of the visitors and allowed them to interact with the sensors and drones by recording their poses which thermal cameras projected on the floor and screens. For the visitors in that area of the drill ground no visual space was left to escape to.  The drones “understood” their location and the position of the other drones flying in formation in individually programmed paths employing 32 sonar beacons. To protect the safety of the visitors from malfunctioning or falling drones a Drone Safety Suspension System was applied with each drone equipped with a retractable tether attached to a pulley.  It took six months to develop the drone technology used for the installation, combining autonomous and indoor flying drones. 

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports that in 2012 more drone pilots were trained by the US Air force than normal pilots. 1,300 drone pilots are in active service with some drones in the air for over six months.   From 2002 to 2017 there have been 2,935 confirmed drone strikes killing between 6,382 and 9,240 people, including between 739 and 1,407 civilians. In Afghanistan between 2,685 and 3,551 people were killed during the 2015 – 2017 period. The latest and most advanced surveillance system is the Gorgon Stare which is attached to the underside of a drone with nine video cameras transmitting live video images of the movements of an entire town.  Gorgon Stare records everything while the observed adversary has no idea of what is going on.

Images of the individuals faces captured earlier were projected against the walls. Readily accessible iPads allowed visitors to take on the role of an observer, take their picture and track their images through a customized face recognition technology applying 128 dimension vectors capturing the uniqueness of each face unique.  The technology uses algorithms with neural networks which differentiate automatically   between thousands of facial features combine to identify with a high degree of accuracy the individual’s frontal face that was recorded and stored in a data base.   Throughout the armory five surveillance cameras had been streaming at 10 frames per second the images to a central processing unit.

Prints of the self- images   could be purchased for several dollars at the Armory shop, though the images were of a mediocre quality. Some visitors could complete their exploration by observing through peepholes others visitors moving through the installation.  Few noted that by buying the ticket they had given to the Armory the right to use their recorded images.

Though it may not have been the intention of Weiwei and his collaborators, most visitors related to the installation as a source of entertainment rather than a source of disturbing reflections. Certainly, more time was spend taking selfies and searching one’s image on the iPads rather than collecting information about the historical development of surveillance technologies through the iPads. The installation showed the advancement of surveillance and the progressing control external forces have over our images and of the massive accumulation of data about us and our behavior.  There is an end to privacy, expansion of data mining and a decline of interpersonal interaction as indicated by the growing concern social scientists have with the impacts of social isolation as well as erosion of our personal identity.  We also live in a society with authoritarian tendencies.  Ironically, in China where the state has a pervasive and accepted surveillance role its more than 750 million internet users can subscribe to live surveillance services enjoying real-time video of many subjects from sports to shopping. The Western notion of owning one’s image and activities and the need to obtain permission to capture it does not apply. Yet in North America there is a growing acceptance of surveillance and the transformation of public spaces into areas which are monitored and recorded.

Claus Mueller, New York Correspondent  

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