WORM x Amarte: Camera Self-Surveillance OPENING expo

From 12th of December until the 15th, you are invited to explore the concept of surveillance with Camera Self-Surveillance, an exhibition at S/ash Gallery where CCTV cameras and recognition algorithms interact in real-time, blurring the boundaries between control and observation.

An algorithm is both an apparatus that facilitates a network and a logic that governs how things are done in it. Its engineered intricacies and procedural focus implies that an input is transmitted to its output with optimal processing. Contrary to ChatGPT, we believe an algorithm is more than the above. It aims to reflect the increasing needs of a society of control and capture. The capture of bodies, nonhumans, and gestures; for everything fits in a box, and every object becomes part of a class. Such is the self-centered mode of operation in contemporary computation that there is a dataset for everything - from mushrooms to toasters - but there is little on surveillance cameras.

At the same time, the center of Rotterdam has around 250 surveillance cameras according to the website Surveillance under Surveillance. The design of private/public spaces with an emphasis on suspicion and security has given birth to an architecture of fear. Combined with low-cost surveillance cameras, the city has seen a rise in monitoring devices installed by apprehensive citizens.

The installation placed in the S/ash Gallery will be composed of multiple screens and multiple IP cameras, mediated by a switcher. An algorithm based on our model generates a series of pan, tilt, and zoom commands to the cameras and switcher, dictating which cameras are displayed on each screen. Every camera scans and looks for other cameras, where a complex image composition is seen on scattered screens.