James Darling - MAT 200aCAMPUS VIDEOMOSAIC"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized." BACKGROUNDThe irony of this quote is that as visionary as Orwell was in his novel, 1984, he couldn’t predict infrared and night-vision cameras. Indeed, his one caveat, “except in darkness”, is no longer applicable in the modern era of Big Brother. The inspiration for my proposed artwork for Elings Wall comes from another Orwell influenced 20th century work, the feature film “The Truman Show”, or more specifically... its poster. I’ve always been fascinated by photomosaics and their obvious artistic predecessors, neo-impressionists like Georges Seurat. The abstract dots of color that form a succinct image when viewed at a distance have become images themselves worthy of close-up scrutiny. I propose to take this artistic concept to the next level with a massive videomosaic representing the entirety of our distinct and dynamic campus. CONCEPTThe obvious metaphor is that of the wall becoming a window... or more accurately, a thousand tiny windows upon the entire campus through which we can all spy upon each other... However, I prefer the more self-reflexive and self-reflecting metaphor of a mirror. Through thousands of campus videos, we create a single real-time image of the entrance to campus. Viewers will see themselves in motion, represented by the movements of the rest of their surrounding population. IMPLEMENTATION
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