johnkingsnorth.co.uk/see/

We visit galleries to 'look at art', a very one-sided affair. What if the exhibits in a gallery could look back at us?

Whilst this may sound like fiction, 'New Media' artists such as Golan Levin have recently been able to create this effect, exploring how we can interact with art. SEE challenges viewers' expectations by reacting to their presence, movements and faces. Given a basic 'artificial personality' people can truly interact with the exhibit as a cycle of action and reaction emerges.

The human face of SEE hides a more sinister facet, however, as 'interactive photography' is used as a tool to address a larger issue. SEE encourages viewers to face the screens directly, allowing a surveillance system to capture and analyse their image (data which could then be streamed live on the internet). This questions data protection, our 'society under surveillance', and the vast amounts of meaningless data which is stored about us. Perhaps every CCTV camera in the country is linked to a similar system of face-recognition?