Sky Gazer is an installation whose purpose is to bring awareness to the surveillance trend around the world and an increase of a self-surveillance culture often called Sousveillance.
The installation consists of a sculptural character (“SkyGazer”) that is forever gazing at the sky (or ceiling if it’s indoors.) This is taking the meaning of Sousveillance literary which is watching from below or “inverse surveillance.”
Changing the perspective from which people are used to seeing themselves is a key goal of this project. Making the installation public gives people around the installation a good topic to start a conversation about surveillance.
The Public Installation of SkyGazer was a study to see what the public reaction was to sousveillance or the surveillance of public space for personal reasons. SkyGazer was placed underneath a surveillance camera in Washington Square Park, New York City. The placement of the installation was influenced by The Surveillance Camera Players. who view video surveillance as an opportunity perform a scripted play to entertain those who view the surveillance footage. In my case I viewed the surveillance camera as a medium to show, the people behind the camera, my beautiful sculpture.
The footage collected by SkyGazer was not the greatest quality. The image is blurred by the plastic semi-sphere that was used for the eye. This effect captured an interesting esthetic which I plan to build upon, since it captures this gritty voyeuristic-like footage which I found very artistically inspiring.
I found the image of a girl looking into the camera very interesting. Her posture/ body language was one of curiosity and intrigue. I decided to use this image to make a couple of compositions by rendering the image with simple shapes replacing the pixels. This is the original image with lots of contrast added:
These are the compositions is inspired.
Trashy Slut:
Angry Girl:
Soft Porn:
New Star:
