Cal Anderson Park got a little extra surveillance July 26 when several suited individuals with security cameras for heads wandered through the park as a part of the Camerahead Project.The City of Seattle installed three security cameras in the Capitol Hill park in January despite a City Council budget proviso requiring definition of protocol for usage of the cameras, a move that surprised and upset some, including artist Paul Strong Jr.
Strong, who usually does sculpture, had just read Little Brother by Corey Doctorow, and inspired by Pablo Defendini's poster for the book depicting a suited man with a camera for a head, created the project to bring the issue to life, literally.
Working from the first model he wore to Doctorow's book reading in Seattle, Strong constructed about a dozen more Cameraheads — his name for the suited security-camera lookalikes — with either a digital camera mounted to take pictures in a parody of the security cameras, or a face-obscuring hemisphere of shiny plastic, to complete the camera look.
Strong also solicited volunteers and bought outfits at Value Village so that friends and volunteers could wander the park and bring the issue face-to-face with park users.
"It's still something watching you," said teenage Camerahead volunteer Marissa Horan, explaining why she got involved in the project. "I makes you feel like you're doing something wrong." She volunteered with 11-year-old Aidan, whom she babysits.
He echoed her concerns, "It feels like... turning 18 during the war. You don't feel very safe."
Most at the park seemed amused by the costumes, some even taking pictures and joking with the Cameraheads.
But one man, when approached by a Camerahead, shouted, "Why don't you take that shit to Olympia? You're just getting the negative reaction you expected."
Under an ordinance passed June 9, police can access footage, watch live taping, or direct the cameras in the case of a reasonable suspicion of a crime, an ongoing investigation, or in a State of Emergency.
But meeting minutes from a February 28 Parks meeting indicate that the department expected a different use for the cameras, writing "the use of camera surveillance and park rangers is to increase the public’s perception of safety in Seattle’s downtown parks."
ACLU Communications Director, Douglas Honig, who passed out fliers at the event, says that the cameras are not an issue of legality but that the group is worried about growing security camera presence in public places.
The City installed cameras in the park around the same time as increasing police presence and creating the new position of Park Ranger, seven uniformed Parks employees who patrol several center-city parks. The rangers can issue Parks Exclusions for any activity prohibited by Parks or Seattle Municipal codes, which includes alcohol consumption without a permit and sleeping overnight with "sleeping equipment."
The park already had two cameras installed to monitor the reservoir before it was covered, as recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Strong plans to take his project to the Burning Man arts festival in Black Rock, Nevada in August.
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2 comments:
"Strong, who usually does sculpture, had just read Little Brother by Corey Doctorow, and inspired by Pablo Defendini's poster for the book depicting a suited man with a camera for a head, created the project to bring the issue to life, literally."
Ha! I am reading that book now and it is turning me into a paranoid person! I talk about and think about it all the time. In fact, I was telling my (our) father about it at lunch today!
Actually, I was reading Michel Foucault, a political theorist who writes about the homogenization of the individual as defined by the state's increasingly efficient system of discipline. He also wrote a chapter called "Panopticism" all about how this kind of constant, faceless observation is a form of discipline. It's pretty good.
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