Spying on yourself as art

A relatively recent study by mental health specialists from King's College London among residents of the UK impressed academics and the public. It showed that 40% of the respondents suffer from some form of paranoia, and every second of them is convinced that he is being watched, and every eighth - that they are being watched purposefully and in an organized way. However, although getting less detailed statistics on how much the surveillance of citizens in Western countries has increased in recent years is not so simple, the fact that it has increased significantly is an obvious fact. This is partly why paranoia turns into one of the usual traits of the character of modern man. After all, as you know, if you are paranoid, this does not mean that you are not being watched.

But a good sense of humor and creativity work wonders. On a specially opened Tracking Transience website, New York artist Hasan Elahi (Hasan Elahi) has been posting information about his current location with photos of the surrounding species for greater likelihood for all those who wish for nearly five years. Using the Google Maps API, a GPS module embedded in a mobile phone and simple software, Hassan did something similar to the surveillance systems used by special services in Hollywood movies. Wherever he is, he is followed by a big red arrow on the world map.

Inspiration of such a project fell on Elahi after an incident at a US airport. Being a native Bangladeshi, he has a very suspicious appearance (as well as one and a half billion of his compatriots), by which in today's America it is often recognized as a terrorist. At that time, the FBI did not confine himself to his detention and full personal search, but established easy surveillance of him and occasionally called for interrogations using a lie detector. Patriot of his new homeland, Hassan decided to simplify the work of the fighters for the country's calm. Well, at the same time to secure a permanent alibi.

Later on, having accumulated a fair amount of photographic material, Elahi began to organize exhibitions of artistic compositions under the collective name The Orwell Project (Orwell Project), in which he combined photographs of dinners he ate in airplanes, metal detectors at airports, conveyor belts, toilets and other places and objects often encountered him on the road. However, within the framework of a static exposition, the artist kills the very idea of ​​constant self-surveillance and violates the chain of past events, because he builds the frames not according to the time they were created, but according to the principle “how beautiful”. Although photos on the site are often not provided with accurate dating and information about the place where they were taken.
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Of course, the idea of ​​voluntarily giving all the pretense about yourself is unlikely to find a broad understanding among the public, but the irony inherent in it is very important for the society, which every day becomes more closed and at the same time suspicious.