looking glass

closed circuit

project illustration
looking glass is a virtual reality experiment in how it feels to be a surveillance camera, whether on a mass shooting site or on a suburban backyard. made with Ansh Patel
video editing
sound design



we know that cameras see, but we don't know what they see. do they see us as people? do they see us as events? is the landscape more interesting to them than our constant wandering? if they are left turned on twenty-four hours a day, do they get bored? is their attention constantly at the maximum? unable to move, barely able to rotate, the surveillance camera is designed to see, and not to look at. constantly recording images, it accumulates a knowledge that is devoid of quality. what it sees is what happens, and what happens is then stored.

between the empty parking lot and the empty parking lot devastated by nature, between a busy pedestrian street and a busy pedestrian street with a dead body, the difference only lies in human appreciation, in human values, and not in the device itself. the meaning of these images only come into being as we are forced to look at them , as we discern between boring and dangerous, between banal and criminal.