Intercept is a large scale video installation, comprised of 9 monitors with playback of edited footage obtained from a global selection of unsecured network cameras. There is also a live CCTV local loop within the installation.

Several hours of footage was recorded from unsecured global network cameras accessed over the internet and through the videosniffing process. This footage was edited to remove all people and a 9 disc DVD series was looped on monitors embedded in the installation which mimicked the aesthetic and technical structure of a CCTV control room, the absent protaganist having stepped away from the master control chair.

The installation housed 9 x video monitors, 9 x dvd players, computer, wireless CCTV cameras,  wood, MDF, conduit, cables, a hydraulic barber’s chair, a safe, ventilation system and polythene coverings.

The concept is now now more common and often referred to warspying or warviewing and some projects have adopted this process or taken advantage of data protection legislation to legally acquire footage.

This experimental work utilised Nokia’s first phone (7650) to include an in-built camera and Bluetooth. A desktop computer with Bluetooth connection ran some custom software that received and arranged images sent via Bluetooth into a mosaic. This live image was projected and any local devices could contribute to and distort the collection by pushing images to the desktop computer. The mosaic became recursively more complex as photographs were taken of the projected image, then submitted to become part of it.

Before the common feature of GPS in mobile phones GSM network based triangulation was the only way to achieve location tracking. This project involved registering for an online ‘child & mobile phone’ location service and then navigating London, geo-tagging spaces manually with a mobile phone, notebook, camera and video camera. The locative data was captured simultaneously with a person at a desktop computer, logging in every 15 minutes to the tracking website that was logging my phone’s movements on request. This frequency was largely down to cost as pinging the phone every second would have been very expensive.

The resultant map image, description and timestamp output from the website was recorded, collated and matched to the timecode of the video data and manually reassembled as a projected presentation.

This work mimicked a flowchart diagnostic process using A4 paper, ultraviolet pens and tape and a UV torch given to the viewer. Upon entering a darkened room the viewer used the UV torch to explore the diagnostic questions on the A4 sheets, only one sheet or path was illuminated by the restricted ability of the torch. Viewers were asked a series of questions that led to a varied series of feedbacks and conclusions. The logic of a computer programme was constructed on a human scale using low tech and an obfuscated process.