Design Assignment 2: I’ll Be Watching You

Assignment,Submission — mvarner @ 2:29 pm

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I chose to focus on acts of surveillance within the Carnegie Mellon community. Individuals within the community will eavesdrop or secretly photograph their peers for social gain, and the institution itself has several cameras in various points around campus and even employs people to observe certain areas. These acts are typically subtle, so as not to alert the surveilled of the observer’s actions.

I dressed in formal attire and walked around the University Center during lunchtime (a peak traffic time for the building) and would stop a few feet away from tables of people and stare at them while taking notes on a clipboard. I did not interact with any of the individuals I observed besides eye contact, and kept a completely straight face the entire time I was watching them. After a few minutes I would walk away and find another table to observe.

The responses elicited by those I observed ranged from curious to concern. No one directly confronted me, but people in groups tended to express looks of unease to each other, and the tension between me and the individuals was fraught with tension. It was an uncomfortable experience for me as well–being covert seems to be a natural inclination when we attempt to watch others.

This was a solid start to a project, I was pleased with the reactions elicited by the individuals I encountered. Were I to repeat this, I would  like to actually create legitimate forms for surveillance to fill out while observing people–I was using a random form I pulled from Google Images and simple writing jargon. Although the performance’s impact was the actual act of observation, I think the creation of artifacts from the observations would add an interesting dimension to the documentation of the piece.

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