Surveillance - Middlesex University: Are you looking at me?

An interactive surveillance evening of music, performance, new media' and visual arts for paranoiacs, exhibitionists and voyeurs.

"We are living in the pupil of a thousand different eyes at any given moment." (Toffler)

As Londoners we are caught on surveillance cameras an average of 300 times per day; subsequently we enact our daily routine with an inherent awareness of a constant "gaze". The concept of "big brother" has become a recognisable motif with widely acknowledged connotations, detached from its Orwellian context. In the wake of C4's Big Brother series, The Osbournes or....The Anna Nicole Smith Show, the recent popularity of docu-soaps and the iconic value of the surveillance image in the media reporting of the Jamie Bulger, Rodney King and Damiliola Taylor incidents, the emergent overt big-brotherism has become a significant aspect of popular visual culture.

The use of covert video surveillance images in consumer watchdog programmes or Hollywood films creates a climate where the iconography of CCTV has become an either naturalised or fetishised aesthetic of visual culture.

This unique event will provide the opportunity to bring together artists, musicians and performers engaging with this scopic phenomena.

MUSICIANS:

SICKLINCOLN - LIVE AUDIENCE AUDIO CUTTING

MASSE - LIVE

RYO CO (MELANGE RECORDS) - LIVE & VIDEO SCREENINGS

STUART. P - DJ SET CALOGERO PACI - LIVE

QUESTSIDE CREW - LIVE PA & DJ SET

SCANNER (t.b.c)

FABRICE MOGINI – LIVE

ARTISTS:

FREDRIK OLOFSSON - LIVE VIDEO EDITING ULF LUNDIN - STATION video screening

GREG MCLAREN - PERFORMANCE ORGAN

STEVE MANN - LIVE REMOTE PERFORMANCE (WEB)

GIOVANNI CALEMMA - VIDEO ART

MARK. H - LIVE VISUALS

CURATOR

NICKY ROBERTSON-PEEK (PARANOID - LIVE)

PLEASE LOOK AT ME…………….!

STEVE MANN - LIVE REMOTE PERFORMANCE (wearcam.org/mann.htm)

"Sousveillance: Art after the Post-Cyborg Age" - I have lived as a cyborg for over thirty years, creating live street performances. My cyborg performances became quite popular in Toronto in the 1980s, culminating in a solo exhibit in Night Gallery (185 Richmond Street) in the summer of 1985, and eventually led to exhibits of my work at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, Stedelijk Museum of Art in Amsterdam, Science Museum in the U.K., Austin Museum of Art, Oklahoma City Museum of Art, and various other museums and galleries around the world. However, I extrapolate on the Situationist belief that everyday life (such as the street) is a kind of Sousveillance (inverse surveillance) Theatre, and I believe that the artifacts of the museum are often little more than the residue left over from a live performance. Therefore, as a satire of the art gallery, I constructed a wearable art gallery in which anyone could exhibit their work. I now work as an Assistant Filing Clerk Trainee in this self-constructed gallery.

SICKLINCOLN (sicklincoln.org) vs FREDRIK OLOFSSON (fredrikolofsson.com)- LIVE

Sick lincoln is the creator of a powerful system for live generative breaks and audio cutting called BBCut. Fredrik Olofsson is a sound and video artist who uses max/nato and max/jitter in unison with audio manipulations. This night sees them present new techniques for live synchronised cutting of audiovisual material, capturing live audio and video from the audience and incorporating it into their set. Everything you hear or see is being created live, using advanced custom algorithmic composition tools and interactive interfaces, and even live coding. Both are experts in the cutting-edge audio language SuperCollider.

ULF LUNDIN - STATION video screening (www.ulflundin.nu)

Station (1997) previously exhibited in the UK at the Photographers Gallery - In all my works I create a tension

between the camera and that which is photographed. The camera has a central role in our society which interests me. Questions relating to this are present in all my works: how we relate to the camera, the relationship between the observer and the observed, photography as an act of power.

MASSE - LIVE (masse.org.uk) vs GREG MCLAREN - PERFORMANCE ORGAN greg mcLaren fearlessly gouges the eyes out of the usual dull-as-fuck performance/video installation. There is no respite from the gaze. In an attempt to beat the oppressor we try to become the gaze. What if, as you become the gaze, you have nothing more to look at but yourself? To avoid disastrous consequences, this patented multi-image-re-ciphering peristaltic organ helps people the world over to shy away from looking at any prescribed image.

The experimental workings of an organic version of a mechanical technology that never existed, is accompanied by Masse's live bass and drums, with voices and tuned percussion which they then mash up in real time, using loopers and their "studio in a box", all under their direct and immediate control.

Working more like dis than a band, putting together selections from an "ideas bags" to create a live set for that night. Everything is played live.

CALOGERO PACI - LIVE vs GIOVANNI CALEMMA - VIDEO

Calogero Paci is a classically trained pianist who manipulates his traditional background to bring a Cagian approach to electronic music. By incorporating an eclectic mix of urban and surreal samples, remote and surreptitious sounds, he creates a specifically composed soundtrack to Giovanni Calemma's video projections. Music and performance is the background of Giovanni Calemma's work during the 80's and 90's: covers, concerts, performance, installations, graphics, clubs, video and electronic music. He has exhibited in London, Berlin, New York and collaborated with artists from a diverse range of other media. Based in London since 1994, he has been experimenting with new forms and concepts of aesthetics and new interpretations of style. A finalist in the London Photographic Awards, he has also produced work for I-D and Boiler magazines.

FABRICE MOGINI - LIVE vs MARK.H - LIVE VISUALS

Fabrice will be doing live coding/composing/improvising/ cutting on his laptop and MIDI guitar with applications written in SUPERCOLLIDER. He has written a data protocol to send all this live sound information in real-time to Mark. H during the set. Mark writes his own programmes in Director. All the visuals will be strictly synced up to the sounds you hear in a way never seen before.

CURATOR - NICKY ROBERTSON-PEEK - PARANOID (LIVE)

This project is developed from my PhD studies around the effect of surveillance culture on the visual arts, specifically the fine line between paranoia and performativity. As someone who regularly teeters on this line, I WLTM like-minded paranoid performers with GSOH.....

Contact: (nickyrobertson-peek@orange.net) OR c/o Middlesex University, School of Arts, Research Dept)

...and many, many others.