Watch Out!

Watch out!
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The World wide Panoptikon increases global exposure.

Is Big Watcher b[r]othering us?

Should we be afraid of being seen or should we enjoy the World's transparency as a way of proclaiming everyone's difference?

In Watch Out! eyes are coming from everywhere to see us. Their scale on the screen gives them another meaning. These eyes no longer belong to the pedestrian spectators watching inside a box but instead resemble those of digital gods checking out the World. They are coming to look down on us, as if somebody finally dares to know what's going on inside Plato's cave.

The mobility of the wireless boxes, like individuals, introduces a friendly, human-sized way of connecting people. Watch Out! confronts the World we see and think.

The project centres on a whole-scale inversion of the traditional dynamics of seeing and thinking: the watcher is seen while the object (the public) cannot be seen; the thinker is read in the sense that the watcher's expression changes according to the responses submitted via SMS and email. The object of watcher's gaze shifts from the written text to the public.

(Maurice Benayoun)