Cybersurveillance-Illustrations for video essay

•

What's cybersurveillance got to do with you?

An animated video essay about digital surveillance, part of a series that seeks to raise critical questions about the world we are living in, through a narrative and visual manner.

This video is portraying the cyberspace, questioning the ways in which it collects data and what happens with all the information it has, who's in control and how can we deal or address questions of privacy before they slip away from our reach.

Part of my role was to direct the visual art concept (together with Theo) and to create imagery for the cyberspace. Within the illustrations I wanted to instill the feeling of a digitized space, with a cold color palette, blues, and teals, that would symbolize the virtual life we spend online. The overall mood was set to inflict a feeling of being watched, concept that is better reflected mid-video, in the panopticon section and the DIY period of self-surveillance.

Directed by: Theo & Mina (a.k.a me)

Written by: M

Illustration: Mina & Theo

Animation: Theo

Voice-over: Paul

Composition and Sound Design: BAB

This is a just wondering... production

Below I've selected a part of the illustrations that were created by me.

Most of the readings we have on the subject were collected and publicly addressed after the insights of many whistleblowers like Snowden and Manning, who released pieces of information about the NSA in the US and their army, under a surveillance state. We wanted to include their portraits so as to honor their actions and draw attention to the human face of the subject

Creating tubes and pipelines as cables was fundamental to the video, to be able to show the flow of information from one point to another.

Excerpt from the script:

"...your information is in a big pool of everyone’s information, ready to be pulled out if anything happens. Not because you bought some dangerous chemicals, or done anything suspicious. Just because you are online."

Here, we've used this lens which takes photos of an intimate space as a metaphor to show how mass surveillance is done, by gathering every data point from every trace you leave online. Used as a method of prevention, this technique makes anyone a possible enemy of the state, instead of targeting suspects, which is deemed to be more effective by security experts.

Excerpt from the script:

" Philosopher Michel Foucault wrote about architectures of surveillance, unveiling the panopticon - a prison designed to instill the feeling of being constantly watched. "

Throughout the video, we've used windows as a reflection for the user/self in this environment, but also they reflect different concepts such as privacy or transparency, on an individual or even collective level. We've envisioned the cyberspace as a multilayered flat building, in which all the traffic is depicted as stairs, connecting to different floors or sites of interest.