YouViewer

Interactive Video Installation: camera, computer, projector, custom software created in Max/MSP Jitter.

Dimensions variable.

Installation Chase Center, RISD Museum, 2008

YouViewer is an interactive video installation which combines two images: surveillance footage of robberies in progress gathered from Youtube; and a live video feed of the viewer watching the surveillance footage. As participants traverse the space, their captured image is combined with the surveillance footage in a the projectied image. While moving, the image of the viewer is barely visible, it is only when the viewer stops and watches for a period of seconds that their act of watching fades into visibility within the scene. This work seeks to highlight the viewer's  complicity in the remediation of violent imagery as entertainment. Surveillance footage can be seen as the last bastion of photographic truth. YouViewer questions the role of surveillance as evidence, by collapsing past recorded moments with present spontaneous interactions, thereby conflating documentation and construction of the image.