Surveillance Camera Players

From NYC Indymedia: A Performance Against Surveillance Cameras [A reportback of a very successful performance]

By SCP photolab

In Times Square, the Surveillance Camera Players used a publicly installed webcam to amuse and inspire other anti-surveillance activists from England and Germany, then meeting in Leipzig for a conference...

At exactly 1:30 pm Eastern Standard Time (7:30 pm in Europe) on Saturday, 2 December 2006, the Surveillance Camera Players (SCP) once again performed in front of the group's "favorite" (least favorite) webcam that Earthcam.com has installed in Times Square, New York City: the one that, unlike the others (15 in total), is pointed straight into the faces of people who have no idea their image is being captured and displayed by a camera-system that "refreshes" once every 3 seconds, 24-hours-a-day, all year 'round. It looks like its the surveillance camera for 47th Street Digital Photo, but its (worse) a live webcam. There's no sign that informs people a camera of any kind is in operation.

The occasion for this performance was a two-day-long series of events called "THE SPACE HIJACKERS: making trouble in Zeipzig," which featured the London-based artist/activist group the Space Hijackers, was organized by the German anti-surveillance camera group Leipizger Kamera, and was held at the Galerie fur Zeitgenossische Kunst (Gallery for Contemporary Art) in Leipzig, Germany. On Friday night, 1 December, acting under the theme "Public Space and Surveillance," Space Hijackers Sam and Robin helped coordinate a both a street protest and a street party. The next day, in the early afternoon, the Space Hijackers put on another public performance ("Let the Eye in the Sky Decide this Age-Old Battle . . .") and then, in the evening, a presentation ("CCTV The Future's Bright: The Development, Present, and Future of CCTV") at the Galerie. The SCP's performance -- which lasted 15 minutes and went off without a hitch -- was watched live, in the Galerie, on large TV monitors...

[the rest is here]

[surveillance camera players]