// Chess For CCTV Operators (2010) //////
Chess For CCTV Operators« is a site-specific performance for which surveilled urban spaces are the stage. Sniffing out wireless camera signals, !Mediengruppe Bitnik kidnapped camera signals and replaced them with an invitation to play chess.
About Chess For CCTV Operators?
For »Chess for CCTV Operators«, !Mediengruppe Bitnik fitted a portable suitcase with a video transmitter, an antenna and a chess computer. Equipped with this suitcase they went in search of security camera signals to take over and camera operators to challenge to a game of chess.
The take-over made the surveillance camera image on the operators screen suddenly disappear showing instead a chess board and the text: „Will you play chess with me? - You are white, I am black.“ and stating a telephone number for communication.
The surveillance monitor in the control room is thus taken over from the outside and transformed into a games console. With the invitation to play !Mediengruppe Bitnik overcome the power structure produced by the surveillance situation.
»Chess For CCTV Operators« is a subtle performance for a single and especially chosen recepient. During the three day intervention in the City of Essen (D) none of the surveillance camera operators engaged in a game of chess with !Mediengruppe Bitnik.
Keywords:
Hacking as Artistic Strategy, Performance, Intervention
«Chess For CCTV Operators » Video Stills
Left: Hijacked surveillance video signal
Right: Outside view of a business premises
Left: Signal take-over: “Will you play chess with me?”
Right: Outside view with yellow transmitter suit case
"You’re white, I’m black."
“Here is my phone number..”
Waiting for the first move by opponent.
Release of the captured signal after five minutes. Suitcase is packed. Moving on to find another surveillance signal to hijack and another opponent with whom to play a game of chess.
«Chess For CCTV Operators » Video (exceprt)
Video Installation: FullHD, 15min, Loop
Video Installation, Espace Multimedia Gantner, Belfort (France)
Publication "Hacking the City" - Artist Statement
Link to the Book
Artist Statement
Chess for CCTV Operators
Surveillance systems work one-directionally; they do not fulfil any communicative purposes. This circumstance is at the core of a relationship between an intangible, seemingly all-powerful and all-knowing observer and a powerless, voiceless, uninformed object of observation. And although the pictorial material is placed at the disposal of other institutions (e.g. the police) where necessary, it is not intended for the public. By obtaining access to these surveillance images, we bring about a shift of power: “surveillance” – watching from above – becomes “sousveillance” – watching from below.
But can the balance of power within this surveillance system be not just shifted to the object’s advantage, but reversed altogether? Is it possible to intervene in closed-circuit surveillance systems from the outside? In conjunction with the Hacking The City project, we asked ourselves what means of intervention CCTV systems offer us. What we came up with was Chess for CCTV Operators, an intervention into the urban surveillance space of Essen which we carried out especially for the project on three days 1in July 2010. Instead of tapping the images of existing signals and making them visible, Chess for CCTV Operators replaced those images with a signal of its own. To this end, we mounted a video sender with a direc- tional antenna and a chess computer on the inner wall of a suitcase. Armed with this suitcase, we wandered around the Essen city centre in search of surveillance camera signals. When we found a building from which we received a signal, we stopped, set up our sender suitcase, took over the signal, and replaced it with an invitation to a game of chess.
(Un)friendly Takeover
The image on the surveillance monitor abruptly starts flickering. In the place of the usual surveillance scene, a chessboard fills the screen. The chessboard jerks, is forced out again by the surveillance scene. Then the screen turns black and the words “Will you play chess with me? – You’re white, I’m black.” appear in white. A cell phone number is displayed for the purposes of communication, by text message or phone call, within the context of the game. The exterior signal, being the stronger one, has converted the surveillance monitor in the observer’s control room into a game console. The takeover lasts five minutes, then the chess signal switches off and the usual surveillance scene appears on the monitor once again.
The invitation to play is intended as a means of breaking through the power structure of the surveillance situation. The game introduces equality to the hierarchic relation- ship between the observer and the observed. It moreover opens up a level of communication which – thanks to involvement in a joint game and the acceptance of joint rules – makes an encounter between equals possible.
Chess for CCTV Operators is a subtle performance for an individual or specially selected receiver. Although our chessboard took over nearly twenty signals during the three-day performance, not one of the surveillance camera operators accepted the invitation to play chess. In many cases the intervention gave rise to discussions with the operators. Without exception, the arguments revol- ved around the issue as to who owns the images broadcast into the public space by private surveillance cameras, the rationale of surveillance, the art of the chess game, and – not least of all – the legality of our intervention. In the single-channel video installation based on the intervention, such an encounter is documented. The owner of a jewellery shop in Unteren Hagen in Essen threatened to call the police when we tapped into the images of his surveillance camera and invited them for a game of chess. In a state of near panic, he also removed his own surveillance camera from his shop “for security reasons”. He had apparently lost faith in his surveillance system.
»Chess For CCTV Operators« in Exhibitions:
Hacking The City
Museum Folkwang Essen (D)
16. 07. - 26. 09. 2010
Jusqu’ici tot va bien
Espace Multimedia Gantner, Belfort (F)
23. 10. 2010 – 22. 01. 2011
Questions / Noise
Substitut, Berlin (D)
29.01. – 26. 02. 2011
Hands on Hacking & Bricolage
Electron Festival, Batiment d’art contemporain (BAC), Geneva (CH)
20. – 24. 04. 2011
Together in Electric Dreams. Abwesende Anwesenheit.
House of Electronic Arts Basel (CH)
27.05. – 18.09.2011
