Leave us alone (2024)

Watching the surveillance industry in an intimate moment. A robotic installation with moving surveillance cameras.

Two robotic surveillance cameras enjoy an intimate moment, soft movements and touch, a kind of dance. But if one steps too close to the cameras, they quickly jerk and move their gaze towards the intruder, they are now forced to do their work: Surveillance. After a while they resume their robotic dance.

All the main parts of the installation are built from re-purposed electro-trash: Some mechanical parts and motors from two old moving heads. Before they were rescued, the cameras were forced to watch ‘LKW Laderampe 1’ and ‘Eingangsbereich’.

Materials: Salvaged mechanics from moving heads, aluminum profiles, rescued surveillance cameras, ESP32 and various electronics, Unity, Kinect.

All code is public.

Shown at Hack The Promise Festival in Basel, Switzerland (October 2024).