Our way of life has subtly yet rapidly transformed due to our technological creations, leading us to a strange and unforeseen state. Tech art reflects on these changes and examines the impact of technology on humanity.

I recall my childhood in the 1970s when we had only three TV channels. It wasn't until 1993 that a fourth channel emerged, and eventually, the number of cable channels increased to over two hundred. This evolution saw a shift from centralized, top-down broadcasting to the decentralized nature of the internet, with platforms like Instagram and TikTok leading the way. Surveillance systems also transitioned from centralized to decentralized, allowing anyone the ability to monitor and broadcast. These invisible channels, numbering in the tens or even hundreds of thousands, are like "wireless TV stations" around our homes, continuously broadcasting our lives day and night via wireless signals.

In 2012, a dance friend wanted to use a wireless camera for a performance. During testing, I accidentally received the surveillance footage from my building. I discovered that in Taiwan, wireless spy cameras, costing around 1,000 NTD and as small as a coin, were ubiquitous. They were used for neighborhood watch, home security, private investigations, and even illegal spying. With low technological and financial barriers and no regulatory restrictions, anyone could easily purchase and use them. The equipment to receive these wireless signals, known as a "full-band scanner," was also readily available online or in electronics markets. Walking the streets of Taipei with a full-band scanner, one could pick up numerous surveillance signals. Given the rapid signal decay over distance, the actual number of these hidden cameras inside buildings could be many times higher.

Starting in 2012, I embarked on a project to collect these signals using a full-band scanner, recording the footage with a laptop and capture device. I created a portable device that automatically started recording three to five seconds of footage upon detecting a wireless camera signal.

With this device, I roamed Taipei, collecting about five hundred videos. To protect privacy, I stored these videos in a secure format similar to Google’s approach, ensuring that no "live" person could view them. The system randomly selected and overlaid the videos to create a single composite video, ensuring that viewers could not discern specific details, but only saw a statistical average-like image.

These recordings capture various corners of the city with rough, noisy visuals, wide-angle aerial perspectives, and infrared-illuminated dark alleys, inadvertently forming a unique representation of our era. The layered surveillance footage, with its indistinct dynamic forms, hints at people, cars, and street scenes, yet remains elusive, evading specific recognition and merging into a generic depiction of the urban environment of our time.

If a tree falls in an empty forest, does it make a sound?

In a metropolis of millions, countless surveillance camera feeds are converted into signals, broadcast around the clock. These feeds are continuously deleted and re-recorded, yet they remain unread and unexamined.

Photo by CHING-TAI HO