kinoki-pi-project
“I'm an eye. A mechanical eye. I, the machine, show you a world the way only I can see it. I free myself for today and forever from human immobility. I'm in constant movement. […] Freed from the boundaries of time and space, I co-ordinate any and all points of the universe, wherever I want them to be. My way leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world.”
The Kinoki-Pi-Project is seeking for a medial interface between esthetic meditation and systematic surveillance of society. Therefore we will create and use different artifacts to deal with the meaning of visual observation in urban spaces and landscapes.
concept
The concept of this project is based so far on two terms. On the one hand the term Kinoglaz as it is described by Dziga Vertov in the quotation at the beginning of this page. For the russian avantgardist the mechanical eye of the camera allows us an objective view on our environment that is detached from our own bodily limitation and capacity as humans. And on the other hand the metaphor of the panopticon as the perfect apparatus of social surveillance Michel Foucault describes in „Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison”
You can read and download our concept here. At the moment it is only available in German.
prototyp
For our surveillance devices we used a raspberry pi microcomputer combined with a camera module. This is how the first prototype looked like:
You want to build your own surveillance device with a raspberry pi + a camera module? Take a look at our „DIY Manual”!
start recording
After we finished to program the Pi and got used to the Command-Line-Feeling we started to record looking for aesthetic kadrage in the garden.
links
Exhibition on Surveillance in the zkm
literature
Bauman, Zygmunt (2003): Flüchtige Moderne. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Debord, Guy (1978): Gesellschaft des Spektakels. Hamburg: Nautilus.
Foucaul, Michel (2010): Überwachen und Strafen. Die Geburt des Gefängnisses. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Vertov, Dziga (1973): Schriften zum Film. München: Hanser.