Shake Cats

The installation "Shake Cats" is a public display of the ubiquity and accessibility of personal data. A camera on the street below photographs license plates as vehicles are detected by a motion sensor. The camera uses text recognition software to identify the license plate number and search the public record for the owner of the identified vehicle. The installation then searches Google's user database for an account matching the owner ID. If a match is found, the installation then identifies the most recent activity on the user's associated YouTube account and projects the user's most recently watched YouTube video onto a large translucent screen on the exterior of the bridge, visible from inside as well as from the street below. Each video is played on a delay to protect the anonymity of the driver in question.

The installation is a strange combination of simultaneous privacy-violating exposure and vague anonymity and is designed to call attention to the degree of information which can be discovered about a person through data collected by Google's many ubiquitous online services and public record info. The combination of these features presents an installation that both intrigues passersby by the sheer unpredictability of video selection while also implying a more dystopian tint to the contemporary technological age.

Materials List:

SUNBA 1080p IP PoE+ High Speed Outdoor Pan Tilt Zoom Security Camera, 20x Optical Zoom Starlight PTZ Dome ONVIF with Audio and Night Vision up to 800ft (601-D20X)

$319.49

Carl's Blackout Cloth, Projector Screen Material, White, Gain 1.0 (2.35:1 | 110x270 | 291-in | Folded | CP) Projection Screen/Movie Screen Fabric x4

$419.85

Epson - Home Cinema 3700 1080p 3LCD Projector - Gray/White

$949.99

MSI Trident X Plus 9SF-054US Core i9-9900K 2x 16GB RAM 512GB Windows 10 Pro

$2,918.99

50ft (15.2M) High Speed HDMI Cable Male to Male with Ethernet Black (50 Feet/15.2 Meters)

$18.99

SUBTOTAL:

$4627.31