“Fête Mobile: a Hyper-Local Self-Surveillance and Media Broadcast Experiment” presented by Moloney and Tuters
Symposium:
Presentation Title:
- Fête Mobile: a Hyper-Local Self-Surveillance and Media Broadcast Experiment
Presenter(s):
Abstract:
Fête Mobile was the name given to a multi-purpose airborne media platform first exhibited at the ISEA2006/Zero1 festival in San Jose by Luke Moloney, Marc Tuters and Adrian Sinclair. Under this moniker we performed social experiments having to do with media sharing, surveillance and local-area media dissemination. Fête Mobile’s center piece was a 6.5m long semiautonomous blimp equipped with a file server, a video capture system and, in a subsequent iteration, an internal graphical projection system. Regarding the issue of surveillance, the project sought to increase awareness of public surveillance beyond a mere critique to propose individuals might become responsible for their own surveillance. An experimental internal projection system was later tested at nighttime cultural events, as a sort of local visual public address system. The assemblage was conceptualized as an extreme-low-altitude, hyperlocal prototype of an art satellite existing for the same general purposes as many real satellites: surveillance, data communication and media broadcast in an artistic context. It is a continuation of the artist’ research with the MC3 project for the MDCN.
