Globals. Never the Same Again, Always Different, Forever 2004

Globals is a series of networked, generative artworks by Stanza that reconfigures the logic of surveillance. Rather than positioning the viewer as the passive subject of observation, the work opens up a global field of networked cameras and webcams, allowing us to watch the world watching itself. The audience becomes both observer and voyeur, encountering fragments of distant places, everyday activities and parallel realities unfolding simultaneously across the planet.

Using bespoke software, these netart systems access selected live webcam feeds from cities and locations around the world. These streams are processed and recombined in real time, transforming the imagery into a constantly evolving, computer-generated view of the global environment. The work is not a film or a fixed recording. It is a live system, driven by networked visual data, in which the images change according to the available feeds and the software’s operations.

Globals treats the city as a vast, distributed media system: an immense television network made up of surveillance cameras, webcams and other technologies of observation. Images that would ordinarily be captured, monitored or stored within separate systems are brought into a shared visual space. The outside world enters the gallery, while the familiar conventions of broadcast television are displaced by a decentralised, unpredictable flow of live imagery.

The work turns surveillance into a question of visibility, access and ownership. We inhabit environments in which our movements may be recorded and distributed without our knowledge, yet the systems doing the watching often remain hidden from public view. By redirecting these technologies towards collective observation, Stanza exposes the tension between being watched and watching others, raising questions about privacy, image rights and who controls the representation of public space.

Each installation is different because it depends on live network conditions and the images available at any given moment. When accessed simultaneously from multiple computers, the work can generate different visual experiences across different screens. Its global field of observation is therefore never entirely unified: it produces multiple, partial views of a world that cannot be seen in its entirety.

Globals forms part of Stanza’s wider investigation into real-time data, networked cities and the systems through which contemporary environments are observed, represented and controlled. Developed in the early 2000s, the work anticipated many of the questions now surrounding ubiquitous cameras, networked surveillance and the circulation of digital imagery.

Exhibition and installation

The series includes The Global World View and city-specific works relating to Madrid, London and New York. The gallery installation is ideally presented across three screens, allowing multiple streams of live imagery to operate together as a distributed visual environment. The work is suitable for gallery exhibitions, media arts festivals and events exploring technology, surveillance and network culture.

Selected exhibitions

• Viper, Basel, Switzerland, 2004

• Samsung Media Centre, SeNef, South Korea, 2004

• Postmasters Gallery, New York, 2004

• Dana Centre, London, 2004

• Watershed Media Centre, Bristol, 2004

• Plutopia, SXSW, Austin, Texas, 2009; also presented to members of the World Future Society

Technical note: The work was created using custom software to process networked webcam imagery in real time. They are niow only availab le in request.

Screenshots Of Artwork Below