PEEPHOLE | 2006
Live Videoplanet
Peephole in Gallery wall and floating weather balloon
The weather balloon in this video sculpture
becomes a huge, unblinking supervisory eye.
The visitor discovers a common apartment door peephole on one of the
gallery walls and peers into it. While there is nothing to see in the
peephole,
once they have placed themselves close to the wall, the viewer hears
a softly playing soundscape.
What the audience does not know at the moment is that anonymously their
eye is transmitted onto the giant weather balloon in the gallery.
This "other" audience sees the giant eye periodically searching the
peephole, which now seems to be scanning the room.
"This work debunks in a witty way the modern mechanisms of control
and supervisory surveillance employed by corporations,
governments and increasingly even private people, as well as the aspirations
and methods of the covert, voyeuristic viewer."