Urban Eyes: A View From Above
By Antonia Cucchiara
Unbeknownst to most urban dwellers, our cities have become increasingly armed with CCTV cameras—invasive surveillance devices that monitor our private lives in the public space. In New York City alone there are over 2,400 cameras, peering at us at crosswalks, recording our daily journeys to work, documenting our habits, choices, and decisions. To think about the ramifications can easily drag us into paranoia. So, many of us choose to ignore our recorders. marCus Kirsch and Jussi Angesleva have subverted this government surveillance equipment with their Urban Eyes—a service that uses CCTV cameras as tools to inspire and innovate rather than to control and convict. Combining the breadth and power of two preexisting networks–the strategically installed, ubiquitous CCTV cameras and the ever present, ever growing, ever hated pigeon population, this project provides people with new perspectives of their city.
"Any acceleration can change your point of view," says Kirsch. Urban Eyes "maps; it visualizes your everyday surroundings differently and thereby gives you the opportunity to ask questions and rethink what is surrounding you."
As the third place winner in the Fusedspace’s "international competition for new technology in/as public space," Urban Eyes uses the latest technology to recast flying rats in their more respected, if antiquated, role, as information carriers. Although the concept of rigging pigeons with photographic devices seems like something out of science fiction, this mission is possible. First, CCTV cameras are outfitted with RFID tag readers. Then, the pigeons are equipped for the operation. The pigeons are fed bird seed, implanted with RFID tags; these seeds have unique URLs imbedded within them. A curious Urban Eyes user can purchase this new wave of bird seed in a local camera shop. As the pigeons-turned-undercover-agents fly close to a CCTV camera, the camera’s inbuilt RFID reader captures the birds’ IDs and sends an image or short video clip of that moment to the Urban Eyes user’s unique URL. The consumed seeds store up these photographs until the mission comes to end, usually around 12 hours later, when the pigeons erase of all evidence of Urban Eyes by dropping their waste on the city below.
Critics of Urban Eyes question the necessity of using pigeons for tagging. Max Bruinsma, a jury panelist at the Fusedspace competition asks, "why not tag taxis or humans?" Kirsch responds, "I think that people are already aware of taxis; that idea doesn’t really challenge you. It is was much more interesting to push to the point for some people when it becomes absurd, and people start asking questions: Why that? What does it give to me?" Unlike aerial shots from parking lots, blimps, or weather helicopters, Urban Eyes captures images that are untainted by architecture, infrastructures and other human constructs that shape the ways in which we wander through and watch our cities. And to criticize these efforts as mere gimmickry ("bird’s eye view;" and with pigeons no less!?) is to miss the fun.
