Surveillance Paparazzi, 2018-2024

‘Surveillance Paparazzi’ tries to take a paparazzi photo with the use AI and unsecured surveillance cameras from all over the world.

‘Surveillance Paparazzi’ thematises the phenomenon of artificial intelligence and global surveillance in public space. The work taps into various surveillance cameras worldwide that record and transmit unencrypted images. It was possible to hack into these cameras via the Internet so that live recordings of stores, entryways, and public spaces could be directly integrated into the work.
The installation can recognise more than 200K celebrities and searches them in more than 1000 unsecured cameras all over the world. When Depoorter’s software recognises publicly known persons, with the help of artificial intelligence, the image becomes visible in real-time within the exhibition. Surveillance Paparazzi’s monitors then show the name of the VIP, the live image, an official image from Wikipedia, and the corresponding GPS location on a world map..