22.12.05 Flying Spy Potatoes, Mission 21st street.
If the immaterial surveillance would be applied by anyone to the control centers and mechanisms (in a sort of 'watch the watchers' scheme), it could form a maze of public informations that could reverse the usual pyramidal power structure, peculiar of these technologies. On this direction is headed the work Flying Spy Potatoes by Jenny Marketou. The artist has crossed for two years high security places under surveillance like the Port Authority, the Grand Central Station or the World Financial Center, taking with her a red helium-filled weather balloon, with a wireless camera inside. Although she was arrested and detained by the FBI, she has then made an installation with some of the video recording, suddenly evolving it from a performance to a street collective game, thanks to the collaboration with the game designer Katie Selen. The board was a Manhattan street (21st street between 10th and 11th avenues in Chelsea), and the players must master control of the balloon and the client software in order to collectively map the territory. The game of the mediated observation and of its possible control strategies is playful experienced with a first person perspective, involving all the participants in a collective act of visual reappropriation.