CCTV Social: Day I Session 3. 1pm
Cinematographer: Shaina Anand
Duration: 00:07:35; Aspect Ratio: 1.366:1; Hue: 218.371; Saturation: 0.094; Lightness: 0.251; Volume: 0.109; Cuts per Minute: 42.816; Words per Minute: 167.706
Summary: For CCTV Social, Shaina Anand collaborated with Manchester Metropolitan University and Arndale Shopping Centre to open working CCTV environments to a general audience. People normally 'enclosed' by these networks came into the control rooms to view, observe and monitor this condition, endemic in the UK.
About thirty people signed up for one-hour sessions in the MMU security center to engage with the CCTV operators and monitor surveillance procedures. These sessions became somewhat like a diagnostic clinic, where we discussed symptoms, anxieties and inoculations about our 'public health,' under surveillance. These therapy sessions seemed to work both ways, for the participants as well as the security officers.
This is footage of Rob and Alasdair's interaction with Steve, the Surveillance Control Officer at Manchester Metropolitan University, along with Shaina and Chris. They inquire about the UK Data Protection Act and whether the department has ever received requests for footage from individuals. Alasdair talks to Shaina about her perspective and if she was interested in viewing the CCTV footage from an artistic point of view. During this time Steve keeps returning to a group of youngsters gathered at the back of a building (smoking). When they sensed the camera swinging towards them, they turned to look straight at it. Bernadette remembers an 'incident' they were all involved in and described the events leading up to the Mancunian Way bomb scare on July 13, 2005, with Steve illustrating the action on cameras.
The walls of the surveillance control room are lined with a combination of multiplexed and single monitors. Steve explains how long the
CCTV footage is stored.
CCTV
archive
camera
screens
surveillance
tapes
Manchester Metropolitan University
Rob: Whom do you receive the information from? Like calls, or from the police...
Steve: Yes, from City Centre, and the Manchester University, and the police.
Chris: How far back do you archive the material, the footage?
Steve: Specific incidents are archived for five years if the police requests it. And then obviously, once in court they take the master tapes.
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
There is a conversation regarding the fascination of CCTV.
action
artistic
narrative
opinions
perspective
privacy
security
surveillance
Chris: What interests you about CCTV ? What kind of issues are maybe relevant to you?
Rob: I've heard that we are the most surveyed... eh... the country most under surveillance in Europe. Which I think is quite amazing. Dunno, it just fascinated me. What kind of events these guys follow... Yeah.
Alasdair: I'm quite interested from the point of view... A lot of my work is kind of video art, looking at non-events and things like that, I guess, which a lot of this is. Say you have one camera filming 24 hours a day, and in a day you might get 30 seconds of anything of actual note. I found that quite interesting cause it kind of makes you look at the image for maybe like a most painterly point of view, while you're looking at all the objects and the position of the picture, cause there's like really nothing going on there in a narrative sense, like you would usually think of a film. I found that kind of interesting, if you consider it like a film set-up and you've got this narrative-less film going on. I find that quite interesting.
data protection act
Bernie: (In the background) It was dark so that's when you get opportunists coming in and out, that you don't know. But you said he was suited and, you know, really neat and smart.
Rob: So you missed that because of the black out.
(All this takes place while Steve has zoomed in to the corner of a building, where about five youth are doing something in a corner. Most probably smoking pot.)
Bernie: It was actually in a building, inside a building, but I think he took the opportunity because it was so dark.
Alasdair: What's your opinion on surveillance in general? Do you see it as a positive thing, or should there be limits on it? There's a lot of debate about it.
Steve: I think it depends on the area.
Alasdair: I think they were going to make CCTV images come under data protection. Does it work like that? Do you have to protect all the video footage and...
Steve: Yeah.
Alasdair: Yeah? So can people request their images off you?
Steve: If somebody is walking through the campus side and they see the camera following them, they are quite within their rights under the Data Protection Act, to request to see any footage that they think may have been taken of them. But in saying that, they are allowed to see that footage, but any other person on that footage are going to be blurred out. So it's a bit of a... Are you with me? A lot of it is quite a complicated process. In the ten years I've been up here, I've never known anyone who asked it.
Alasdair: You can get facial recognition software...
Steve: It's to what levels you want to go to...
Alasdair: Would you justify it?
Steve: I think that you would justify the facial recognition cameras at the entrances of buildings. Students coming in and out I could understand. You know that I can justify it, but as for out in the public - I don't know. Where do you draw the line? I mean, is that too much invasion of privacy?
Alasdair: Particularly identifying people...
Steve: It's, I mean, yeah. People, they might have done whatever in their past. They've served their time for the crime. But every time they walk down the road, is their face going to be pinpointed and pinged upon the computer? Where do you draw the line? Like, say you can put 300 cameras over here. But at the end of the day, they are only as good as one person's pair of eyes. I mean you can sit here mind-boggled looking at screen upon screen, but unless I catch him with the corner of my eye when I'm busy watching something else, it's...
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
Steve switches the feed on the screen from camera 15 to camera 12. We see a group of five people standing in a close cluster doing something (probably smoking pot). Shaina pans the camera away from screen 12 to Alasdair.
The conversation also expands on the
Rights of Data Subjects and Others under the Data Protection Act
bias
civil liberties
crime
dataveillance
discriminatory
effectiveness
information
invasion
paranoia
personal
prejudice
privacy
profiling
rights
security
surveillance
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
Steve: Ah, we know those up to trouble here when we're walking around. A lot of the local people, they, you know, like specially in these areas... The local lads, they know we're about, and we've always been on first name terms with them. So they get to know you, and you get to know them just as much.
The camera zooms in on screen 12 we see traffic passing by on the street.
CCTV
cameras
community
local
relationship
surveillance officers
Alasdair (to Shaina): Are you looking to use the aesthetics of the cameras in your work? You know, like drop frame rates? The static shot?
Shaina: Hmmn, yeah.
Alasdair: Are you going to incorporate the way it works and how it's set up in your work? Is it something you've thought about?
Shaina: No, I doubt... It's really... I mean, what they are seeing is incidental to this process. It's not about... I mean, I don't want to make an art installation out of the process. Because it will sort of be counter critical in that sense then, to glorify or fetishise, or like have fun even with the set up.
Alasdair: Yeah. Just that it would be...
Shaina: It's tempting.
Alsdair: Like a voyeurism video, watching...
(Steve is back on the camera where the youngsters are smoking. He zooms back in, they sense camera movement and look straight at it.)
Steve: Yeah, they know they're being watched. They know they're being watched.
Alasdair: They looked straight in.
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
While Shaina and Alasdair talk, Steve zooms into the view on screen 14. After a cursory glance at the street, he zooms out and switches the feed from camera 14 to camera 12. The camera zooms back to where the youngsters were smoking. Camera zooms in closer and they turn to look straight at it.
art
fetishise
perspective
surveillance
video art
Bernie: You was asking about a major incidence. Do you still want to know about a major incidence? Cause I remembered one. It was a couple of years ago now, and a suitcase had been placed under the Mancunian Way. (To Steve) Do you want to show us the Mancunian Way, please? The one in the car park.
Steve: It was a few weeks after 7/ 7. And...
Joe: Tell you when... It was graduation day.
Shaina: A few weeks after what? Sorry?
Joe: It was graduation day when that happened.
Chris: July 7th London bombings.
Steve: Not long after 7/ 7.
Bernie: You see these poles with that red car in the background - the suitcase was literally squashed inside. (Steve zooms camera 36 which is in the campus car park under Mancunian Way. Close up of flyovers pillar and car behind it. Camera pans to other pillar.) So we had to phone the emergency, and the whole place had to be evacuated. And then basically we had to get the bomb squad down, and it took quite a few hours for them to deal with it. It was quite a big thing cause the whole place... All the university had to be evacuated, the bomb squad had come, the police were making lots and lots of decisions, and it was just an empty suit case. And basically what happened was they brought this robot with all these arms and they dragged the suitcase out and then this camera on the robot was like checking the suitcase, and then they blew it up. Blew the suitcase up.
Steve: What happened is obviously the suitcase was there (Points to a car near a pillar in the car park) and as it turned out it was a (Pans right to another pillar) member of staff who had changed her car that day, and she'd come in a different car without a permit and she had parked it next to that (Zooms in) pillar. Now, two explosive devices, one next to each pillar... Perfect way to take down the Mancunian Way.
Shaina: Yeah.
Camera pans right across a number of quad screens to Bernie. The conversation makes reference to the
London bombings that occurred on
July 7, 2005, and the subsequent bomb scare at the
Mancunian Way.
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
bomb scare
dramatic
fear
paranoia
post 7/7
reconstruction
security
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