Tokyo / artist:
/ Rodrigo Matheus
Rodrigo Matheus
Tokyo, 2008
Video, 6 min 25 s
At the beginning all we see is a blurred image whose various elements are rather indistinct. But as the camera slowly zooms out, we can start identifying the grey solid blocks which appear to be floating over what we can now recognize as a kind of suburban scenario with the houses located in seemingly quiet streets. The lengthy camera movement is now accompanied by a cacophony of voices speaking in a foreign language—apparently Japanese.
A few seconds later, one enters what is familiar territory for most internet users; it now becomes clear that this is a Google Earth camera gradually revealing an aerial view of a city. Simultaneously, the soundtrack becomes increasingly more jarring, adding a certain sense of tension to this seemingly ordinary video. Soon, a few corporate logos start to pop up as if to denote locations that have been identified via satellite data.
But, as the camera continues to zoom out these logos start to rapidly proliferate, to the point when they almost entirely cover the depicted area. The sound slowly subsides and the logos start to vibrate madly and ridiculously in synchrony with a kind of pop techno track reminiscent of video game sounds.
Tokyo plays with the notion that the possibilities offered by recent surveillance techniques are undoubtedly seductive, as they potentially create windows to every part of the world at the click of a mouse. However, it equally reminds us that these same spaces also become much more vulnerable to the control and exploitation by corporate or military power.
Curator's project: CONTRAINTE / RESTRAINT
