I really enjoyed Lauren McCarthy’s talk about her artwork as well as the art making process. I especially liked the Follower app and the questions it raises about surveillance. She mentioned the irony of the fact that while we hate surveillance, we also have this need to be watched/viewed as evidenced by our activity on social media, etc.
It also made me think about surveillance with regards to who is being watched. Who decides who is watched and who has the privilege of hiding from surveillance? Looking at the website, there was one sentence that stood out to me: “The Follower stays just out of sight, but within your consciousness.” This makes me think about our awareness of being watched, something McCarthy talked about as well. It’s interesting how we have such varied reactions at being watched; we’re sometimes uncomfortable and sometimes we like the attention.
The Follower also takes a photo of the followed person and that’s all they’re left with at the end of the experience. I began wondering about the traces we leave behind as we move around the world (as explored in Professor Heather’s work as well) and whether we actually own those parts of ourselves that we leave behind as ‘waste’.