AWTV (Arley Woods Television)

I have long been interested in public and private space and where the boundaries of these two spaces meet/interact/reach. The oversaturation of Zoom during the first lockdown prompted my thinking about whether the increased use of this software was changing the boundary of public space and bringing our private spaces into the public. In April 2020, I began developing the 'Screen Walk Series', a collection of videos that utilise Zoom Virtual Backgrounds to scrutinise the changes to public and private space as a result of the increased use of video conferencing software during the pandemic.

“Screen Walk Series – A body walks across the Zoom window over a virtual background of a personally significant public or private space taken from Google Street View. The virtual background, in constant glitch, reveals the actual public or private space that the figure is physically present.”
This series later developed into 'AWTV (Arley Woods Television)' - a video work that presents a collection of screen walks as CCTV.
Zoom presented accessibility in a time of confinement. Users were provided with the complete connectivity. Using the software on a mac, however, revealed its limitations. Without facial recognition, the software uses a green screen algorithm to apply its virtual backgrounds. As a result, the virtual image can’t differentiate between landscape and body causing the real and virtual backgrounds to glitch together creating an impossible new space which is real and implied.
The spaces I choose to screen walk in have to be significant to my life in some way, either it’s a private space within my everyday/local/private life or it’s a public space that is again part of my everyday or is connected to The Dazzle Club (This formula applies to both virtual and physical backgrounds).
My intention for the videos, when I began the 'Screen Walks Series', was for them to be viewed separately but my surveillance specific work with The Dazzle Club and a curiosity for off-license CCTV prompted me to combine the videos in one composition. The Pandemic and The Dazzle Club brought attention to the importance of the local as a hub of support, inspiration and community. I am particularly interested in spaces within the local and how they’re defined; I have been thinking a lot about how I would define domestic space, private space, local/everyday and more specifically, I have been considering whether the off-license or corner shop is an extension of the domestic/private space.
Placing the work 'AWTV (Arley Woods Television)' in Arley Woods, Warwickshire, the place where the videos began, took the project full circle. The work began as a response to the mass connectivity that zoom presented so, what would happen if no one was watching? The Dazzle Club have been trying to reimagine surveillance; we have discussed the difference between what we call human and machine surveillance - being seen and being watched, surveillance of care instead of surveillance of control. How does the machine surveillance technology change in spaces of human surveillance? Zoom may not outwardly present as surveillance, but it carries many of the characteristics of classic surveillance technology. Situating the work in a space that is removed from technology and connectivity, revisited my earlier questions of accessibility, mass connectivity and surveillance futures.