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The Future’s watching You: ‘Gaitkeeper,’ more dystopian animation from John Butler
01.01.2020
07:08 am
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New Year, new you? Maybe. You can change the way you live and what you want to do. You can change your looks, your attitude, your friends, your hair. But there are some things you can’t change and the state knows that.

When Robert De Niro was de-aged for Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman he might have looked years younger but his bodily movements identified him as old. The idea that our body movements can identify our age, sex, and to an extent exactly who we are has led governments (like China) to use body motion technologies to keep tabs on its population.

Filmmaker John Butler has just released a short animation highlighting this new form of state surveillance. Called Gaitkeeper, a nice little play on words, Butler’s latest film aims to expose how governments are using body motion technology to control their citizens. I caught up with Butler this morning and asked about Gaitkeeper.

What inspired your new animation?

John Butler: Lots of artists have been doing things on facial recognition, and how to thwart/evade it, and it’s a well worn theme. My aim is to look at the new science of ‘gait recognition’, which is being tested as part of China’s social credit system. I’m sure you know about that, it’s the techtalitarian system of assigning each citizen a score for good behaviour, which relies heavily on digital surveillance tools such as facial recognition.

In a ‘solid state’, purchasing nappies is good, and buying alcohol is bad. A cashless system makes every transaction visible, so nosey journalists can often find themselves unable to book flights or even access the web.

Gait Recognition works on the assumption that your walk is as individual as your face or fingerprint, and I would agree. It allows identification from a distance and in cases where the face is obscured.

And you’ve used motion capture for this film?

JB Since motion capture is central to my art, I thought it was an obvious thing to do, especially since getting my own smartsuit. It is also a blatant attempt to be first in the field!

I was interested in the spat between Scorsese and Marvel, which you’ll know all about. In particular, he has used all of Marvel’s pioneering ageing/de-ageing tech to make The Irishman. One review praised how well it was done, but mentions the fact that De Niro “walks like a 70 year old…”

I think this backs up the theory that we are not images, but a compendium of behaviors. In the first Ant Man, they de-aged Michael Douglas, but he still has his older voice.

Another example is from Final Fantasy in 2000. This was the first attempt at a mocap film, and was a box office bomb. What surprised me was how James Woods, one of the most distinctive actors around, sounded like anyone else, when put into a synthetic character. I conclude that James Woods cannot be split into components. You need the hyper kinetic body language, the shifty look, the narrow face etc….

Our movement, motion, is as distinctive as our faces, and this will soon be captured and interned. Gaitkeeper is a biometric control suite designed to counter the challenge of “Locomotive Camouflage.”

Is that how you think we can counter governments using motion capture against us?

JB: Yes, with Gaitkeeper I’m imagining a time when performance artists and dance specialists will be in demand to train civic insurgents in the art of Locomotive Camouflage. It’s also “The Ministry of Silly Walks,” for the age of surveillance.

Gaitkeeper depicts a training and deployment phase, and a carivalesque riot inspired by the umbrellas of Hong Kong.
 

 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
John Butler: Changing the world one animation at a time
A song of praise to the future: John Butler’s new speculative animation ‘Acrohym’
‘The Ethical Governor’ and the Genius of John Butler

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.01.2020
07:08 am
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You can run, but you can’t hide: Watch this wild heat-vision police pursuit helicopter footage
11.18.2014
05:25 pm
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Last Friday, in the Haller Lake neighborhood of Seattle, police identified a stolen SUV and went into pursuit. The driver and his passenger abandoned the vehicle and ran into Washelli Cemetery. The suspected criminals could be forgiven for thinking that they had the upper hand—the cemetery was pitch-dark and they had no shortage of places to hide. What they weren’t counting on were the high-tech contributions of the King County Sheriff’s Office Guardian-One helicopter unit armed with a heat-vision camera that turns any human being into a glowing white beacon in an expanse of black and gray.

“Looks like I got a couple of hiders…. if you go, third row in, I believe, and just like 20 feet in….,” says the helicopter pilot to the two policemen on the ground in pursuit of the alleged SUV thief hiding under a bush—within seconds they’ve got the first suspect in custody.
 

Two cops, at top, zero in on the perp
 
According to the Seattle PI website:

“A police dog performed a track after officers arrested the pair and found a gun among the gravestones, reports say. Officers determined the gun was stolen and seized it from the scene. Police booked an 18-year-old man into King County Jail for investigation of vehicle theft and eluding, and a 19-year-old man for obstruction and a warrant.”

If the video doesn’t change your expectations of getting caught the next time the police are after you, it might remind you of an especially cool video game or action movie, just because it looks so incredibly awesome.
 

 
via Vocativ

Posted by Martin Schneider
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11.18.2014
05:25 pm
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‘Koyaanisqatsi’ director’s dystopian PSA for The New Mexico Civil Liberties Union, 1974


 
Godfrey Reggio is best known for the first installment of his avant-garde “Qatsi” trilogy, Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance. The 1982 film was a Philip Glass-scored non-linear experiment in slow motion and timelapse footage, depicting urban and natural scenes throughout the US. Koyaanisqatsi contains no dialogue at all, and its follow-ups, Powaqqatsi: Life in transformation (1988) and Naqoyqatsi: Life as war (2002), contain very little—all three films are named for words in Hopi, as Reggio believed “language is in a state of vast humiliation,” saying, “It no longer describes the world in which we live.”

Before all of this however, Reggio was a community activist working on issues of health care and gang violence in New Mexico, eventually forming a sort of media activist non-profit, the Institute for Regional Education. The IRE was commissioned by the The New Mexico Civil Liberties Union to create a public service announcement warning of the growing surveillance culture, resulting in the trippy, insidious short you see below. In addition to cinematographer Ron Fricke‘s trademark visual style, the PSA parallels Reggio’s later work pretty clearly in terms of theme. There is a palpable fear of an unfeeling, authoritarian modernity, a historical period of technology and industrialization, rather than humanity.

While the campaign ran on billboards, radio and in print ads, it was the television commercial that really caught on—viewers actually called stations to see when the ad would air again. Despite the success of the campaign, the ACLU stopped funding the IRE, and after an unsuccessful Washington fundraiser, Fricke suggested the remaining money be used to fund a full-length film—Koyaanisqatsi.
 

 
Via Network Awesome

Posted by Amber Frost
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08.07.2014
05:22 pm
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Party Hats for Big Brother on George Orwell’s 110th birthday


 
Festively decorated surveillance camera in Utrecht, Netherlands on Tuesday in honor of George Orwell’s birthday

Yesterday the Dutch city of Utrecht celebrated George Orwell’s 110th birthday by placing colorful party hats on surveillance cameras in the city center. Orwell’s novel 1984, published in 1949, describes a futuristic world in which the all-powerful government, Big Brother, keeps its citizens under close surveillance in public and in their homes.

Via Front 404

Posted by Kimberly J. Bright
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06.26.2013
03:01 pm
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IWATCH: The Big Brotherization Of Los Angeles
10.23.2009
03:05 pm
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“Let law enforcement determine if it’s a threat…and let the experts decide.”  Earlier this week, I made note of the security cameras popping up all over Kabul.  Today, though, brings news that suggests the surveillance impulse is just as alive and well here in Los Angeles.  The below clip is from iWATCH, the LAPD’s:

community awareness program created to educate the public about behaviors and activities that may have a connection to terrorism.  This program is a community program to help your neighborhood stay safe from terrorist activities.  It is a partnership between your community and the Los Angeles Police Department.  We can and must work together to prevent terrorist attacks.

A noble aim, true, but must the campaign come off sounding—and looking—so creepy?  I’m not sure what’s more desperately transparent here: the pandering to youth culture with that lowercase “i,” or the PSA’s carefully calibrated casting?

I mean, do people not watch these things and realize that each and every one of these “LA voices” is an actor who, to land the gig, underwent a rigorous audition process?  A process that, at some point, probably hinged on how “threatening” their own ethnicity might be perceived?  And not to read too much into one PSA, but isn’t it odd that the more gratuitous close-ups belong most frequently to those of the white guys?

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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10.23.2009
03:05 pm
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