At the time of creating this work, there are more than 100,000 Flock surveillance cameras across the United States.
We often look at other countries and criticize them for heavily surveilling their populations, yet here we are, building our own version of a surveillance state.
These cameras photograph the cars that pass them, creating records of where people have been and when. And the unsettling part to me is that there is no opting in or opting out. You simply live your life, drive down a road, pass a camera, and become part of the system.
The technology is sold to us as a tool for safety and crime prevention, but Flock City asks what happens when constant surveillance becomes so ordinary that we stop questioning it.
When being watched becomes part of the landscape, how much privacy have we actually given away?
This work is part of my ongoing Distortion Studies series, where I use animation, glitch and visual interruption to push still images into something more unstable and emotionally charged.
The base image and animation was created with my personalized MidJourney model (v8.2), developed around my own visual language and collage practice. I then manually added the distortion effects with RIBT//Labs, using movement and disruption to heighten the unease at the center of the piece.
