Radical Software Group's "CarnivorePE" - "PoliceState"

The federal government has a history of tapping into its citizens' personal lives, especially their travels through the world wide web. RSG developed a software program similar to what the government uses to track people's actions. However, this program, named CarnivorePE doesn't track identities, just general Internet traffic. Various artists, called clients utilize the program to create technologically based works of art. The one that grabbed my attention was PoliceState by Jonah Brucker-Cohan. In this piece, the artist uses CarnivorePE to track Internet searches containing key words such as bomb, and plane crash that one might envision the government tracking to keep tabs on "terrorists." These key words activate 20 toy remote controlled police cars that respond to each term after it has been translate to its respective police ten-code. The ten-codes trigger a sequence in the police cars causing them to move around a certain way, spinning, going in reverse, etc. They are all tuned to the same frequency so that they move together. In the background, sirens go-off and a police officer's voice can be heard giving the message over a speaker.

The artist's vision was to reverse the concept of police response to make the toy cars dependent upon the terms that we as a nation have come to be so paranoid about. To me, it shows how we have become enslaved to our paranoia about the "war on terror." The authorities are actively searching for evidence of terror, and when they find it, they must act. The dance of the police cars is quite comical and makes a satire of the government's surveillance.

Here is the link for the PoliceState project