The initial for the project was to use the system to broadcast subversive propaganda to unknown spectators. However, reflecting on possible effects that the content can potentially cause. The message transmitted should not carry a definite meaning; otherwise it would cause a binary reaction that oscillates between belief and disbelief to what is being seen. Watching an unexpected subversive advertisement on the screen necessarily creates a direct association with ‘intrusion’ and an instant reaction of uncomfortability. However, the project lies on the fact that the physical location of the spectator and his reaction is unknown.
The lack of feedback participates in this dynamics. Therefore, the same way that the project does not intend to validate the reactions to the reverse transmission, the spectator should not oscillate between belief and disbelief. The message should makes the potential spectator in a position of uncertainty – at the same time he believes, he wonders why that image is on the screen.
Thus the message should not contain a strict meaning. It has to engage with the imagination of the unknown spectator and make him wonder why he saw that particular image on his device. Following this line of thought, the intervention has three main guidelines: unexpectedness, lack of feedback and mobility. That means, who does the intervention cannot known who is being affected, the spectator must not comprehend that his/her system has been invaded and the transmission must not have a fixed location.
But where to click? Leaving this question to the spectator, the system avoids passing through a process of validation and re locates the idea of intrusion to an indefinite representation.
For this specific area in which the intervention was made, a custom arcade game was created to metaphorically represent the idea of the alien signal invading the system. For this, an animated interface of an old Atari game was recreated graphically using Photoshop and Flash.The video consists on a stand-by of the screen blinking the name of the game and waiting for the player to press Start. The game represents the idea that there is a guest trying to establish communication with the host and the spectator could take an action of entering the game and play as the host.
The intervention in Southend was made on the 3rd of May between 14:00 and 15:00 GMT by myself, Stuart Bowditch from Mediashed and Jon from Goldsmiths. It consisted on walking around commercial and residential areas of the city looking for any transmissions using the MediaShed video-sniffing tool. When a signal was found, the system was then set to transmit the Southend Arcade video. Considering the intervention and its relation with the lack of feedback. There are two main entry points to this dynamics. The first was how to design a message to an indefinite observer. At the same time, how this message could cause an unexpected response denying any straightforward association with intrusion. Therefore, the message had to inhabit the line between a metaphorical meaning and intimacy. The solution for this step was to create a message that could be acknowledged by the ‘indefinite’ spectator revealing a certain degree of intimacy by sharpening a particular detail related to the spectators. In this case re-contextualize the name of the town ‘Southend’ in form of an arcade game that carries the idea of a host-guest conversation. In which the game asks the host to start playing because there is a guest in the line.
Concentrating on the lack of feedback, a famous question around unobserved phenomena describes the feeling we had during the intervention. If a tree falls in a forest with no one to hear it, does it make a sound? The implication this question arises speculates on the relation between the physical event and its relation with the observer. It is evident, that considering both a tree and sound as physical, when a tree falls it, in fact, produces waves of vibrations in the air that we understand and listen as sound. However, in another view there seems to be a sense that when no one is present to hear the sound of the three falling it passes out of existence.
As if it had never happened, a sound produced when there is no one to hear, never comes into being. The expectations on the lack of feedback generated the same feeling. The tests made in the laboratory with different devices proved that the system worked. Nevertheless, broadcasting the signals to indefinite spectators with no visible reference created a sensation of the potential sound. The fact that we didn’t knew if the signal reached some device or if there was anyone seeing it the transmission never came into being.
This feeling created an instantaneous desire to establish any form of communication in which we could engage with potential receiver and receive a response. At the same time we were excited by the fact that not knowing the potential spectator the project asks for a different interpretation: non-conventional and rooted on the relation of the observer with the event. The signal in fact existed when there was no one to see it? We experienced a reversal of the transmission, the absence of response caused feeling of anxiety and curiosity on the group of transmitters. These feelings cascaded into recursive questions regarding the consistency of an unobserved event.
Before going into field some questions on the dynamics of the process emerged. How to find the right locations? How to verify if there are systems running? How is going to be the reaction of people seen the intervention taking place? What location could not cause legal problems?
The lack of feedback created a different poetics to the system. The feeling we had when transmitting surpassed any formal interpretation or straightforward conclusion. It became an infinite wondering and this relation between the transmitter and the unobserved event started to surface. Another unfolding of these sensations was the fact that not knowing who is receiving the transmission makes the message stronger. Because it creates a dissolved relationship between who sends and who receives.
More specifically, using electromagnetic waves to transmit information over the air, a trend of technology of making everything become ‘unwired. To intercept two physically connected points implies on a physical modification on the route in which the information flows.
The third dimension of the intervention can be critically analysed. The tool we had in our hands allowed us to establish communication with the ‘indefinite spectator.’ We could have used the camera microphone and ask the spectator to demonstrate any form of acknowledgment or visible response to the signal. Strangely, that desire ceded to contemplation on the beauty of the unknown. The communication in this sense was established. Transmitting signals to random receivers with no response was enough.
The feeling of accomplishment was there, even no having any validation from the other side. The Shannon model of communication was ‘broken’; there was no regulation, control and prediction because we had no feedback. The unexpectedness shifted from the spectator to the group of transmitters. The system was at the same time reversed affecting us and going one way towards the receptor. It reflected the wonderings and curiosity that a possible spectator had to our imagination and absolute investigation on the unknown. Interestingly the reflections on the lack of feedback positively contributed to the overall execution of Signal Takeover. It unrestricted the tool from its initial goal to be practical application and became conceptually more powerful allowing abstract interpretations regarding the causality of the event and the relation between the events the observer to be made.
Under the light of these reflections, the project asks for further improvements and speculations on how it can theoretically approached from the perspective of the unobserved event. Considering the first idea of the project as CCTV Take Over aiming to create a direct response to surveillance, its improvement to embrace other devices that operate in the same frequency, the results presented by the intervention and the interpretations around the relation observer-event, Signal Take Over oscillated through different levels of practice and yields for further interpretations on theory.