Art Project Turns New York's Dystopian Traffic Surveillance Cameras Into Cutesy Photo Booths

New York’s tremendous grid of traffic cameras are always watching. Big Brother has his thumb over your entire existence. Why not make something fun (and a little bit punk rock) out of the experience by repurposing these cameras into a streetside photo booth? That’s exactly what Brooklyn’s Morry Kolman did when they launched their project, Traffic Cam Photo Booth, last week. Using existing DOT live streams, folks can get unique images of themselves straight from the Government.

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Users of the site are able to access a map showing the city’s 900-plus camera network, pick the nearest camera to them, pose for the image, and capture a memory. A little button on the app captures the snap for you, and you can keep it in your phone like a photo booth strip, or as a polaroid-style photo.

“What I like about this project specifically is that people love to be given something, especially something about themselves,” Kolman told The New York Post.

“Giving people the opportunity to take selfies of themselves through these traffic cameras, I thought was a really interesting and fun way to kind of raise awareness about large surveillance apparatus that’s around New York City in a way that is fun and kind of light-hearted and people want to engage with because they get something out of engaging with it.”

Do you know how many cameras your city has deployed to keep track of your movement? Did you know anyone can access any of these cameras at pretty much any time without any credentials? If you are being followed in public there’s at least a chance that you’ll notice, but someone could be tracking your every movement from the comfort of their home and you’d never even be aware.

The future seems to be a lot less about flying cars and jetpacks than I’d been led to believe as a child. It seems instead to be hundreds of different technology-enabled methods of tracking you and serving you ads.