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Archive for the ‘CCTV’ Category

The kid stays in the picture

By Simon Sellars • May 15th, 2008 •

Category: Ballardosphere, CCTV, celebrity culture, film, gated communities, surveillance

Samuel L. Jackson is back in the game, soon to work with the best material he’ll ever clap eyes on.



Virtual Death: The Game Show

By Simon Sellars • Apr 18th, 2008 •

Category: Ballardosphere, CCTV, YouTube, alternate worlds, boredom, consumerism, death of affect, inner space, surveillance, television

A man is trapped in an elevator for 41 hours, steadily losing his mind. But to you, he’s just another bug crawling around on a security-camera lens. What do you do?



One Nation Under CCTV

By Simon Sellars • Apr 15th, 2008 •

Category: Ballardosphere, CCTV, dystopia, surveillance, technology, visual art

Banksy’s latest masterpiece.



The Ballardian Primer: Surveillance Cameras

By Simon Sellars • Mar 14th, 2008 •

Category: Ballardosphere, CCTV, alternate worlds, crime, death of affect, gated communities, suburbia, surveillance, technology

To celebrate the new version of the wonderful SurveillanceSaver software, here is The Ballardian Primer to Surveillance Cameras, with all quotes taken from Ballard and all images lifted from the Axis CCTV network.



Gargle, don’t swallow

By Simon Sellars • Nov 29th, 2007 •

Category: Ballardosphere, CCTV, surrealism, surveillance, technology

I’m slowly coming up for air after being buried alive by work and study. To everyone whose links, articles, essays and features I’ve promised to post, I’ll begin to work through the backlog over the next few days. By the way, what does it mean when you dream about trying to enter a church, but […]



‘What would Borges do?’

By Simon Sellars • Nov 21st, 2007 •

Category: Ballardosphere, CCTV, alternate worlds, film, inner space, paranormal, surveillance, technology

Image from Diet Soap #1.
+ Following on from my rapture at discovering the SurveillanceSaver software, here are some more portals onto mediated inner space.
Chris Nakashima-Brown brings news of issue 1 of the fabulous zine, Diet Soap. The theme is Surveillance and there are poems, palindromes, fiction, reportage and lots of excellent collaged art, including (so […]



Trompe-l’oeil corridors

By Simon Sellars • Nov 10th, 2007 •

Category: Ballardosphere, CCTV, alternate worlds, boredom, crime, film, inner space, surveillance, technology

Annoyed with myself, I set off along the narrow street, past the surveillance cameras that guarded the lacquered doorways, each lens with its own story to tell. Hidden perspectives turned Estrella de Mar into a huge riddle. Trompe-l’oeil corridors beckoned but led nowhere…
J.G. Ballard. Cocaine Nights (1996).
Every good Ballardian needs this: SurveillanceSaver, a screensaver that […]



Running Wild (1988)

By Simon Sellars • Sep 16th, 2006 •

Category: CCTV, bibliography, gated communities, surveillance, urban revolt

OPENING LINE:
“25 August, 1988. Where to start?”
This novella is just 87 pages long. Ballard calls it a ‘whydunit’ (rather than a ‘whodunit’), and it’s as uncanny as that implies. The shadow of Columbine hangs over this work (or, rather, vice versa).
The murders happened shortly after 8 o’clock on the morning of 25 June, 1988. Media […]