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Every breath you take and every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take, ​I'll be watching you

Gordon Sumner

How would you watch the world for a day?

Eight billion individuals of all ages and races communicating across 7000 ​languages and over multiple time zones. People moving, keeping still, ​sleeping, commuting, working, buying, selling, flying, fishing, sailing, driving, ​walking. On Tik Tok, Insta, Facebook, in storms, sunshine, drizzle, snow, ​sending emails, using mobile apps, playing multiplayer online games, file ​sharing, streaming Netflix, Apple TV+, BBCiPlayer, Sky, talking to friends, ​family, being hired, being laid off, getting promoted, watching football, ​playing football; living, existing. From high in the Rotunda, Ultraopticon is ​watching it all, recording and translating fragments from the interconnected ​network of private, public, academic, business, and government networks ​that collectively form the global system of unified computers that we call the ​internet. And it’s also watching directly from 81 metres above Birmingham ​streets through floor to ceiling, 20th floor windows.

And this time we are invited to watch the watchers.

From high in the Rotunda, Ultraopticon is watching it all

Research by Clarion Security Systems estmates that ​there were over 7,371,903 CCTV cameras in the UK in ​2022, providing around 1 CCTV camera for every 11 ​citizens. In this age of ‘omni-surveillance’ you are likely ​to be captured on UKCCTV up to 70 times per day.

Whether you're an idiot who's watching or an ​idiot who's dancing, if you're really an idiot, ​you might as well dance.

― Minoru Duruya

“There isn’t much not being watched by somebody”

Fraser Sampson, Home Office’s biometrics and surveillance commissioner

Ultimately, to think about ​time and its passing is to ​think about death.

The one constant is a clock ​somewhere, anywhere - on a ​shelf, in a pocket, on a screen, ​perhaps even old-skool style on ​a wrist- that ticks rhythmically ​and relentlessly to mark out the ​86,400 seconds that make up ​the 24 hours of a day on Earth. ​To think about time is to give in ​to an awareness of the finite; to ​be aware that the past has ​been and that the future is ​limited. As for the present? ​Being a single point of no ​duration, the present cannot ​exist, and yet somehow we can ​sense it although, even as we ​do so, it propels us towards an ​inevitable and irreversible ​endpoint.

But let’s not dwell on the then but put our focus instead on the now ... and the now ... and the now. Pause for a moment to ​let ourselves be wrapped in the soft, comforting blanket of quiet chatter as information is gathered and relayed from all ​across our world, randomly but sequentially into our small room, towering above the city below. In English, in Lithuanian, ​in Somali, in French, in Bengali, no information must be given more credence than any other. It is all of equal importance ​to those of us watching. And we’re always watching.

Prem Kumar

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I’ll be watching you.

In this collection of photoessays, I aim to capture certain ​aspects of modern culture as seen through a lens shaped ​either by Apple, Fujifilm and/or my own perspective.