analoger_Widerstand (or analog resistance in english) is an installation that translates live surveillance images into sound and visual patterns. Using an old analog oscilloscope to visualize the sound textures, and using two CRT monitors revealing the algorithmic vision and interference.
Images from public surveillance streams are reduced to quantitative descriptors (edge density, luminance variance, dominant hue).
These values drive control voltages driving analog oscillators that create sound. Then, this sounf will create analog oscilloscope patterns.
A second module (CRT monitor) will caption the images feeded into the system using a machine learning model.
Finally, a third module with a second CRT monitor will interfere with the sound and noise background when a subject is captured in the camera.
analoger_Widerstand (Analog Resistance), September 2025, Bern.
### Surveillance
In an era of ubiquitous cameras and continuous data collection, everyday acts—posting photos, walking past street CCTV, swiping loyalty cards—feed into a global surveillance network. We routinely trade privacy for convenience, often without knowing who is watching or how our data will be used. **analoger_Widerstand** uses reality as raw material.
### Concept
Working with analog hardware, the piece captures live feeds from publicly accessible surveillance cameras worldwide (watchingtheworld project [^1]). Each frame is reduced to measurable parameters—color, luminance, edge density—which are transformed into control voltages that trace moving patterns on a laboratory oscilloscope. In parallel, a local machine-learning model generates textual captions of what the algorithm “sees,” projected onto a CRT monitor. Visitors therefore hear the data through sound and read algorithmic interpretations, but never see the original images.
Working with analog hardware, the piece captures live feeds from publicly accessible surveillance cameras worldwide (watchingtheworld project [^1]). Each frame is reduced to measurable parameters—color, luminance, edge density—which are transformed into control voltages that trace moving patterns on a laboratory oscilloscope. In parallel, a local machine-learning model generates textual captions of what the algorithm “sees,” projected onto a CRT monitor. Visitors therefore hear the data through sound and read algorithmic interpretations, but never see the original images.
A second module uses an on-site webcam to capture visitor pose. This data modulates the background noise on the monitor and alters the sonic texture, creating granular shifts that make the audience a live participant in the system. In this way, the work does not merely represent surveillance but enacts it, folding the viewer into its feedback loop.
The piece shows how modern surveillance regimes compress the richness of human situations into signals and captions, turning reality into something optimized for monitoring and control.
### Resistance
At its core, the installation relies on vintage analog equipment as a counterpoint to contemporary digital infrastructures, operating outside the network’s panoptic gaze. This deliberate choice emphasizes how analog media can resist the reach of surveillance capitalism and state monitoring. Digitalization, while promising connectivity and convenience, also introduces forms of discipline and control. By remaining offline, the devices in this artwork act as rebellious outcasts—refusing assimilation into the seamless circuits of data capture. The result is an analog loop that resists storage, resists transmission, and returns to technology’s physical origins: electricity, signal, noise.
At its core, the installation relies on vintage analog equipment as a counterpoint to contemporary digital infrastructures, operating outside the network’s panoptic gaze. This deliberate choice emphasizes how analog media can resist the reach of surveillance capitalism and state monitoring. Digitalization, while promising connectivity and convenience, also introduces forms of discipline and control. By remaining offline, the devices in this artwork act as rebellious outcasts—refusing assimilation into the seamless circuits of data capture. The result is an analog loop that resists storage, resists transmission, and returns to technology’s physical origins: electricity, signal, noise.
### Distortion
By translating images into voltages, the work speaks in the language of the machine: electricity. What returns from that current is never the world itself but an algorithmic distortion—a partial, fragmented version of reality. The installation makes this gap tangible: visitors witness how the machine reconstructs only pieces of the world, presenting not truth but data-driven representation. In exposing electricity as medium and reduction as method, the piece invites reflection on who controls the narrative and what is lost when machines mediate our experience.
By translating images into voltages, the work speaks in the language of the machine: electricity. What returns from that current is never the world itself but an algorithmic distortion—a partial, fragmented version of reality. The installation makes this gap tangible: visitors witness how the machine reconstructs only pieces of the world, presenting not truth but data-driven representation. In exposing electricity as medium and reduction as method, the piece invites reflection on who controls the narrative and what is lost when machines mediate our experience.
### …
Ultimately, **analoger_Widerstand** is an analog rebellion—a work that confronts audiences
with the politics embedded in data collection and machine vision, and asks them to reckon with
the systems that watch, classify, and shape their lives.
Ultimately, **analoger_Widerstand** is an analog rebellion—a work that confronts audiences
with the politics embedded in data collection and machine vision, and asks them to reckon with
the systems that watch, classify, and shape their lives.
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[^1]: https://webcamaze.engineering.zhaw.ch
