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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesDries Depoorter turns ordinary camera feeds, social-media images and machine-learning systems into art that reveals who is watching, who is being watched and how easily viewers can become participants. His projects make surveillance feel concrete: a screen pairs police radio with CCTV, an algorithm reconstructs an Instagram photograph, and a gallery visitor can decide whether to report a jaywalker.
What is Dries Depoorter’s surveillance art?
Belgian technology artist Dries Depoorter builds installations from publicly accessible cameras, internet-connected devices, social APIs and AI. Instead of treating surveillance as an invisible infrastructure, he exposes its mechanics and asks what happens when the same tools are redirected at citizens, politicians, tourists or the viewer.
Keith Hammond’s Make: feature, published November 7, 2024, describes a practice concerned with “surveillance, privacy, AI, and the role of technology in society.” The works are not simply demonstrations of computer vision. Their screens, speakers, servers, clocks and prints turn data collection into a social encounter.
Projects and methods at a glance
| Project | Data source | Automation or system | Viewer’s role | Material form |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seattle Crime Cams (2017) | Live police radio and nearby open cameras | Pairs audio with camera feeds | Observer of a real-time public-safety tableau | Live audiovisual display |
| The Follower (2022) | Open cameras and Instagram images tagged to matching locations | Image recognition and location matching | Observer of how a social photograph was made | Video installation |
| Jaywalking (2016) | Live intersection cameras, including some protected only by default passwords | Pedestrian and rule-violation detection | Potential reporter to police | Interactive gallery interface |
| Surveillance Speaker (2018) | Camera view of a scene | Computer vision paired with natural-language speech | Listener and subject of classification | Camera and loudspeaker |
| Quick Fix (2019–2023) | Instagram accounts and engagement services | Automated likes, followers and account management | Buyer of artificial popularity | Interactive service installation |
| Surveillance Paparazzi (2020) | Open Hollywood cameras | Microsoft’s paid recognition API | Observer of attempted celebrity identification | Computer display |
| The Flemish Scrollers (2022) | Government livestreams | Python/Keras detection of phone use | Public audience judging officials | Tagged online clips |
| Short Life (2020–2023) | User birthday, origin and WHO life-expectancy data | Personalized percentage calculation | Subject measuring elapsed life | Clock |
| Border Birds (2022–2023) | Open cameras monitoring borders | Machine-learning bird detection | Observer and purchaser of resulting images | Printed photographs |
How the best-known works expose surveillance
The Follower: CCTV meets Instagram
The Follower (2022) asks how an Instagram photograph was taken. The system records open-camera footage, scrapes Instagram images tagged with the same locations and compares the material with image-recognition software. A polished social-media image is therefore placed beside the overlooked camera infrastructure that may have witnessed its creation.
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- 【Infrared Scan】Ever wonder what’s watching you in a new hotel room? Tiny pin-hole cameras can hide in smoke detectors, clothing hooks, chargers, or fixtures you’d never notice. In a completely dark room, the infrared scan in this camera finder hidden camera detector makes hidden lenses reflect as a bright spot—revealing what the eye can’t see. Sweep mirrors, vents, picture frames, chargers, and wall fixtures; it also works as a hidden bug and camera detector to give you peace of mind before you settle in.
- 【Anti-Theft Alarm Mode】Don’t Let Danger Catch You Off Guard. While you’re asleep in a hotel room, hang this anti spy detector on the door handle—any attempt to open the door triggers an instant alert, waking you before someone gets close. And when you’re out and your luggage isn’t always in sight, attaching it to your suitcase adds protection; even slight movement sets off a loud alarm to alert you to theft. Paired with your hidden camera finder, it keeps you aware and protected wherever you go.
- 【Anti-GPS Tracking Scan】Is your car truly safe? GPS trackers can cling to your car with magnets and quietly send out your location. As your gps tracker detector, this device detects the magnetic fields where a tracker is attached and the signals its rf detector picks up when your location is shared. Sweep hiding spots—under seats, along bumpers, near the inside edge of tires. Before you drive, this spy camera detector helps you catch hidden trackers early and avoid someone following you.
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Depoorter later removed the video after copyright claims. That outcome is part of the work’s practical tension: public accessibility does not automatically settle questions of ownership, consent or reuse.
Jaywalking: when viewers become informants
Jaywalking (2016) detects pedestrians crossing illegally on live intersection cameras. Some feeds were public; others were accessible because they retained default passwords. The installation presents a large-button choice: email a photograph to police or do nothing.
The piece shifts responsibility from an automated system to the human in front of it. A visitor is no longer merely watching surveillance; the visitor is invited to operationalize it against another person.
Surveillance Speaker: classification made intimate
In Surveillance Speaker (2018), a camera and loudspeaker describe what the system sees in a natural voice. Depoorter recalls the line, “I see a girl taking a selfie in a mirror.” Giving machine classification a conversational sound makes an abstract label feel like a nearby observer speaking about a real person.
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The Flemish Scrollers: officials watched by the public
The Flemish Scrollers (2022) reverses the usual direction of surveillance. Python and Keras software detects politicians using phones during livestreamed government meetings, then posts tagged clips with the message, “Dear distracted, pls stay focused!” Citizens become the audience and officials become the subjects, showing that surveillance tools can expose power as well as ordinary people.
Other projects in the series
Seattle Crime Cams
Seattle Crime Cams (2017) combines live police-radio calls with nearby live cameras. The result is a real-time tableau in which public-safety communication and city surveillance appear as one coordinated system.
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- 【3-in-1 AI Sentinel Alarm System& Green Night Vision Laser】Once the radio frequency detector abnormal motion, and the spy detector will emit vibration, buzzer sound and strobe triple alarms. A self-developed cat-e ye night vision detection algorithm keenly captures infrared nanometer wave signals from hidden cameras; laser full-area scanning combined with a green light guide precisely locks onto night vision lenses, leaving no place for various hidden pinhole night vision cameras to hide.
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Surveillance Paparazzi
For Surveillance Paparazzi (2020), computers scanned open Hollywood cameras for celebrities using Microsoft’s paid recognition API. Depoorter says the results were all false positives, exposing the gap between the authority suggested by an AI label and the reliability of the identification behind it.
Quick Fix
Quick Fix (2019–2023) lets visitors buy Instagram likes and followers. Depoorter says, “I currently have 50,000 fake accounts on Instagram.” That is an artist-reported figure, not an independently audited statistic, and the installation uses it to make manufactured popularity tangible.
Short Life
Short Life (2020–2023) displays the percentage of a person’s expected life already elapsed, calculated with World Health Organization life-expectancy data for the user’s country. The prototype used Arduino; later versions used custom printed circuit boards. Depoorter calls it an “edition of 1 million,” with buyers entering their birthday and origin.
Border Birds
In Border Birds (2022–2023), made with his sister Bieke Depoorter, machine learning identifies birds crossing borders on open cameras. The detected moments become prints that are sold, turning a monitoring system into a physical image and a commercial edition.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What technology does Depoorter use?
Depoorter says he mainly uses Shodan, a search engine for internet-connected devices, to locate accessible systems. His hardware and software scale with the job:
- Raspberry Pi single-board computers: used in most installations.
- Nvidia Jetson Nano: used when edge computing requires more power.
- AWS: used when the workload exceeds local hardware.
- Keras: used for face-recognition work.
- YOLO: used for object detection.
- Arduino and custom PCBs: used in the development of Short Life.
His stated progression is practical rather than futuristic: “In most of my installations I use Raspberry Pi. If I need something more powerful I use Nvidia Jetson Nano; if I still need more power I use AWS.”
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Rank #3
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- 【Ultra-Wide 100mhz–8ghz Rf Scanning】Professional full-spectrum detection technology of the wireless signal detector identifies wireless spy cameras detectors, eavesdropping bugs, locator trackers and hidden recording gears, this hidden camera detectors eliminates hidden privacy threats in complicated space environment, serving as bug detector, tracker detector and gps tracker detector simultaneously.
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Why the work raises privacy and AI concerns
Depoorter’s systems often use information that is technically reachable but socially unexpected: an unprotected camera, a location-tagged photograph or a government livestream. The projects show that privacy can be eroded through combination. Each individual source may look ordinary; matching, classifying and republishing the sources creates a new level of exposure.
They also distinguish access from accuracy. Surveillance Paparazzi demonstrates false positives, while Surveillance Speaker gives uncertain machine interpretation the confidence of a human voice. Jaywalking adds a further risk: an interface can recruit bystanders to enforce what an algorithm has decided.
Depoorter summarizes the power imbalance this way: “If only one guy achieved that with simple open source software, imagine what a government can do with access to way more cameras, way more computer power, and way more resources.” The statement is a warning about scale, not a measured estimate of government capability.
Exhibition context: Eyewitness
The 2022 Eyewitness exhibition at New Media Gallery in New Westminster presented three surveillance installations. Reviewer Gillian McIver described the work as connecting publicly available Seattle emergency calls with the city-wide CCTV system and displaying incidents and responses as they happened. In that setting, Depoorter’s installations function less like isolated screens than like a model of a city seeing and reacting to itself.
What is established—and what is not
The project dates, methods and quotations above come from Make’s 2024 interview and feature, with exhibition context from the Eyewitness review. The 50,000-account figure is Depoorter’s own statement and has not been independently audited. No independently published audience, sales, installation-count or impact statistic establishes how many people have encountered these works or what measurable behavior change they produced.
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