Fear Filter (2017-2018)
Fear Filter, 2017-2018, Rod Dickinson
Animation, Digital photo stream and associated web app phone application
Above: A short section from the Fear Filter installation animation
Synopsis:
Fear Filter is a photostream of user created photographs that visualise the UK Terror Threat Level.
Users create photos with a custom mobile phone photo filters web application.
For exhibition the photostream is presented embedded as part of a large scale portrait orientation 4k animation.
Fear Filter Installation, Bath Spa University Media Wall, UK, 8m x 4m, July 2019
How it works:
The Fear Filter app uses photo filters combined with data from MI5 to make the UK Terror Threat Level visible on users photos.
The filters colourise and redact photos they are applied too. The amount of redaction correlates with the severity of the Threat Level.
The more severe the Threat Level the more the subject of the photograph is redacted and obscured.
The greater the threat the less legible the photo.
Fear Filter Installation, Bath Spa University Media Wall, UK, 8m x 4m, July 2019, Photographs from the Fear Filter photo stream. These photographs were uploaded by users of the Fear Filter app
Along with many of the security measures introduced since before the beginning of the War on Terror the symbolic and pervasive presence of the Terror Threat Level seems more important than whether it actually improves security. It might be thought of as a form of Security Theatre, where the primary aim is to create the illusion of security.
Fear Filter exploits this confluence of security theatre, MI5's live data stream, computer vision technologies and digital photography to reformulate the relationship between photography and terrorism.
Rather than using the spectacular imagery often associated with acts of terrorism, Fear Filter uses a computational equation, a visual placeholder for the UK Terror Threat. So that every photo visualises the sense that the Terror Threat Level is everywhere, all the time, in real time.
Fear Filter is complete digital platform, and as an artwork uses a platform-as-medium.
Read a short paper about Fear Filter here...
See the photostream and try out the filters at https://www.fearfilter.uk