A while back, there was reported a new law enforcement surveillance system which could automagically switch/integrate multiple data feeds into a single presentation layer — designed to automatically follow individual people or vehicles, as they pass from one camera/feed to the next. Think it might have been a new toy from Qinetiq. Sounds like their kind of thing — 3D maps with patches of realtime footage from CCTV, helicopter cameras, whatever is available, all integrated in realtime for officers in the field or back at C&C. Anyway. Can’t find it on Google, but there were some very CSI-stylee screengrabs (probably mockups). But hey. There must be a nice art project in trying to build a realtime 3D video of London just from the intersecting sightlines of all those CCTV cameras — the flipside of the Institute for Applied Autonomy’s camera-evasion route planner. If only it was possible to hook into all those feeds (as is possible to a limited extent via the Wired Shoreditch project).

Would be interesting to see where if there are any surveillance blackspots in central London. Doubt it.

Walking from home to lunch and the Helen Chadwick retrospective at the Barbican the other day, discovered, down a sliproad of London Wall, the Worshipful Company of Barber-Surgeons’ herb garden, in a little park in the shadow of a fragment of the wall. Perfect place for a picnic ala Jeffrey Smart, in the shadow of some of London’s ugliest buildings.

Last night we went to the private view of A Changed World, an exhibition of work by second year students in an experimental printmaking course, at the Bankside Gallery. Some nice things, including this pig in a poke, and a video by Sara Yaghubi, which features some good hair. Lots of people taking pictures, with all manner of devices, of the art and each other in equal measure… wonder if the moblogging thing is really happening, or if not, where all those images end up … (photo by Anne-Fay).