Watch as Woody Allen's eyes follow your cursor around the window.
Based upon the basic library's Constrain code and features code from Background Image.

Built with Processing.

Instrumentalism is the art from that is entirely based around the concept of art being able to move people to action. Past instrumental artists have included Judith Baca’s mural art, Guillermo Gomez-Pena’s video art, Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ garbage art, and more recently the work of Graffiti artists Banksy and Shepard Fairey.

It is of the last artist that my work, “Woody’s Watching You” was inspired. Fairey is known for his “Obey Giant” work. The main concept behind “Obey Giant” was the theme of “Big Brother is Watching” that was prevalent in George Orwell’s work “1984”. Taking this concept, he created a stylized image of André the Giant, added the words “Obey” in reference to propaganda posters and began putting these images all over the streets of California. Fairey’s main goal was to not only question authority, not just to question consumerism, but to question the whole idea of obeying what anyone tells you. He wanted people to think for themselves and not just do as they were told.

My work is an extension of that. It too plays off of the concept of a large omnipresent being watching over you (in this case Woody Allen). The main difference between my work and the work of Fairey is that it is interactive. For this reason I feel that it is even more difficult to be ignored since the eyes actually follow your cursor around the screen rather than just stare blankly at you. Not only that, because the work is placed online it also touches on the idea of online privacy.

By using the image of Woody Allen, an icon of the film industry, the work touches on the idea of not just one person watching you, but an entire industry watching. It is no secret that the Motion Picture Association of America has gone to great lengths to stop online piracy, however not everyone is aware of just how far they are willing to go in order to put an end to file-sharing. My goal is to show just how much power these corporations have, but to get people to question not only how they got this power, but why they are allowed to have this power. As someone who believes that file-sharing should not be outlawed, and that prosecuting teenagers and single mothers is not the solution, I feel that it is important to make people fully aware of the true power these companies have. It is my hopes that this work will help people understand that no one is safe from the all seeing eye of “Woody”.