[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98u1HuqS7Nk[/youtube]
The British band Get Out The Clause has struck creative gold: unable to afford to make a video, the band performed in front of 80 closed circuit television cameras around Manchester (the Brits love their security cameras — 13 million in total are found around the country), then requested the footage under the Freedom of Information Act. They received 20 responses and were able to produce their own video.
Bloody brilliant, I say.
9 comments
Brilliant, but in Toronto that would be classified as “frivolous and vexatious.”
Well, since they have just been called an “utter fiasco” because they fail to curb crime, they might as well be used for art.
Maybe information requests are only “frivolous and vexatious” when they stand a chance of exposing deficiencies in the administration of the city.
It is after all a tenet of bureaucracy that what remains unknown (or at least unacknowledged) can’t hurt you. See also the recent decision to close the federal government’s access to information registry.
I use FOI a lot. It not only saves time, but puts you on the record. It gives you access to information that you might not know was on file and, usually it saves a lot of photocopying as well. It’s important to word the request carefully.
There are almost never lineups unless some new billboards have gone up over the weekend. In that case, I’d be happy to wait.
I’m always dealing with Mr “Staffonly”.That guy staff eyes only seems to be very privileged at city hall.
Now that might just be the most brilliant hack ever.
It’s an amazing idea, although I don’t buy the “too poor for a video” justification. This video would’ve cost next-to-nothing to shoot, and the only money they saved by going CCTV was the cost of a camera and some videotapes–which are dirt cheap these days. All the other costs would have been the same. But regardless, it’s still brilliant.
Too bad the song and video have nothing to do with the concept of surveillance cameras in public spaces, privacy, civil liberties, culture of fear, or any of the many related issues. Hopefully this won’t be the last time we see this technique–it would be nice to see someone tie the medium to the message.
this couldn’t have been about money — the band would have been billed on an hourly basis for the research to find the requested footage, not to mention the cost of duplicating such footage, the cost of the dvd or videotape on which the copy was saved, and the postage to send the response by mail. access to information doesn’t come cheap.
this has been revealed as a fake