Eye Watching

A real-time projection installation that captures passersby's faces and distorts them into abstracted digital imagery, questioning what it means to be watched.

2026Visual & Concept Design · with Veronica BergonzoniProcessing, Projection Mapping, Live Camera Input

Projection MappingProcessingInteractive Installation

Eye Watching is a real-time surveillance installation. A camera captures the faces of people moving through a space, and a Processing-built effect distorts each capture into abstracted, pixelated imagery, projected live across a six-pane window wall.

Six window panes used as a segmented display, each showing a large pixel-art eye motif in blue and red, with a black owl-like emblem projected in the centre pane.

Concept

"What happens when the computer watches you? You are no longer a person, but just a series of numbers. Your image is no longer yours. It is controlled by the system." That framing, taken directly from the project brief, drives the whole piece: visitors don't just see the installation, they become its subject the moment they step into frame.

In the space

The installation lives in a set of six old window panes, each one turned into an individual projection surface. Most of the time they display a repeating grid of stylised pixel-art eyes with a recurring owl emblem at the centre, a watching motif visitors face before they're even being tracked. When the live camera feed is active, the same panes instead show grainy, desaturated captures of anyone standing in front of it, with visible face-detection bounding boxes overlaid directly on their body. The tracking is made deliberately legible rather than hidden.

The six window panes showing grainy, desaturated captures of standing human figures, distorted by the Processing effect.

A visitor stands in front of the installation as the window panes display live camera captures of people with red face-detection bounding boxes overlaid on their heads.

A close-up of one window pane showing the black owl-like emblem projected over a grainy human figure, an exit sign visible faintly through the glass.

A wide angled view of the six-pane window installation glowing blue with pixel-art eye motifs, in a dim room with other artwork on the walls.

Reflection

The strongest choice in Eye Watching is restraint: instead of hiding the surveillance or making it purely abstract, the bounding boxes stay visible, and the eye motif stares back before anyone is even captured. Visitors read the installation's intent almost immediately, which was the point. The discomfort of being watched works better shown plainly than dressed up.