WatchFiends

Cecelia Chapman & Jeff Crouch
January 2020

Melting ice has displaced land. But the 325-million-year-old, water-dwelling dragonfly, on wing for days or for weeks, able to migrate across oceans, survives. And this agile mosquito predator, whose decline poses a danger to human health in tropical climates where water is in crisis, may outlive us. Dear Icarus, what might we learn?

We want to renounce The Trolley Problem. Why? The Trolley Problem assumes that technological solutions are solutions about life or death. This part of The Trolley Problem is, at least, true some of the time. But what we do not like about The Trolley Problem is that it inspires complacency. It tries to sell us on the notion that the best we can do—and in so doing our best, we are somehow exonerated—is to reduce the death toll, to keep the body count low. But The Trolley Problem does not offer us a good choice. Its logic is mythic—it assumes that solutions are deals with the devil and that deals with the devil require sacrifice, human sacrifice. We need human friendly solutions, not solutions that maximize profits for the sake of maximizing profits when lives are at stake, not solutions that bring indiscriminate death as an aspect of the solution set. Indeed, another aspect of The Trolley Problem is that it implies that technology is war craft, that there is no separation between civilian life and war, at least as far as technology is concerned. Unfortunately, this aspect of The Trolley Problem also rings true, and it is part of what makes The Trolley Problem seductive. We obviously have to deal with the fallout when our solutions go bad. We do not, however, need to build death and destruction into our solution—as The Trolley Problem implies. But—as The Trolley Problem also implies–we need to respect death and destruction as aspects of anything we do. But renounce The Trolley Problem. We need to decide before we need to decide between life and death.

What is it with Marty? This Stop ‘n Shop robot employee, responsible for alerting store employees to spills in the aisles, is a giant, a rolling camera recording everything around him. He freaks out over a sprig of sparsely, a tiny food label, or a twist tie dropped on the floor. He freaks out when he finds spillage or dropped cans. But Marty cannot quite manage the clean-up. Yes, Marty is a mess spotter, a floor drone. Marty finds a mess, and out come the humans for the clean-up. The set-up is a reverse-action Fukushima scrub. And, indeed, the Marty scene is quite a show. Stop ‘n Shop customers are puzzled, amused, and bewildered by this beeping, bumping, lurking giant. “Mama, he’s cute.” Just wait until Marty creeps up on you in the canned-goods aisle reaching for a can of fruit cocktail. Just know that kids love Marty and run to find him.

WatchFiends is a video series investigating current global challenges to our freedoms, (What The WatchFiends Can Not Find) and presenting very short video that can not be found anywhere else. Cecelia Chapman and Jeff Crouch have been collaborating together in video, works on paper and mail art projects since 2006 and have never met in person. Their work has been exhibited, screened and viewed online with links at ceceliachapman.com.

Another collaboration by Cecelia Chapman & Jeff Crouch on Arteidolia “Record from the Skull: night order of things.” →