“ everything is under control ”

Overview

Inspired by a dream I had a few years ago, CCTVYLLE™ is an imaginative exploration of the future of surveillance systems and the inevitable consequences of an extreme and grottesque use of technology. Sometimes even an apparently innocuous invention can lead to unforeseeable changes in society. In the dream, I saw a tree with dozens of strange creatures perched on it. The scene was as fascinating and chilling as arresting. Suddenly I realized I was seeing a possible future.  – Gianluca Bonomo

The responsiveness to the impact on people’s lives exercised by surveillance systems has been widely analyzed and examined from various points of view with a number of artists dedicating their work to the psychological and social implication of being part of a society ‘under control’. CCTVYLLE™ joins this debate, yet with a distinctive approach to the matter by focusing on the medium and technology utilized by surveillance systems in order to offer a new vision of a future advancing toward the greater consequences that far more sophisticated surveillance systems WILL bring.

CCTVYLLE is a multidisciplinary project including fine art, photography, comics, animation work and more. While fine art and photography present the vision following a non -narrative criteria comics and animation aim at developing stories based partly on actual facts and partly fictional.

The narrative

Set in London of a not too distant future, CCTVYLLE™ narrates the dramatic and controversial consequences of living under the suffocating control of thousands of super-smart hybrid birds belonging to a government-run agency. The hybrids embody half machine and half animal (bird), consisting of a very sophisticated cctv-like camera build that boosts an intelligent cybernetic chip while the bird’s wings, bones and tissues are organic. The hybrids or “cctvirds” are often remotely controlled by appointed operators whose duty is to constantly patrol the town preventing and reporting crime. Like for any technology or powerful invention, the borderline between use and misuse is very thin and often does not exist. Within a short period the hybrids become so dominant that no picture or view of the city is without them.

CCTVYLLE™ highlights the stories of people whose lives become irreversibly affected by an overly paranoid and controlling system and takes us through a dramatic and exciting journey to discover a new world of ordinary and extraordinary heroes.