re-image is a Finishing School (FS) action first presented at Remote Lounge (RL) in New York City that hijacks existing interactive technology to raise public awareness of the ease in corrupting technology and the potential misuse of surveillance data; and to challenge the participants actions regarding the politics of identity and body imaging-both as subject and as viewer. RL describes itself as a hands-on digital entertainment lounge that integrates art, technology, and nightlife. It focuses media attention on guests and invites them to explore themselves, each other, and the world through a layer of technology. Walking in the door alone generates content that can be revisited later online. The physical space was designed around a media as architecture concept that enhances the virtual experience. RL invites guests to enter the virtual electronic world, where all is visible and accessible. Counter to the interactive model designed by RL, participants in the re-image action are not aware of the physical presence of FS at RL. Anonymous confrontation stimulates real emotions (anxiety, fear, anger, and unresolved conflict) that can be used to foster a clearer understanding of issues related to surveillance culture.

FS employed the existing RL surveillance technology to acquire images of participants by downloading the data to wireless laptop computers from RLs public online database. The images are then altered and redistributed within the RL network. The Cocktail Console™ is the primary piece of technology for this action. RL describes it as simple and friendly looking, these cocktail tables evoke the futuristic fantasies of the 50s. Monitors, telephone handsets, and message screens provide the initial means of communication between guests at separate consoles. Cameras located on the top of each console transmit images that are received by more than 100 monitors and screens throughout the lounge. Joysticks allow participants to remotely control the pan and tilt motion of each camera. Buttons located on the front panel of each console allow guests to surf through the closed circuit channels, send flirtatious messages to other guests order drinks from the bar, or capture still images of activity in the lounge. Whereby, FS generated images (to be broadcasted) by directly interacting with participants through Cocktail Consoles™. The additional data used to re-image is derived from various sources: statistical studies, published cultural indicators, advertisements and popular culture. In one re-image, FS presents a participant wearing Mickey Mouse ears and the slogan, "I'm going to Disneyland". This participant may feel glorified as a newly made (readymade) celebrity, while others are horrified as FS matches the face of one kissing couple with the stark and vital statistic, "Half of all murder victims know their assailants". Using the RL technology, participants are presented with the possibility of being the subject and/or viewer. FS presents participants with a factual reality that can be altered and broadcasted as quickly as she/he streams her image into the digital arena. FS demonstrates to the viewer that control is lost while viewers are within range of the cameras.

Video surveillance and digital cameras mechanically alter the perception of the subjects psychological state, physical constitution, personality, and desire by the process alone. Images also vary from camera to camera. The camera has a very limited ability to capture visual data. This has become a point of acceptable loss for the consumer and exploitation for FS. Image manipulating software (i.e. Adobe Photoshop) have become the tools of the media trade for the purpose of altering images to meet more specific needs. The saying, "the camera adds ten pounds to your body weight" may be true if the contemporary image manipulator desires this effect. Media has long been engaged with manipulating images to coincide more harmoniously with text. Men's entertainment magazines featuring female models have long been at work sculpting images. O.J. Simpson's LAPD mug shot was plastered on the cover of Time and Newsweek Magazines during the summer of 1994-each with a very different image, both from the same source. One opted to increase the contrast of the image, which consequently made O.J.'s skin appear darker, suggesting entrenched racial stereotypes.

Was Walter Benjamin right? Did the mechanical age extract the life from the image or rather, from what we believed about images?

re-image also experiments with the believability of the broadcast. Is information true when it is made public? Photographic data was once reliable evidence. Somewhere between the Zapruder and Rodney King films, our society lost faith in the inherent content of the image. We have witnessed photographic images represent conflicting positions. For example, the Moon landing photographs have simultaneously represented both the pinnacle of human achievement and the proof of the largest scientific/political conspiracy ever waged.

In a recent Wired magazine article (11/03), Patrick Di Justo predicted that over the next few years, there will be a radical increase in video surveillance cameras in both public and private space with new collaborations between the public and private sector to connect video surveillance cameras to common databases for the purpose of collection and critical analysis (i.e. THE PATRIOT Act, CAPPS). The rise of this new technology is in part a response to the recent terrorist attacks against the United States and the resulting culture of fear that has enabled the marketing of protection to US citizens. Di Justo also predicts that there will be 25 million new people armed with digital cameras built into their wireless phones in the coming year. Di Justo is quick to indicate that there is a more pragmatic danger in the private sector for the average person. Amateur (camera) eyes are proving to be the big brother of the future, personal image data is captured with digital cameras, collected, stored, and is often displayed by individuals without motive or constraint. Bans have been placed on digital cameras in sports clubs because images of patrons taken at these clubs were being published on the Internet. Las Vegas casinos also ban the use of digital camera equipped cell phones from gaming areas, presumably out of fear that gamers will use them to cheat, all the while video surveillance cameras record the movements of all casino patrons. The next time you are at an ATM, consider whether it was a fair exchange, your image for your money plus a $1.50 withdrawl fee. Ultimately, both the increased presence and development of video surveillance cameras and digital cameras are sure to stimulate new subject territories in imaging and representation. FS is concerned with the possibility that we will no longer have control over our own visual identity.

Headlines across the country recently read "Anchor Bares All In Wet T-shirt Contests, Gets Fire." Catherine Bosley, a news anchor for 10 years chose to enter a wet-shirt contest in a bar for all to see. She apparently wanted this very public act to remain as private as possible. Is this type of action (broadcasting without her consent) an intrusion of privacy? Did re-image participants also realize the potential of the cameras at every cocktail table when they chose to enter RL or any space for that matter? FS appropriates this blatant abuse of technology. FS also acknowledges the formula used by the producers of Girls Gone Wild: when someone mixes alcohol with the opportunity to perform in front of cameras, there is a strange eagerness to respond by the participant. FS does not believe that the alcohol solely governs the performance, it simply enhances the same primal desire and/or confidence that humans feel while looking in the mirror at home or singing our favorite song on the way to work in our cars, it makes us less aware of an audience. This uninhibited performance, caught on camera become the gestures, bodies, and faces that FS uses in re-image. The land of the free has become the land of public access.

FS believes that most viewers have had their trust eroded by the mediators not the mediated. As consumers, we have empowered ourselves by controlling narrative with our own star-making devices. Everyone wants to be a part of fame, if not for the self, for the other. Finishing School wants to know: do you know who is consuming your image?