This week, Belgian artist Dries Depoorter launched a disturbing art piece titled “The Follower” that proves no matter where you are, you’re pretty much always being surveilled. Using a specially-developed AI program, Depoorter monitored public surveillance cameras for a week to identify people taking pictures for social media, searched through all posts tagged in the same location of the cameras, and pinpointed the posters in the security footage.



The result is something out of a dystopian science fiction novel. Side-by-side, Depoorter’s website displays the Instagram posts, and then the public footage of the exact moments of when the posts were photographed, with the posters highlighted in green. Check it out here.




The art piece is undoubtedly meant to be evocative of something unsettling. It offers an interesting commentary on just how vulnerable, how seen, and how easily tracked we really are.



Depoorter has previously been featured by the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), TedX, Wired, BBC, and Vice, among other notable organizations and publications. His work deals heavily with themes of technology, surveillance, and human behavior. Take a look.



Whether you’re aware of it or not, Big Brother is watching you.