In one of the afternoon artist presentations James Coupe, currently in residence at folly, presented his new project Surveillance Suite. Similar to Dark Fibre, the production of Surveillance Suite turns traditional methods of filmmaking upside down. Coupe takes an algorithmic approach to cinema and, in doing so, transforms reality into narrative. By using face profiling software and video databases, Surveillance Suite creates itself as an automatically edited film, where characters can be played by multiple individuals with the same prerequisite features. The video footage for Surveillance Suite is shot fresh each day, then analysed by profiling software that can detect and classify people according to age, gender, race, facial expression and location. The result is an automated and anonymous casting system that brings together the ‘actors’ and locations from random video footage. Coupe essentially reverses the process of writing a script and subsequently making a film.

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