System Azure Security Ornamentation
After inventing her company System Azure Security Ornamentation, Jill Magid convinced the Amsterdam Police Department to hire her to decorate its CCTV cameras at Police Headquarters. Although the ornamenting policy was reversed by the police, the cameras remain in place. The System Azure Manifesto:
While an old Chinese saying claims "When the wise man points to the moon the idiot looks at the finger", System Azure upholds the reverse: The wise consider the finger. Why? Looking at the finger is more interesting. The finger is reality. In considering the finger you consider how moon is being represented. Who is pointing this finger? Toward what is my attention being directed and why should I look there? What does this finger want me to see? With these questions in mind one can choose to see as the finger sees, to look at the moon in another way, or to look at something else entirely.
While your security system is your eye from the inside, it is you finger from the outside.What ring are you wearing?
The project, which included Rhinestoning Police Headquarters, was an exploration of the 'fetish' of the surveillance camera, and the public and institutional perceptions of CCTV systems—which in 2002 was not yet being highly debated. Magid acts as both performer (behind the camera) and rhinestone installer.