Remote feeds and unsecured surveillance cameras monitor what Rob Nixon termed “slow violence” — slowly unfolding environmental catastrophe. ArchiveCam utilizes live video feeds that capture incremental change like disappearing glaciers, eagle births, city traffic, water levels or population density. During the pandemic, catastrophe was enacted through human proximity, touch, breath. The first phase of ArchiveCam — Lost Time — was recorded March 5, 2020 to March 30, 2021 from sites of public human interaction: the city square, the beach, the street, the lobby. Video was collected from 19 cities twice per day, at noon and midnight, with audio from the artist’s studio at the time. A total of six cities are represented fully at archivecam.com/losttime. Some cameras were taken down; Elsewhere compiles footage from these cities along with audio from people recorded in May 2020.
Riah Buchanan is a net artist interested in the visual language of animal telemetry, monitoring feeds, and remote internet and autonomous networks. She has an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and is pursuing a PhD at the University of Washington. She has shown work at George Mason University, A+D Museum, Eyebeam, and LACE. She is on the editorial board of Media-N and has written for Eros and Kulturfolger magazine; she teaches at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles.
