By now most of us are aware of this story : Mary Bale, a woman living in UK was caught on a CCTV camera dumping a cat in a trash bin. The video was uploaded on Youtube, went viral and made the news worldwide. The response was quick and intense : sheer outrage. Mashable has a good summary of the ways this anger was expressed all over the Internet. Quite a normal reaction, one may think. Yet, something doesn’t add up. How come suddenly nobody seems to be too concerned about the use of CCTV cameras to spy on citizens?

Those are serious topics in our times : the respect of private life, the surveillance of citizens by the Government, the rising specter of Big Brother. It’s one of the recurrent topic on Boing Boing : the rising number of CCTV cameras in big cities, specifically in the UK (try this customized search).

Looks like Big Brother isn’t the problem in this particular scenario : the problem is that we don’t want others to spy on us. But if we happen to find ourselves in a position where we can spy on our neighbors, and maybe catch them doing something we think is wrong, then CCTV cameras are ok, surveillance is good, the system is working just fine.

About Tatsuro Kiuchi:

Tatsuro Kiuchi was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1966. Originally a graduate in Biology at International Christian University in Tokyo, He made the change to an art career after graduating with distinction from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. He started illustrating mostly children’s books with several publishers in the US and Japan and eventually branched out into editorial work in magazines and the illustration of book jackets and advertising commissions. His first picture book “The Lotus Seed” (text by Sherry Garland / Harcourt Brace & Company) has sold more than 250,000 copies worldwide, and has been commissioned by such clients as Royal Mail to do Christmas Stamp Collection in 2006, and Starbucks for Worldwide Holiday Promotion “Pass the Cheer” in 2007. He now lives in Tokyo Japan. (Profile)

Visit his official English website, his blog and his Tumblr account. Some of his artwork can be bought online. I first came to know this artist via Coudal Partners.

Higher Pictures: “Untitled” by Alfred Gescheidt, vintage gelatin silver print, 1961

In an age when Photoshop seems to be a de facto part of nearly every photographer’s creative process, the ways of in-camera and darkroom trickery - montage, collage, double exposure, hand-retouching and re-photographing - are in danger of becoming a lost art. Alfred Gescheidt was a master of all these techniques and more, although his name has, rather unjustly, become largely unknown in recent years.

Once described by former New York Times photo editor John Durniak as “the Charlie Chaplin of the camera”, Geischeidt amassed a rich body of photographic work that was unique, satirical, idiosyncratic and at times even hallucinogenic. (Field of Vision: Alfred Gescheidt)

About Charles Barsotti:

Charles Barsotti is a cartoonist based in the United States. He was the cartoon editor of the The Saturday Evening Post and has been a staff cartoonist at The New Yorker since 1970. His work has also appeared in Playboy and Fast Company, among other publications. A signature artist whose rounded, elegant, sparsely detailed style evokes both the traditional world of a James Thurber and the contemporary sensibility of a Roz Chast. (wikipedia)

Visit Charles Barsotti official website.

Artist’s statement:

In my work this romantic ideal of union with the natural world conflicts with our contemporary impact on the environment. These pieces are in part responses to environmental stressors including climate change, toxic pollution, and gm crops. They also borrow from myth, art history, figures of speech and other cultural touchstones. In some pieces aspects of the human figure stand-in for ourselves and act out sometimes harrowing, sometimes humorous transformations which illustrate our current relationship with the natural world. In others, animals take on anthropomorphic qualities when they are given safety equipment to attempt to protect them from man-made environmental threats. In each case the union between man and nature is shown to be one of friction and discomfort with the disturbing implication that we too are vulnerable to being victimized by our destructive practices. (read on)

First spotted via Who Killed Bambi.

The dog’s name was Nipper:

In 1898, three years after Nipper’s death, Francis painted a picture based on a photograph of Nipper listening intently to a wind-up Edison-Bell cylinder phonograph, substituting a disc gramophone for the phonograph. On February 11, 1899, Francis filed an application for copyright of his picture “Dog Looking At and Listening to a Phonograph.” Thinking the Edison-Bell Company might find it useful, he presented it to James E. Hough who, in a move that would eventually result in Edison exiting the record business altogether, promptly said, “Dogs don’t listen to phonographs.” On May 31, 1899, Francis went to the Maiden Lane offices of The Gramophone Company with the intention of borrowing a brass horn to replace the original black horn on the painting. Manager, William Barry Owen suggested that if the artist replaced the entire machine with a Berliner disc gramophone, the Company would buy the painting. A modified form of the painting became the successful trademark of Victor and HMV records, HMV music stores, and RCA. The trademark itself was registered by Berliner on July 10, 1900. (wikipedia)

More info about Nipper over at DesignBoom.

Previously on Skandalon

This cartoon is an updated look at my original Facebook dogs, who kicked off Noise to Signal as the first cartoon under that name. And they are, of course, a reference/homage to Peter Steiner‘s iconic New Yorker cartoon. (more)

Noise to Signal is Rob Cottingham‘s take on the social web, online living and all that goes with it. N2S (as it’s known affectionately to, well, me) has appeared on such sites as the Huffington Post, PC World and TreeHugger. (more)

Read the Wikipedia entry about Steiner’s illustration for more info.