Dries Depoorter — Photo © Titus Simoens

Dries Depoorter

Dries Depoorter (1991) lives and works in Ghent. The artist combines technology and art to highlight contemporary matters, such as privacy, artificial intelligence, surveillance and social media. His diverse digital portfolio comprises innovative apps, interactive installations, websites and games.

Depoorter has already exhibited in places such as The Barbican, London; MUTEK Festival, Barcelona; Art Basel; Para Site Hong Kong; Mozilla – The Glass Room, San Francisco; WIRED and IDFA Doclab.

Back home, some of his work has been shown at, among others, Bozar, FOMU and Mundaneum (Mons). Depoorter is also a keynote speaker with passages in e.g. MoMA, TEDx Brussels, Mutek Montreal, KIKK-festival and STRP festival.

Famous pieces are Get Popular Vending Machine (2016); the app Die With Me (2018); and The Flemish Scrollers (2021) in which he uses artificial intelligence to detect which politicians are browsing on their mobile phone in the Flemish Parliament.

On display at COME CLOSER

Middelheimmuseum

Dries Depoorter, Surveillance Speaker — foto © Tom Cornille

Surveillance Speaker V3, 2018-2024

Sculpture, new work

A surveillance camera mounted on a high pole focuses on you. Using artificial intelligence, it gives spoken feedback on what it observes. The loudspeakers boom: ‘I see …’. Then let the games begin! Perhaps you'll change your behavior based on what the camera sees and says? You shift from being a passive subject to becoming an active player. In another variant, it is sometimes not the camera with AI but the artist himself who gives a live description of what is happening.

Continuous viewing
Please do not touch