WATERLOO
We started with Waterloo. According to TfL, “During the three-hour morning peak, London's busiest Tube station is Waterloo, with 57,000 people entering. The busiest station in terms of passengers each year is also Waterloo with 82 million.”[1] We arrived at 10:00am and navigated our way into the Underground through swarms of people. The first set of escalators one encounters after tapping in leads to a spacious hallway monitored by at least four CCTV cameras. As a space that people traverse both upon entering and exiting this part of the station, we decided this was an apt place to begin “Orange You Glad to See Me?” Facing the escalators and directing our attention and actions to a CCTV camera, we held up the first round of our signs: “KNOCK KNOCK,” and “AW COME ON (WHO’S THERE?)”.
In the 10 minutes that passed as we stood with these signs in this spot, a number of travellers turned to look at what we were doing, took photos, read our signs aloud, and turned their gazes to the CCTV cameras themselves. Yet we did not receive any recognition over the tannoy from anyone monitoring the cameras. We decided to relocate to the platforms. Yet even there, the same results ensued.
After a number of attempts to enter into a dialogue with the station managers through a variety of cameras, we made our way back to the station entrance to talk to them in person and inquire about whether they had seen us and why they hadn’t responded. We approached the control room and pressed the door’s buzzer. It was quickly answered by a station attendant. We introduced ourselves and began to explain our project, holding up our signs as a visual reference. The station attendant laughed as we went through the joke and said he hadn’t seen us through the cameras at all. He called over the station manager, who had a similar reaction to our project but also said he hadn’t seen us on the monitors. He explained that because it is such a large station, Waterloo is fitted with 500 CCTV cameras. The manager monitors all of them on a limited number of screens in that one control room. This means that not all camera footage is seen all the time, but rather that the images rotate and appear for mere seconds each.
While the station manager thought our project was funny and said he would have liked to help by responding to our joke over the tannoy, he explained that he could lose his job if he did. A few years ago, he explained, TfL regulations were much more lax; maybe then he could have done it. But now? Not a chance. One of the employees who made announcements on the platforms decided to put on a series of silly voices one day and was fired for it. He recommended that we either try our project at much smaller stations that are outside of central London or get permission from the TfL press office. Otherwise, as much as the station employees themselves would have found it humorous or wanted to help us, it just wasn’t going to happen.
This initial experience and the information it revealed impelled us to reconsider our plan to enact “Orange You Glad to See Me?” at the four busiest stations in the London Underground network. But we weren’t quite ready to abandon central London altogether. We decided to do our next intervention at a station that was still relatively central and busy, but only had one line running through it. We hoped this would mean fewer CCTV cameras and a larger possibility of being seen.
[1] Transport for London, “Key Facts”, <http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/modesoftransport/londonunderground/1608.aspx>
In the 10 minutes that passed as we stood with these signs in this spot, a number of travellers turned to look at what we were doing, took photos, read our signs aloud, and turned their gazes to the CCTV cameras themselves. Yet we did not receive any recognition over the tannoy from anyone monitoring the cameras. We decided to relocate to the platforms. Yet even there, the same results ensued.
After a number of attempts to enter into a dialogue with the station managers through a variety of cameras, we made our way back to the station entrance to talk to them in person and inquire about whether they had seen us and why they hadn’t responded. We approached the control room and pressed the door’s buzzer. It was quickly answered by a station attendant. We introduced ourselves and began to explain our project, holding up our signs as a visual reference. The station attendant laughed as we went through the joke and said he hadn’t seen us through the cameras at all. He called over the station manager, who had a similar reaction to our project but also said he hadn’t seen us on the monitors. He explained that because it is such a large station, Waterloo is fitted with 500 CCTV cameras. The manager monitors all of them on a limited number of screens in that one control room. This means that not all camera footage is seen all the time, but rather that the images rotate and appear for mere seconds each.
While the station manager thought our project was funny and said he would have liked to help by responding to our joke over the tannoy, he explained that he could lose his job if he did. A few years ago, he explained, TfL regulations were much more lax; maybe then he could have done it. But now? Not a chance. One of the employees who made announcements on the platforms decided to put on a series of silly voices one day and was fired for it. He recommended that we either try our project at much smaller stations that are outside of central London or get permission from the TfL press office. Otherwise, as much as the station employees themselves would have found it humorous or wanted to help us, it just wasn’t going to happen.
This initial experience and the information it revealed impelled us to reconsider our plan to enact “Orange You Glad to See Me?” at the four busiest stations in the London Underground network. But we weren’t quite ready to abandon central London altogether. We decided to do our next intervention at a station that was still relatively central and busy, but only had one line running through it. We hoped this would mean fewer CCTV cameras and a larger possibility of being seen.
[1] Transport for London, “Key Facts”, <http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/modesoftransport/londonunderground/1608.aspx>