When Does Public Art Stop Serving the Public—And Start Serving Surveillance?

When Does Public Art Stop Serving the Public—And Start Serving Surveillance?
By The NYC Department of Art

In May 2025, Times Square Arts featured British sculptor Thomas J Price as part of its celebrated Midnight Momentseries—the world’s largest and longest-running digital art exhibition. For sixty silent seconds each night, Price’s digitally rendered faces, drawn from his Man Series sculptures, occupied nearly 100 LED screens across Times Square.

The result? A mesmerizing and surreal takeover—staring down the public from every direction.

But while the installation captured attention from tourists, locals, and press alike, it also raised a question we can’t afford to ignore:

What happens when public art starts collecting more than admiration—when it starts collecting data?

Midnight Moment, Sensor City

Times Square is no ordinary stage. It’s wired for extraction.

Thanks to unique zoning laws and advertising regulations, digital billboards in the district can incorporate advanced tracking technologies. These include:

• Geofencing

• Bluetooth and Wi-Fi tracking

• Camera-based gaze detection

• Cross-app behavioral profiling

In other words: while you stare at the art, the art—and the infrastructure around it—might be staring back.

Facebook, Instagram, and Billboard Surveillance

Consider Facebook’s Times Square billboard campaign—a widely publicized moment where physical presence near the billboard reportedly triggered behavioral tracking through open apps like Instagram. Just by standing nearby with the app open, users unknowingly contributed to a geofenced dataset.

This type of location-based data harvesting blurs the line between engagement and exploitation—especially when cloaked in cultural programming.

Are Artists in on It?

To be clear: we’re not suggesting Thomas J Price—or any artist—is complicit in surveillance. But we are saying this:

When your work is exhibited in a sensor-rich arena like Times Square, it becomes part of a larger system—one that may prioritize behavioral data over artistic meaning.

And in some cases, artists (or their commercial partners) may unintentionally benefit from this data economy.

A New Framework for True Public Art

At the NYC Department of Art, we call for a redefinition of public art in the era of surveillance capitalism:

• Transparency – Disclose what surveillance or tracking technologies are used during any installation

• Consent – Inform the public when their behavior or presence is being monitored

• Equitable Benefit – If public presence generates data value, there must be a return to the community

The Public is Not Passive

Thomas J Price’s practice—centered on representing Black identity and presence in sculpture—demands real attention. But in a surveillance zone like Times Square, even radical work risks being absorbed into a commercial feedback loop.

Public art must not become a façade for surveillance. It should elevate, not extract. Invite reflection, not record reaction.

Because true public art doesn’t monetize the public—it honors it.

AI-generated interpretation of Thomas J Price’s sculpted faces from his “Midnight Moment” video installation—where public gaze meets digital reflection in Times Square’s most surveilled stage.

Still from Thomas J Price’s “Midnight Moment” installation in Times Square, May 2025—digitally rendered faces from his Man Series projected across nearly 100 billboards in a silent, collective gaze.