Walking through Times Square in 2012 I came across a small crowd of people looking up towards the sky. Some were staring, some gesturing, and most were smiling. Their faces were open and guileless, and the light falling on them from above softly detailed every facial feature. They were enraptured.
   The focus of their attention was a video billboard. This billboard was not selling anything, instead what it was presenting was a live view of the very crowd looking up at it. Every 15 minutes of so, amidst innocuous videos of mountain streams and flowers blooming in slow motion another segment of “crowd sourced” imagery would appear. People would stop in their tracks and join the group that had been patiently waiting since the last segment ended and become absorbed in the task of locating their face among the hundred or so people similarly preoccupied. Once they managed to locate themselves cellphones were dug out and a document of the event would be produced, a “selfie” to commemorate their participation in a surveillance project.
   When I say surveillance I don’t mean to suggest any nefarious intent on the part of the billboard operators, I only use the term because that is plainly what it is. The procedure ran as follows: People look up at themselves displayed on the billboard and then capture the moment with their cellphones, or not, then a sort of game appears in which a man and a woman contend for the affections of the crowd. The crowd is encouraged to vote for whom they prefer via text message. The loser of the contest is then seen off to one side, suspended over a tank of water. A beach ball is then introduced superimposed over the image of the crowd and begin to bounce around. Through the miracle of modern technology the people in the crowd are able to direct the movement of the bouncing ball by raising their arms as the ball approaches their image on the screen. In this manner the ball can be directed to a target on the screen. When the ball hits the target the loser of the previously mentioned vote is dropped into a tank of water. The billboard then tells everyone to smile and still image of the crowd is captured and posted to a web site affiliated with the billboard. The image is available for download as a souvenir of the experience.