Surface Tension is an interactive installation where an image of a giant human eye follows the observer with orwellian precision. This work was inspired by a reading of Georges Bataille’s text The Solar Anus during the first Gulf War –the first wide-spread deployment of camera-guided “intelligent bombs”. Present-day computerised surveillance techniques employed by the Department of Homeland Security in the United States through the Patriot Act, provide a new and distressing backdrop for this piece. The installation was originally developed in 1992 at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid as a stage module for a theatre work by the Transition State Theory troupe. Since then, Surface Tension has been presented as an art installation, typically on a plasma screen. (Photos by Antimodular Research)