AMCV (Mobile Counter-Surveillance Alert)

AMCV is a project of tactical media that discusses surveillance in urban space. The project consists of an application for Android phones as well as on a website. The function of the application is to alert the proximity of a surveillance camera through the use of geolocation technology, in combination with a database created collaboratively by users of the application. Also the application allows to contribute to the project’s database adding new cameras. The project website functions as a download site for the application, and also to contribute to the project database and create new users.

The project was created in Cuernavaca in 2008 in response to a series of laws created by the then newly elected right-wing government, which implemented a surveillance infrastructure in the city, with the excuse of increasing the security, but in the facts implemented a lot of measures against independent cultural spaces and expressions. Originally a paper map, distributed as a tourist Flyer, the project took its present form by the need to create a community of users that could contribute to the database.

The project was developed thanks to the Support Program for the Research and Production in Art and Media of the Multimedia Center of the National Center of Arts, and it has been presented in countries like Brazil and Canada.