Using surveillance cameras and the popular video game The Sims 2™, Katherine Isbister, associate professor of language, literature, and communication at Rensselaer, will create a public art installation called SimVeillance: San Jose as part of The ZeroOne San Jose Festival, taking place Aug. 7-13.

Surveillance cameras focused on the Fairmont Plaza in downtown San Jose will capture images of passersby. Isbister will then use The Sims 2 — a game that allows users to create simulated worlds and fill them with cyber-citizens — to create a virtual version of the plaza, and fill it with avatars (human representations in a shared virtual world) of the people passing through the plaza who’ve been caught on camera. The virtual population will grow throughout the duration of the exhibition.