This research project, [Re]Viewing Big Brother and [Per]Forming the Real, set about a critical examination of watching and being watched; specifically, ‘everyday’ people in the traditionally private space of the home mediated by surveillance technologies. The research methodology was practice-based, and fundamentally undertaken creatively,
resulting in an exhibition of artwork and this written exegesis supporting it. Looking at the presence of Reality TV in the home, the exhibition juxtaposed the everyday with the spectacle, while the exegesis questioned the theoretical, metaphorical and methodological intricacies of creating a [hyper]reality and of [per]forming the real. Conclusions arising from the theoretical and creative research, and demonstrated in the exhibition, included how the visibility of private spaces transgressed the real to the hyperreal, the identification of such hyperreal spaces, the importance of the media to validate existence and the overall performance of that existence.