This time last year I was placed on a GPS ankle tracker for 60 days basically the entirety of the winter. The 3M made GPS tracker was monitored by a satellite and a private security company in Florida that watched over my location at all times. If the ankle monitor started vibrating and flashing red it meant the satellite cannot find the ankle monitor and you must go outside away from any trees to realign the ankle monitor to its satellite. All times of day and night. After five minutes the security company calls your phone and if you dont answer they consider you to be absconding and they come for you and the bracelet. This would happen often, especially at night while I was sleeping. The phone call part.
If the ankle monitor falls off or gets cut off your ankle they take you directly to prison once they find you and the bracelet. Thankfully I didn't have any of those issues other than waking up in the middle of the night several times a week. We put a nest camera in the hallway to have proof I was in my house during curfew hours.
While driving to and from my studio I noticed all the satellite dishes covering the Philadelphia skyline and rowhomes. One building near my Mom's house had so many satellite dishes covering it that I thought it looked like a bouquet of flowers. I never paid attention to how many satellite dishes were in the city until I was locked to a satellite. Looked beautiful actually.
The satellites are originally painted here to express confinement but love how they actually represent communication, escape, entertainment, connection, freedom and hope with the ambiguous faces within the satellites looking upwards to the skies in wonder of what's going on.
- Timothy Curtis
