Big Brother is watching you says George Orwell, the big tech firms and recent internet privacy laws. And if you’re currently looking around the Baltic in Gateshead, so is a giant farmyard cat with glowing yellow eyes. Heather Phillipson, who will be putting a dollop of cream on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth in London come 2020, has crowded the Baltic’s Level 4 Gallery with soundscapes, video art and material installations, then bathed it in blue strobes. Augmented reality animal poo and animal sounds make the gallery goer feel as if they are trapped inside Phillipson’s dystopian vision of industrial farming, which, as a vegan, she has repeatedly returned to in her work.
