It’s almost a year ago that I left the British Foreign Service to pursue studies in Fine Art. At the time I had no idea that several months later I would find myself sitting on a deck-chair outside the Headquarters of News International in London staring at the grubby building through plastic binoculars...

A security guard appears after exactly seven minutes of looking. Fellow artist, Janice Wilkins and I giggle as he approaches us in the drizzle of a British Summer. “We are looking,” I say. I point to a hastily scrawled sketch of a railing. “Oh! You are artists!” This appears to be a satisfying reason for our bizarre behaviour. We nod, still grinning and hand him a bright yellow postcard (the same as our T-Shirt’s) explaining our Overt Surveillance mission. He disappears back to his office, picking his way through puddles.

Over the past few months Janice and I have had fun, going about the place, watching people. We have looked at media organisations, the British Government, even found a lovely café opposite Scotland Yard to while away some hours of observation. It has made people smile to see two middle-aged women apparently being silly.

But this has a serious point. In London alone we are captured on film every 30 seconds. The authorities do it, supermarkets and high street shops do it. The railway and underground network does it too. Some newspapers even listen to people by intercepting voicemail. In the recent riots, we saw police sit back and watch as looters wrecked livelihoods. Outnumbered, the police had another tactic – they were photographing and filming the criminals, and many of the hundreds of arrests have been as a result of people identifying culprits from footage shown on the internet, on the television and on huge screens in shopping malls. And it’s not the first time our government has asked for public help – it has encouraged us to help them by “being on the look out” for benefits cheats, tax-evaders and terrorists. In a Big Brother, Orwellian sense, we could be justified in fearing THEM watching US. But in many ways we are helping.

Something else is happening. And again, it is to do with watching. The people are watching back – and they have eyes with which to look, cameras on their mobile phones and a phenomenal global network to share their findings, in the form of the internet. The public is immensely successful in Overt Surveillance. They have filmed police abusing people on our mobile phones (resulting in prosecutions); captured bullets entering peaceful protestors (making new-media-martyrs); and brought attention to hushed legal deals, cheating husbands and political inconsistencies on Twitter. Often the public doesn’t set out on secret mission to do this, but because they are all inadvertent Overt Surveillance Operatives. Accidental gentle witnesses, as Janice put it when we were conversing with police officers (who were watching and photographing a demonstration by the English Defence League), “we are more Little Sister than Big Brother.”

You might ask, “Where is the art” in Overt Surveillance? Artists are often told to “do more looking” – only a few months ago I was told by a tutor to “slow down, look about me, take things in more”. John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” should be in the back pocket of any diligent art-student. And it is the transformation of seeing, hearing, thinking, feeling into an art form that is the crux of most artistic practices.

It began as a bit of a laugh. Janice and I like dressing up, we liked the ethos behind watching the watcher – but I have to say after several hours of watching, and sketching and taking notes, we have both reached another level. You get in a zone, when you really look, and all sorts of things begin to appear to you – minute revelations, that you might have missed with a mere glance. We both believe there is value in this.

Regular readers will know of my interest in the writings of French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, and his concern with media representation of events (like The Gulf War). But Baudrillard went way beyond this in exploring notions of reality. The reality that we have discovered through Overt Surveillance is neutrality. The more you look, the more objects, shapes and forms stop competing, and in any field of vision a snail crawling up a wall becomes as relevant and interesting, as a celebrity shade of lipstick or a crisp packet in the gutter.

And here is where artists really matter in society. Not simply in communicating the obvious, but in noticing and sharing the intricacies in life; the untold stories, their own ugly truths or beautiful revelations. We do a better job than the media – because our agenda is not bent on telling sensational stories that will sell – it is about sharing our own, sometimes difficult and challenging view of the world.

Janice and I want to share Overt Surveillance with others. We want to encourage The Art of Watching – and enable people from all walks of life to have fun with us (and where bright yellow t-shirts), but also to slow down, look and discover the joy in neutrality – and convey this is verbal, written or drawn form. Of course we will need money to do it – and not money from a single agenda-driven organisation, but in the spirit of participation – from individuals and organisations who think this is a good idea. You can find out more by visiting the We Did This site.

One journalist friend recently queried how on earth someone like me had been allowed in the Foreign Office. But perhaps what I am doing now, isn’t so far removed from the nature of diplomacy – many of my former colleagues spent time watching, thinking and reporting back – neutrality in this activity is crucial. As with my writing, my painting and my “performance art”, diplomacy too is essentially about communicating, primarily for ambitions of peace and mutual cooperation. So, things are not always so different when you look at them for long enough.

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.