Now the man who once filled his apartment with cameras is convinced he is being constantly watched.
In their project Stenop.es they turn entire apartments into camera obscuras.
The main exhibition hall, once brimming with futuristic cars, sybaritic yachts, indoor gardens, model apartments, antiques, cameras and even three-ring circuses, is dark and filled with a cartilaginous network of scaffolding.
"Go through every room of the apartment with a camera and that day's newspaper," he said, and take pictures.
An apartment building surveillance camera captured the weekend beating of a man who later died in a local hospital, the police said.
Their use of the apartment, which the camera navigates with feline grace, helps to give "Old Cats" its impressive emotional texture, the sense that a hectic slice of life is unfolding before your eyes.
Not a bad pay packet for three months' hard work transforming an ugly 1970s block of flats into a designer apartment, albeit with camera crews following your every move.
In "Flight of the Red Balloon" Mr. Hou plays with light and space on the small canvas that is Simon and Suzanne's apartment, moving the camera around as gracefully as if it were a brush (or a balloon).
His centrepiece is a reconstruction of Yates's apartment with fixed camera positions, with a real-life tiger in situ, to represent the deeply strange and surrealist spectacle of Ming the tiger pacing about the rooms, making a melancholy groaning sound.
The episode ends with police investigating Gale's apartment with the camera focusing on his lab notes which have yet to be discovered.
