Filed under: Presentation/Essay
HE GET OUT CLAUSE – ‘PAPER’
Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (came into force in Jan 2005 in England, Northern Ireland and Wales)
- ICO: UK’s independent public body set up to promote access to official information and protect personal information. The Ministry of Justice is the sponsoring department within the Government
1. ‘SUPERPANOPTICON’
Surveillance Report NYC 02.03.03
“What seems to motivate them is the desire to control.”
“Today we are told that privacy and security are mutually exclusive. If you want your security you have to give up your privacy.” …while during the 18th c it was argued that “…you are not secure unless you have your privacy.”
“You cannot give up some of your privacy. It is not a commodity that can be quantified and sold off bit by bit. You either have it or you don’t.”
“You have your privacy where ever you take your person.”
“In capitalism there is no lingering.”
2. ‘DIVIDUALS’
from the Peter Weibel reading:
- post-modern image theory is more about observing the image than the actual world
- visibility used to be the prerequisite for security
- “When the phantom becomes reality, reality becomes a phantom.”
Surveillance Camera Players (SCP)
- informal group, New York City based
- first performance in 1996
- using its own maps for guidance, the group has given free walking tours of heavily surveilled neighborhoods in New York City. These tours have concentrated on what the things look like, how they work, and how they will work if they are improved (“smart cameras”)
- works have been displayed in museums etc.
- online encyclopedia
DENIS BEAUBOIS – ‘AMNESIA’ (1996/97)
3. ‘AUTOMATED SOCIO-TECHNICAL ENVIRONMENTS’ (ASTEs)
- most apparent in current ‘information age capitalism’
- spaces in which power is exerted by creating ‘non-negotiable contexts of interaction’
- Technological mediation of suspicion
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(medienkunstnetz.de offers detailled information on media art)
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THOUGHTS/ QUESTIONS:
Who benefits from surveillance?
As was mentioned during yesterday’s lecture the mere process of surveillance does not guarantee the decline of crime or an increase of security. What it generates is footage, huge amounts of data that need to be interpreted. In most cases crime cannot be prevented. How come technological surveillance systems seem to be widely accepted as a justified means of facilitating security?
The ways in which (digital) surveillance causes some ‘subjects’ to be excluded seems obvious. How can (digital) surveillance function as a means of inclusion? (leaving aside cases in which people are given preferential treatment e.g. due to them having more social, financial or health capital at their disposal)
How does the noticeable increase of surveillance systems in urban spaces impact on individuals’ notions of community? Does it have an affect on a community’s collective set of values or standards?
