definition of Panopticism
(Panoptic) including everything visible in one view a panoptic aerial view
Read Panopticism charter 5 by Michel Foucault (Discipline and Punish 1977) this is about the criminal justice system and the power it has and was influential in post-structuralist and postmodern art theory which has implications for the visual culture.
i.e. from the on line article by Shannon O'Neil, (What does the panoptic schema have to do with art)?
There are one or two applications for this concept in the information we receive in this digital age (issues of individual rights in society to display and or manipulation of images to how museums etc.are set up. We now have reality T.V. web cams, digital cameras, moving adverts, everywhere you go, train stations, garages. Traffic surveillance, being watched in shops and even waking through the streets are all threats to our privacy even the telephone is not except as you get calls trying to sell business to you. Since the advent of films, T.V. photography and other media the voyeur to the third party within the realms of the sear and the seen. (Leigh O Neil s).
For Foucault, panopticism becomes a metaphor, according to him modern societies are structured around relationships between power and knowledge. Power is structured to produce people who will actively participant in self-regulatory behaviour. The systems that are in place encourage us to self-regulate and to do so without any threats of punishment which in turn makes us behave and conform, it is the structure of surveillance itself which makes us conform whether it is active or not.
Video artists and the panopticism
Lindsey Seers To use oneself as the subject could be seen as a representation of the power dynamic central to modern society I wonder if this could be aligned with Freud's notion of the super-ego or perhaps the artist in becoming the subject of his or her own artwork has a much greater leaning towards Lucan's concept of the mirror phase.
Task 2 6 images 2 of which are a result of looking, 2 of observing and 2 of surveillance
Surveillance Art
1) Camille Utterback - created an installation in 2007 called 'Abundance' using the domed city hall of San Jose, California as her interactive canvas. These includes a large surveillance camera focused on pedestrians and an abstract art animation projected onto the city hall building - All movements within the field of the camera are translated onto the abstract shapes that appear in the projection as the pedestrians etc. moves the corresponding shape moves with other shapes in the projection. Utterback states that these movements become part of a collective visual record and transform the building into a playful and dynamic canvas.
2) Andy Warhol's movie 'Outer and Inner Space' - introduced the performance art possibilities of high tech surveillance to the modern world in this case the actress Edie Sedgwick- On the left Sedgwick video image in full profile gazes to the right looking up as if she were talking to someone standing above her. On the right we have Sedgwick sitting in a three quarter profile facing left taking to someone sitting off screen to the left of Warhol's movie camera which creates the illusion that we are watching Sedgwick in conversation with herself.
Looking
1) Dorothea Lange Migrant Mother (or Madonna of the Depression) Here Lange photographed a tired anxious but stalwart mother with three of her children in a migrant working camp. We see the anguish in the her eyes of trying to support her children and keep them together as a family.
2) James Stewart -Rear Window Alfred Hitchcock film 1954 a film about looking. Scopohilia being the theme. The most unusual and intimate journey into human emotions. Seeing is not always believing. It is based on a wheelchair bound photographer who spies on his neighbours from his apartment window and is convinced one of them has committed a murder. Though his rear window and with his powerful camera he (James Stewart) watched the great city tell on itself, expose its cheating ways- and murder!
Observation
1) E Muybridge Horse Photographs
This was one of the earliest technological responses to the problem of static, artistic representation. He used high speed stop motion photography to capture a horses motion. Which proved that the horse has all four feet in the air during some parts of its stride. These shots settled an old argument and start a new medium and industry.
2) Helen Levitt Her photographs were not intended to tell a story or document it, she worked in poor neighbourhoods because there were people there and a street life that was rich sociable and visually interesting the one I have chosen shows urban children playing and posing for the camera in the streets you can feel the raw lifestyle and the self-embodied nature of the people who may be poor but seem to be happy with their lot.
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