IN CLASS
Discussion of surveillance exercise.
Discussion of viewing experience.
NEXT WEEK: PROJECT ONE CRITIQUE!
EXERCISE: TALKING BACK TO THE PANOPTICON
Video & Sound: 3-5 minutes.
We’ve forgotten about the surveillance cameras that tacitly capture our presences in the world. Their sheer number has rendered them ubiquitous. And as someone once put it, if something is everywhere, it’s nowhere. It’s hard to imagine walking anywhere in an urban center without being visually triangulated, at the very least. But is it that we’ve forgotten about their existence, or that we’ve adapted our behavior as we forget the motivation for this alteration? (Remember the strange story of the policewoman and the man with the golfclub.) And there’s the matter of who exactly is watching us. A human? More likely a machine, analyzing and correlating.
Your camera will document in a continuous take the presence of ten (or more) surveillance cameras as you walk through a public area of your choice, meanwhile engaging in a verbal (one-way) conversation with the panoptic network that is capturing you.
Imagine that this network of cameras is documenting your life without pause, such that you could seamlessly stitch together footage without missing a single step.
What do you want to tell these imaginary viewers, human or machine? What do you think might be going through their/its mind? What desires, what idiosyncrasies do you want this camera to capture of yourself?
The video will consist of a continuous shot as you move from camera to camera while talking back to them.
VIEWING EXPERIENCE
Take notes while viewing the following three films.
A third of the class will watch Theo Anthony’s All Light, Everywhere (2020)
Artur, Benjamin, Matthew, Noora, Xin, Samuel, Katrina
The CEO of Axon claims these cameras capture an objective viewpoint. How is this not true? (There are many answers.)
What connections can be made between the military world and the world of surveillance?
Does the presence of surveillance cameras alter behavior? How? (Does the panopticon model of self-surveillance still apply?)
What are the roots of facial profiling?
A third of the class will watch Manu Luksch’s Faceless (2007)
Sheng, Sophia, Phuong, Miguel, Sabrina, Ephraim, Maysa
What kinds of relationships can you draw between the story being weaved and the footage that is supporting it?
How many levels of time are going on? (Watch the timestamp…)
What are the implications of the “real time” described in the film?
A third of the class will watch Xu Bing’s Dragonfly Eyes (2017)
Alessandro, Yaxuan, Abbigale, Maysa, Michelle, Zoe, Junjie
What can you notice about the behavior of the individuals in this film, not knowing that they’re being surveilled?
What kinds of relationships can you draw between the story being weaved and the footage that is supporting it?
How many levels of time are going on? (Watch the timestamp…)
What ethical ramifications do you see in the way Xu appropriates the CCTV footage?
Does the glitchiness of low-resolution CCTV become normalized after a while?
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FEEDBACK THEORY & PRACTICE
Early video abstraction using feedback: pointing the camera at the screen = infinite regress!
Vito Acconci—Centers (1971)
Dan Graham—Performer Audience Mirror (1975)
Dan Graham—Time Delay Rooms
«Two rooms of equal size, connected by an opening at one side, under surveillance by two video cameras positioned at the connecting point between the two rooms. The front inside wall of each features two video screens – within the scope of the surveillance cameras. The monitor which the visitor coming out of the other room spies first shows the live behavior of the people in the respective other room. In both rooms, the second screen shows an image of the behavior of the viewers in the respectively other room – but with an eight second delay.
The time-lag of eight seconds is the outer limit of the neurophysiological short-term memory that forms an immediate part of our present perception and affects this «from within». If you see your behavior eight seconds ago presented on a video monitor «from outside» you will probably therefore not recognize the distance in time but tend to identify your current perception and current behavior with the state eight seconds earlier. Since this leads to inconsistent impressions which you then respond to, you get caught up in a feedback loop. You feel trapped in a state of observation, in which your self-observation is subject to some outside visible control. In this manner, you as the viewer experience yourself as part of a social group of observed observers [instead of, as in the traditional view of art, standing arrested in individual contemplation before an auratic object].
Dennis Oppenheim—Two-Stage Transfer Drawing (Advancing to a Future State)
Richard Serra & Nancy Holt—Boomerang (watch here)
Lynda Benglis—Now (1973)
Jenn E Norton—Les Poupées Russes (2007)
Les Poupées Russes is a two channel video installation that uses a mise en abyme structure. On opposing sides of the gallery space are video projections of a film set. One side is the image of the subject from the point of view of the camera; the other projection is the equipment used on film set. Side one is the image of the subject from the point of view of the camera; the other is an image of the camera and camera person from the point of view of the subject.
The subject is the artist sitting in a chair, waiting for “Action” to be called. Save the film equipment, there is no detail of the space. All subjects and objects inhabit a white void; there is no horizon, no foreground or background. The camera person, also played by the artist, traverses from one wall to the other (from one projection to the other) to adjust equipment. The footsteps are audible through surround sound. The simulated environment creates a virtual/psychological space within the gallery suggesting this ‘void’ inhabits the space of the viewer. Although we do not literally see the camera person entering this middle space, we understand that two realms have been bridged through mediated suggestion. There is a continuous zoom throughout the entirety of the loop: the zoom distances itself from the subject and the mirror and into the monitor’s feed. In one continuous shot, the loop is structured in a Mobius Strip, traversing from one projection to the other, timed to reflect each other as the loop overlaps. Action is never called.
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