Observing Observation: Visions of Surveillance in Media Art
Observing Observation: Visions of Surveillance in Media Art

Summary/Abstract: Surveillance can be perceived as one of the most important features of the world in the time of globalization. Many authors (Foucault, Deleuze, Virilio, Bauman, Lyon, to name just a few) have analyzed its influence on the development of the global media society. As surveillance systems are nearly everywhere and invade both public and private spaces, they are an inevitable factor in constructing a new form of post-optic society. The social structure and the representation of social processes have been changing according to the development of technologies, which allow optical, digital and biological methods of scanning and observation. The oppressive society of control and punishment has turned into the society in which we are facing the “global democratization of exhibitionism” (Virilio), and surveillance itself becomes “the spectacle of entertainment” (Weibel). Thus it is a complex and ambivalent phenomenon: it is terrifying and attractive at the same time; it controls and discloses, it restricts our freedom and offers the possibility of a new insight into our personal and public issues; it places us under control and offers us possibilities of personal expression.

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