My session at the ENTER_ conference glories in the name 'control technology', and it's about the ways in which artists make use of the many surveillance tools that surround and record us.
These range from films like Faceless, which use CCTV camera footage,
to more radical projects like Julia Scher's Predictive Engineering http://www.sfmoma.org/exhibitions/exhib_detail/98_exhib_julia_scher_pe2.html
and (re)collector, a new project from UK artist James Coupe,
http://www.washington.edu/dxarts/profile_research.php?who=coupe
all of which highlight the degree to which we are constantly monitored.
One of the reasons for discussing this now is that the development of surveillance systems seems to be accelerating, and the technology is getting more sophisticated.
We're used to reports that the UK is the most-watched country in the world, but we may well look back on the days of simple closed-circuit television with some nostalgia.
The collected images, data, sounds and videos from all of this monitoring provide raw material for many artists to work with.
Most claim that they are doing so to demonstrate the evils of surveillance, and that their goal is to mobilise opposition to the erosion of privacy and unobserved space, but I'm not sure this is an entirely consistent position.
It seems to be rather too much like the chancellor, who seeks to deter smoking by taxing tobacco but relies on the revenue generated to support other spending programmes.
There is a danger that the art, like other aspects of control technology, will only serve to dull our senses and dampen our indignation, leading us to feel that the unobserved life is not really worth fighting for.
But we cannot afford to go gently into the infrared light of the cameras that watch our streets, and we cannot afford to relax our vigilance when it comes to online surveillance.
I hope that the digital artists who will be speaking next week will recognise that their work raises these serious issues, and perhaps go some way to overcoming my feeling that turning surveillance into art will actually make it easier for those who want to chip away at what little privacy remains.
Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.
Tuesday, 17 April 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6564115.stm
