so i took it home.
16.4.08
15.4.08
SURVEIL THIS \m/
let's talk a little about art historical theory. shall we? yes we shall. currently i'm taking a pretty stellar course on media, surveillance and spectacle as it relates to art. we just finished a massive packet of readings from foucault, jonathan crary, deleuze, lyon, and boyne among others (jameson, you know who you are AND GOOD OL' GUY DEBORD YOU SILLY SAP [actually he's pretty cool]) as well as a lil bit about jeremy bentham: the man behind the gd panopticon.
can i haz spectacle?
lolcats are an example of detournement. in a way. ok, debord's like "Hey. i'm here with my homies from situationist int'l. let's challenge passivity as it relates to the spectacle." ok, they say. ok others say. Marxist. the idea behind detournement is taking something that exists already and then detourning it, aka making it tell you something that it hadn't done before. look on youtube. they have some stuff. especially there's one that takes the mad hatter's teaparty from disney's alice in wonderland and then they dub over the voices to put an entirely new twist on it. lots of detourners like to make things tell other people/enlighten them dudes about the spectacle, the overarching structure that some theorists posit covers over society. more on that later. back to lolcats. you've got a picture of a cat. it is doing something. insert large text. this text changes what the cat is originally doing in the picture. thus you have detourned the picture of the lil bitty kitty. how clever you must think you are. that's a really watered-down version. but i can't resist making theoretical comments about memes.
spectacle/ULAR
what is this spectacle business neway? you mean like a big show? or one of those performance art pieces that we hate but love because they often involve naked people? kind of. the spectacle in a nutshell is the system, the man, the overarching society as a whole. everything we do is part of it. if you are rebelling against it, well that's part of it too. the spectacle is the center force that is cellularizing us into our different lifepaths/jobs/whatever. the impetus. as a culture, what we produce, that's spectacle. well, kind of, some argue that it is no longer relevant. of course, that's all part of the spectacle, the avant-garde, the freethinkers, that kind of thing, just another piece to the puzzle. kind of like a zeitgeist? it's impossible to tell because, in the thoughts of our long-dead friend Plato: you can't critique a culture from within. well then we are just out of luck. but people try anyway. because that's more fun that giving up.
crary's like: debord says the spectacle started in 1927. (debord's a very specific guy. he wrote a whole thing on the spectacle all in bullet points. yeehaw. so there are kind of two spectacles ya? there's the concentrated spectacle (i.e. police states) and then there's the diffused spectacle (i.e. the commodity-driven USofA *cryingeagle*). but now aren't they kind of intertwining? or are they going away into a more code/information flow system instead of spectacle/appearance stuff? HMMMMM BERRY INTERESTING.
cookies and american idol
so then we've got the panopticon. jeremy bentham, back in the 18thc. devised of this structure that's basically a cylindrical building with a tower in the middle. all around the edges are cells or rooms that are lit from the outside. this makes it so that people in the middle tower can see what's going on in the cells but the people in the cells can't see what's going on in the tower. so someone could always be watching but no one in the cells knows. the idea is that then people start to police themselves. it was supposed to be a prison. but bentham said it could work for schools, hospitals, etc. OH HO SAYS FOUCAULT LIKE 200 YEARS LATER LOOK AT THIS WE CAN APPLY IT TO SOCIETY. foucault writes: a lot. but he's talking about surveillance. how people assume they are being watched by the MAN or the GOV't so they kind of change their behavior? sort of. i guess. i'm thinking out loud here. people get all disciplined. disciplinary society. that's what foucault is all about in "Discipline and Punish" (a book!). let's talk a little about later views on this. now we got post-panopticism. boyne talks about that and decides we should abandon the concept of the panopticon for a few arguments. i'm only going to talk about two. the first is displacement by mechanisms of seduction. and what in the world is this you ask? think about cookies. on the internet. not choco, but like the ones in your browser. they figure out what sites you go to and where you ride the internet. then, when you go back to the places where those cookies came from they cater to what you want via what they have observed. people like this/people hate this. on one hand our society is very suspicious. some say they don't like to be watched at all times and that it makes them antsy. on the other hand, a lot of people are lazy. a culture of laziness. we like to be waited upon by the cookies and other little automata that watch us in order to serve us. oh the internet knows where i live and told me about a sweet pizza place. now i don't have to go search for a dining establishment of note. you get the idea. we are displacing the notion of surveillance through seductive means of championing subconscious laziness. OK! and now for the other thing: supplementation of the panoptical plan (the few looking at the many) with the SYNOPTICON. this translates as the many looking at the few. there is some of this in society. think of politicians or the cult of celebrity. the masses watch those individuals and have somewhat of an impact. (i.e. if a movie star falls from the public favor or a politician does something stupid and we all are like: yo, stop knocking on bathroom stalls for sexual favors). the synopticon can be seen in a weird way in shows like American Idol. there the masses have a direct say in how the individual fairs. via voting. you can see this in bad horror movies like that one where the website killed people by how many people are surfing to it. ("HE'S HACKED INTO MY WIRELESS NETWORK THAT MEANS HE CAN SEE EVERY KEYSTROKE!!!!"). in the end, though it's interesting to see that the synoptic and panoptic views often don't correspond. the few are watching the many but the many are rarely watching the few who are watching the many. BOOM.
and that is what i have to say about that.
and now a picture of a dog in a hat.
can i haz spectacle?
lolcats are an example of detournement. in a way. ok, debord's like "Hey. i'm here with my homies from situationist int'l. let's challenge passivity as it relates to the spectacle." ok, they say. ok others say. Marxist. the idea behind detournement is taking something that exists already and then detourning it, aka making it tell you something that it hadn't done before. look on youtube. they have some stuff. especially there's one that takes the mad hatter's teaparty from disney's alice in wonderland and then they dub over the voices to put an entirely new twist on it. lots of detourners like to make things tell other people/enlighten them dudes about the spectacle, the overarching structure that some theorists posit covers over society. more on that later. back to lolcats. you've got a picture of a cat. it is doing something. insert large text. this text changes what the cat is originally doing in the picture. thus you have detourned the picture of the lil bitty kitty. how clever you must think you are. that's a really watered-down version. but i can't resist making theoretical comments about memes.
spectacle/ULAR
what is this spectacle business neway? you mean like a big show? or one of those performance art pieces that we hate but love because they often involve naked people? kind of. the spectacle in a nutshell is the system, the man, the overarching society as a whole. everything we do is part of it. if you are rebelling against it, well that's part of it too. the spectacle is the center force that is cellularizing us into our different lifepaths/jobs/whatever. the impetus. as a culture, what we produce, that's spectacle. well, kind of, some argue that it is no longer relevant. of course, that's all part of the spectacle, the avant-garde, the freethinkers, that kind of thing, just another piece to the puzzle. kind of like a zeitgeist? it's impossible to tell because, in the thoughts of our long-dead friend Plato: you can't critique a culture from within. well then we are just out of luck. but people try anyway. because that's more fun that giving up.
crary's like: debord says the spectacle started in 1927. (debord's a very specific guy. he wrote a whole thing on the spectacle all in bullet points. yeehaw. so there are kind of two spectacles ya? there's the concentrated spectacle (i.e. police states) and then there's the diffused spectacle (i.e. the commodity-driven USofA *cryingeagle*). but now aren't they kind of intertwining? or are they going away into a more code/information flow system instead of spectacle/appearance stuff? HMMMMM BERRY INTERESTING.
cookies and american idol
so then we've got the panopticon. jeremy bentham, back in the 18thc. devised of this structure that's basically a cylindrical building with a tower in the middle. all around the edges are cells or rooms that are lit from the outside. this makes it so that people in the middle tower can see what's going on in the cells but the people in the cells can't see what's going on in the tower. so someone could always be watching but no one in the cells knows. the idea is that then people start to police themselves. it was supposed to be a prison. but bentham said it could work for schools, hospitals, etc. OH HO SAYS FOUCAULT LIKE 200 YEARS LATER LOOK AT THIS WE CAN APPLY IT TO SOCIETY. foucault writes: a lot. but he's talking about surveillance. how people assume they are being watched by the MAN or the GOV't so they kind of change their behavior? sort of. i guess. i'm thinking out loud here. people get all disciplined. disciplinary society. that's what foucault is all about in "Discipline and Punish" (a book!). let's talk a little about later views on this. now we got post-panopticism. boyne talks about that and decides we should abandon the concept of the panopticon for a few arguments. i'm only going to talk about two. the first is displacement by mechanisms of seduction. and what in the world is this you ask? think about cookies. on the internet. not choco, but like the ones in your browser. they figure out what sites you go to and where you ride the internet. then, when you go back to the places where those cookies came from they cater to what you want via what they have observed. people like this/people hate this. on one hand our society is very suspicious. some say they don't like to be watched at all times and that it makes them antsy. on the other hand, a lot of people are lazy. a culture of laziness. we like to be waited upon by the cookies and other little automata that watch us in order to serve us. oh the internet knows where i live and told me about a sweet pizza place. now i don't have to go search for a dining establishment of note. you get the idea. we are displacing the notion of surveillance through seductive means of championing subconscious laziness. OK! and now for the other thing: supplementation of the panoptical plan (the few looking at the many) with the SYNOPTICON. this translates as the many looking at the few. there is some of this in society. think of politicians or the cult of celebrity. the masses watch those individuals and have somewhat of an impact. (i.e. if a movie star falls from the public favor or a politician does something stupid and we all are like: yo, stop knocking on bathroom stalls for sexual favors). the synopticon can be seen in a weird way in shows like American Idol. there the masses have a direct say in how the individual fairs. via voting. you can see this in bad horror movies like that one where the website killed people by how many people are surfing to it. ("HE'S HACKED INTO MY WIRELESS NETWORK THAT MEANS HE CAN SEE EVERY KEYSTROKE!!!!"). in the end, though it's interesting to see that the synoptic and panoptic views often don't correspond. the few are watching the many but the many are rarely watching the few who are watching the many. BOOM.
and that is what i have to say about that.
and now a picture of a dog in a hat.
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