When we study issues related to surveillance in public spaces from a general rather than a personal angle (as we have seen in the previous chapter), it becomes imperative to analyse the Panopticon model as the origin of our contemporary and, as I argue, cinematic state-surveillance apparatus. As I have examined in the previous chapter, the Affected Personal Cam stands apart from other surveillance cameras by virtue of its inherent levels of affect that further enhance its potential as cinematic medium. To analyse the qualities that set this camera apart from more ordinary video cameras that are ostensibly intended for security, it is important for one to study the ways in which the classical Panopticon model has inspired and evolved into a post-panoptic apparatus. The latter category includes networked digital audiovisual devices that produce archival materials with filmic qualities.

The webcam as a post-panoptic cinematic apparatus functions in continuity with several previous surveillance techniques. This research proposes that the transition from panoptic to post-panoptic marks a shift towards an increasingly cinematic character of surveillance that stages or orchestrates street routines. In the following chapter, I will specifically focus on this evolution from the classical cinematographic apparatus of conventional cinema to the contemporary cinematic apparatus of the webcams. Perhaps by accident, the principle of panopticism as introduced by Michel Foucault arises around the same time that Jean-Luc Godard and his peers initiated the Nouvelle Vague through the deconstruction of the ideological machine of traditional cinema and its apparatus.