Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Ackowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Video Surveillance versus the Affected Personal Cam
- 2 Post-Panopticism and the Attention Economy
- 3 From Cinematographic to Cinematic Apparatus
- 4 Cinematic Chronotopes : The Temporality of the Cinematic Mode of Existence of the Webcams
- 5 Webcams and the Archive
- 6 Appropriating the Cinematic Apparatus
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- List of Images
- Index of Authors
- Index of Makers
- Index of Subjects / Artworks
- Film Culture in Transition
2 - Post-Panopticism and the Attention Economy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 December 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Ackowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Video Surveillance versus the Affected Personal Cam
- 2 Post-Panopticism and the Attention Economy
- 3 From Cinematographic to Cinematic Apparatus
- 4 Cinematic Chronotopes : The Temporality of the Cinematic Mode of Existence of the Webcams
- 5 Webcams and the Archive
- 6 Appropriating the Cinematic Apparatus
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- List of Images
- Index of Authors
- Index of Makers
- Index of Subjects / Artworks
- Film Culture in Transition
Summary
Abstract
There are several similarities between the Panopticon and webcams. With its incorporation of panoptic principles, the city pervaded by webcams is transformed into a three-dimensional film set to produce online audiovisual content. The increasing presence of video surveillance reinforces self-regulation as a preemptive measure and ensures maximum productivity. As a consequence, there is an increase in camera awareness that affects the construction of identities entailed in processes of subjectification. Publicly accessible cameras therefore represent a suitable dispositif of data collection and production that provides material for social experimentation. In the cinematic mode of existence, cities become laboratories for experiments in social environments, affecting public life in the present and shaping the future image of these cities.
Keywords: cities, panopticon, self-regulation, productivity
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.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Webcam as an Emerging Cinematic Medium , pp. 57 - 90Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2018