POLYPHEMUS' EYE
Concha Jerez/José Iges
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You are invited to give your opinions about our "society of surveillance" |
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Here, the eye of the giant that terrifies Ulysses and his comrades is the one or the sociopolitical and economic system in which we are immersed. The impersonal, almost omnipresent eye is that of the electronic surveillance systems.
It is the electronic eye and/or ear that captures our hypothetical crime as it is committed, but it is human eyes and ears that need to interpret this data. Those surveillance specialists that we find everywhere behave like professional "voyeurs", registering and scrutinizing us, allowing us hardly an opportunity to resist. It seems very odd that we should be more and more fearful of exchanging glances with a stranger, yet at the same time we accept unquestioning without the fact that we are constantly subjected to the gaze of the surveillance professionals. Maybe it is because there is a new "voyeurism" just as anonymous as that of those professionals and it involves just as few risks as well. |
The "voyeur" can be arrested "in fraganti", but not the Internet navigator or the telespectator of "reality shows", because the same security status is extended to ensure their anonymity, too.
If we propose a dialogue in our work, an almost impossible horizontal orientation of the discourse, it can't be carried out without your collaboration. This is what ultimately gives meaning to our work. We invite you to contribute with your opinion about on our "surveillance society". We ask you to send us any contributions that you think might be interesting, from anecdotes and personal impressions to statistics, published data or opinions on the topic. If you wish, your contribution will remain anonymous. In any case, it will be included in the pages we will be using to promote reflections on the Internet during the next Ars Electronica Festival in Linz. The dialogue is open. Now it's your turn. |
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