LECTURE 2 - TECHNOLOGY WILL LIBERATE US

4 BOOKS TO READ

DIGITAL CURRENTS - MARGO LOVE JOY
WALTER BENJAMIN  - ART AND THE AGE OF MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION
JOHN WALKER - ART IN THE AGE OF MASS MEDIA
JOHN BURJILAR - SIMULACRA AND SIMILATION

What are the implications of technology on our design areas. Charting the path of art and technology until you

SUMMARY

• technological conditions can affect the collective consciousness
• Technology trigger important changes in cultural development
• Walter Benjamin's essay 'The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction' 1936 significantly evaluated the role of technology through photography as an instrument of change. 

We are still getting critics writing on this essage because it is still having an effect on our work today. How technology is an instrument for change. 

TASK

• draw a doodle
• faithfully copy this
• and again
• and again

The first drawing should be named ORIGINAL

The second one is the COPY

The next 2 are reproductions

By copying, reproducing - this became a work of art in its own rights, or an image representation of the original. Benjimans discussion on what is original, what is copies, and what is reproduced is essential  - the relationship between art, design and media is born from this scenario. The relationship between who is copying who, who is reproducing who. 

LInk between art, media, technology, design.

There are some designers who deliberately use this method of copying - and there are some artists who comment on the copying in society. 

MACHINE AGE; MODERNISM

WALTER BENJAMIN & MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION

• He claimed that the art guild was born from technology
• The dialectical - key to understand in the role of the original, because of technlogy and the emergence of photography, there is now such a thing as THE ORIGINAL we dont need to negotiate the idea of the original unless it was with fogers, we didnt need to work out what was the original and what was the copy. It is only since photography that we have to lable the original because of the unique quality of it. 
• E.G - movies that have been remade / copied / there is an understanding of an original

PHOTOGRAPHY

• It is at the beginning of this relationship between art and design. 
• It can come from an number of multiple points, it is not just your perception and what you see from your eye, it can be used to create multiple viewing points. 
• John Berger writes alot in response to the...
• The camera eye has a variable gaze
• Benjiman - idealism and faith and progress through technological process 

PHOTOGRAMS

HE has 2 strands of 

Frued - exstinctula side of human behaviour

Marx... - the economic that gave new political models thinking of art - changes the value of a work of art e.g. the original is worth more in general...but however IF the copy is made by a celebrity it may become more valuable. 

ONCE art enters modes of production - the value of it changes. The original may be valued and valuable but the copy in reproduction is consumed and valuable. 

labour and production through industrial revolution would naturally lead to a bigger consumption of art and design

Photography - has over turned the judgement seat of art the fact that which this course of modernmistn has impressed. It moves one thing into a new context - therefor the value of it becomes something different. 

Frued looks at the materialism of technlogy and how the subconcious can impress...how they interact with our subconcious and deepest designs

It is the material way of looking at the developments of technlogy. 

• The idea of CAPTURING MOVEMENT
• Etenian Jewes - Marey 
• 1888 - he produced a series of successful images of the moving body - krono photography, the pre curser of cinema photography
• His invensions of photography are vast - understand the dimenions of space, time and age. There are the start of exploring how we protray space and movement. 
• Understanding of space, time and a whole dialogue on the dematerialisation of art. 
• Moves into the relm of just image - once you move to just image you can replicate and transform it. With photography comes the dematerialisation of art and design. 

• Clearly using technlogy to create image - the DADA movement
• INstead with photography and techlogy - images and objects become coded, ordered and styled - this is the beginning of the devleopment of art and desinn moving together. 
• How you order, style etc, - becomes resting in the context of desing
• Now you see art images as part of fashion, advertising, graphics etc - why you see deisgn in art. 

• how technologic affects
• logical relationship between tehcnlogy and how it affects economic productino and social positions
• He examins closely the relationship between technology and enterprise
• role and tool for progress, and the tool for AILIANTION

This is what he discusses

The original is produced by one person in their own mode of production, any copy is produced by the modes of technology, therefor the division of labour is to how labour is divided up in to a technological and machine industry - the maker may not see the beginning of hteir work right through to the end. That this has an effect of separating us from creativity. There are issues that are discussed, they are not decides. He essential establishes a materialist  view of history. 

Explores links between capitalism, competition and the selling of products and also the issue of power - who has the power in the capitalist set up  - the is a distinction between the power and the labrer`. 

• Increasingly we look at information and conceptual based work - how people collected and recorded. 
• If you look at design now - there is a lot that has come from just re-ordering date/numbers
• The computer is a natural metaphor for many social developments - it is the centre of our use for design both as an image and for creating design
• It moves away form the modern aesthetic - tied up with consumerism which is tied up with new technology
• We consume the technology and in tern develop new techniques - this is a shift away from the modernist techniques - everything becomes more image and illusion based and more shiftable
• Because of this openness to industrial technique there are also openness to collaborations to art and science (the most obvious) but if you look at the cross boundaries you can see fashion and digital technology.  - paired down clothing that is produced by digital data - fashion can can become conceptual (hadn't been before then) - cross boundary work 

• Performance group that was set up - dance performance and media that has projections - video instilation - the video becomes a form and itself becomes and object. 

• Text projections on cloth and body - just see the silhouette
• Side issue - good for looking at deconstruction - the material object being broken down through the use of text, projections, image - breaking down and understanding the female body 

• Video workds - VIOPHONAGRAPH - experimentation between music, performance, video and instillation

• Comes from the development of thought, and they tigh rightic attitue
• He destroyed 13 years of art publically then wrote this 'i will not make any more boring art'

• Direct development from the use of video image moving image still image within technology - particularly during the 1980's 
• Describes - simulation is a simulated image - a copy of an experience, replication of something, it is not meant to be real
• However SILULARCRUM that the simulation also becomes real - this is a huge effect on art and design because you can apply it to so many things
• Reproducing work digital, that digital work is not a work in its own right. That it isntt just a copy, that is a work and object in its own right
• That playing with the hype real - what is real and what is an illusion
• No need to have a relationship between anything that is real - what is real and what is fantasy
• IS all the work you do on the computer not real because it is not an original work of art
• Do we every really question what and if something has every really been there - no - we just take it as real and truthful and factual because we have heard it said. This is no different form the simulacrum.  

Plays with the idea of what is real and what isn't real - refers back to the idea of PANOPTICISM - who is the subject and who is the object. The illusion of power. What is illusion and what is possible, what is real and what is fake

• Critisizes on how art uses mass media
• Also attatcks the serioussness of art and the relationship between art and design. Other people replicate art into design
• At what point does art become design - how do you promote and develop these. 

DIGTAL AGE (WE ARE NOW IN POST DIGITAL STAGE)

• what everyou do, you are at the start point where boundaries can be crossed. 

Jenny holzer - blue tilt 2004, boltic centre in 2000, 

Istallations, projections, building and services - she played with similarcra - the projections of text were dont by projections, but on galss which was then projected, the text was also moving so it looked like it was extending beyond the building. 

Allows people to view themselves at a different race - visual difference experience and collaborations with the fbi

We have the possibility of designers who can also be artists, who can also develop innovations of design and don't have to repeat methods of the past

• 
  

SEMINAR 1 - PANOPTICISM

PANOPTICON - Jeremy Benson - not to torture or hide away

He came up for the design of this building in 1791 which was designed to be used for prisons, lunatic asylums, schools etc, it was a design for an
There were lots built; Cuba, The USA

KEY POINTS -

• Constant visibility 
• Under surveillance
• Circular
• Institutional gaze
• Invisibility (of the guard)
• Isolated 
• Binary Division - Mad Vs Sane
• Productive
• Shift from PHYSICAL to MENTAL discipline 

VISIBILITYMakes the prison inmates visible and reminds them that they are constantly in view

If you cant see an individual guard but you know you are being watched - then you have to generalise your behaviour to the general idea to the ways of the institution

Every individual has to be isolated - to stop people conspiring, if you can talk to someone else you can measure your experience against someone else e.g. if there is actually a guard there. 

If you keep everyone separate it is like a laboratory - you can experiment with some people. 

It then allows you to to have a system, individualising people increases the physiological effect. 

ISOLATED - Self-regulating - you start to control yourself just because of the idea that you may always be caught out

BINARY DIVISION - You cant do much for them - you are not doing anything for the community - socially unproductive

It was mentally torturing 

PRODUCTIVE - It is designed as a machine that is producing productivity - it makes people work harder - you don't know how hard anyone else is working so you work 

Eventually you train the deviants 

Inventing disciplines which design to make people more productive; e.g. PSYCHIATRY - fundamental aim of the understanding of why people go insane so that they can correct and train the people to be able to work. 

All of Frauds theories are run on about 5 cases - with these people he had theses theirs in place which he found people to prove these theories for. 

Madness and Sanitary should NOT be thought of as binary opposites - they should be thought of as on a SPECTRUM (like it used to be)

SHIFT IN DISCIPLINE - operating as disciplinary society - modern world has got more sophisticated with the apparatus of control rather than just punishing them, its where social control (especially mental) are woven into every aspect of our lives (the more you think about examples the more you find)

The principles echos the way modern society controls their society

We live in a total surveillance society

EXAMPLES;

• FACEBOOK - you behave as you want people to see you as rather than what you are. You are not the one in control of these social network - system of Panoptic control. Classed by the number of followers/friends. 
• SCHOOLs - measuring students against each other against a specialist standards, ignoring human individuality - training and regulating people - forces you to compete against fellow students, automatic deference to other people. Is high achievement getting higher? If people start to teach themselves then it poses a danger for government.
• HOSPITAL
• Increasingly all aspects of life
• MEDIA - TV, Film, News. Seeing how people are behaving. Advertising - Shows you an image of perfect life - eventually you get an idea that that is how it should be and you feel the need to get that to have a perfect life. News - examples of how you should behave and the consequences of what happens to those who don't - similar to a head teacher

DOCILE BODY - Not just a mental process, you correct your body for someone else. Fitter, stronger, healthier body - better for work. The ultimate subject of disciplinary society. 

POWER

It is a relationship between control and acceptance of the power,  dialog

Philosophy gets closer to the truth of it

Where there is power, there is the possibility to resist. 

e.g. teacher has control/rights/status - they have power over the students but it only works if the students let the teacher have power over them. E.g. student is given detention but the student doesn't have to turn up to detention, they could totally ignore the power they placed on them. 

When people start thinking about the power they do have - they start to let themselves be controlled. 

IT AFFECTS THE CONTROLLERS AS WELL AS THE CONTROLLED

The head teachers are as scrutinised

It makes it as possible to scrutinise the scrutinisers as much as possible once panopticism is in place

TASK 1

Apply Foucas concept of panopticism to a pice of contemporary design

Chose an example of one aspect of contemporary culture that is in your opinion, panoptic. Write and explication of this in approx. 200-300 words, exploring the key Foucauldian language such as 'Docile Bodies' or 'Self-reguation', and using no less than 5 quotes from the text PANOPTICISM in Thomas, J (2000) 'Reading Images', NY, Palgrave McMillan.

5 quotes - short quotes - evidence that you can take fragmented quotes from other writers and weave it in your own prose

LECTURE 1 - Panopticism

"Literature, art and heir respective producers do not exist independently of a complex institutional framework which authorises, enables, empowers and legitimises them, This framework must be incorporated into any analysis that pretends to provide a thorough understanding of culture goods and practices." 

Randal Johnson in Walker & Chaplin (1999)

Thinking about the way we/artists/designers/makers - our ideas and what we produce (not just independently) in a vacuum - simplistic and romantic way in which creativity operates. This is about before we get to the creative act and the place that we are and the place we were born/where we work...determines what we produce - where produced by the society and institutions around us will influence. 

PHYSICAL INSTITUTIONS

• PHYSICAL - prison, school, university
• SOCIAL - 

LECTURE AIMS

• UNDERSTAND THE PRINCIPLES OF THE PANOPTICON
• UNDERSTAND MICHEL FOUCAULT'S CONCEPT OF 'DISCIPLINARY SOCIETY'
• CONSIDER THE IDEA THAT DISCIPLINARY SOCIETY IS AWAY OF MAKING INDIVIDUALS 'PRODUCTIVE AND 'USEFUL'
• UNDERSTAND FOCAULT'S IDEA OF TECHNIQUES OF THE BODY AND DOCIDE BODIES. 

THE PANOPTICON

This is a building has the same principles of control that our society has the same principles of control.

MICHAEL FOUCAULT - French Philosopher and Activist - Gay rights

2 Famous works that we should know about, both books survey in different ways, but they look at the rise of institutions and power in the west

• Madness & Civilisation - rise of asylum and phciatry and doctors
• Discipline & Punish; The Birth of the prison - surveys the rise of prison and particularly the modern prison. 

MADNESS & CIVILISATION

• The Great Confident
• Madness was very different socially, the insane lead a relatively easy life and wondered from village to village but they were tolerated and thought of in a positive way - they were part of society e.g. village idiot
• Towards the 1600's - a different attitude comes about (along with the rise in religion) and a moral attitude came about
• Those who fell outside the society - who couldn't and wouldn't work
• the great confinement - houses of correction was built - everyone who wasn't socially accepted was thrown in, it wasnt just the insane, it was also the people who didn't operate how people wanted them to e.g. poor, unemployed, simgle mothers, criminals, the idle 
• Inside these the people were put to work with the threat of being beaten - the idea that society is going to take the unproductive and force them to be productive with teh threat of voicence. This was ok for a while
• Gradually the houses of correction began to be seen as a gross error - rather than making these people socially accepted - instead it make people worse - the insane people made other people more devient
• After the houses of correction - specialist institutions emerged to correct certain people - the insane were seperated from the sane = ASYLUM
• this is when you get a distinction between SAIN AND INSANE but here there were knoweldge specialising - qualified to judge who is right and wrong etc
• Differnt things happen in the HOUSES OF CORRECTION/ASYLUM - they are controlled in different ways - they are treated like minors/children - if they do well then they are going to be given rewards. FOUCAULT see's this as a very important shift. 
• This is the moment for FOUCAULT where society starts to realise thta there are better ways to control people than violence - shift from physical to mentol control at the birth of the Asylum

The emerges of forms of knowlege - boilogy, psychiatry,, medicine etc, legitimise the practies of hospitals, doctors, phychiatrists

FOUCAULT aims to show these forms of knowledge and rationaliseing

MOODLE............

PRE MODERN SOCIETY

• People who didn't act in the socially acceptable way - those who were deviant were punished in the most spastically way as possible e.g. put on a pillory in the village green and have fruit thrown at them - the point of punishment is not to correct or train you, it is because they want to embarrass you in the worst way to serve as a warning to other people. 

GUY FAWKS QUOTE 

"That you be draw on a hurdle to the place of excecution where you shall be hanged by the neak and being alive cut down, your privy members shall be cut off and your bowls taken out and burned before you, your head served from your pbody and your body divided in to 4 quards and disposed of at the kings discresion." 

HOWEVER - society as it modernised realised there were more effective ways to keep people under control - shift from PHYSICAL TO MENTAL punishment. 

DISCIPLINE is a techniques and it is not just aimed at showeing your power to the workd, in moderny sociecty it is more about training your behaviour, performance, multiply his capacities, how to put him where hie is most ueful, this is discipline in a sense. 

PANOPTICON - esigned by JEREMY BENTHAMS

'The ideal mechanism for the automatic functioning for diciplinary power' 

Uses an allegory for the modern disciplinary of control

He thought it could be a multitude of functions - school, asylum, prison - if it was a prison, you have each of the little spaces for cells, each on divided by a wall - each one would have a window so the light would shine through and permanently backlit - guards in the central tower

Each prisoner in the cell can constantly see the central tower - permantly on display and permentatnly isolated but they can tell if they are being watched because the old tower wasnt lit - sometimes they would have venitian blinds so you couldn't tell if anyone was in there

This has a srange effect - internalises the idea of always being watched - you then always behave in the way in which the person you think is watchin you think should be having - you are always scared that you will be caught out - the building itself allows power to function perfectly and automatically and independently.

You then don't really need bars on the cell because people are being watched - they started to mentally control themselves. It then got to the point that you didn't need guards to control it because you need guards to control it. 

PANOPTICISM

Hence he major effect of the Panopticon; to induce the inmate stat of contagiousness

MOODLE.....................

PURPOSE - to make them more active and responsible

AIM AS A SCHOOL - to make them more productive - to make them learn more

LECTURE THEATRE - designed to make students more productive - you can talk to the people either side of you but the lecturer can see everyone - just that arrangement of space makes you more productive. The fact that you are physically sat there - isolated and fixed - makes you more productive.

• allow scrutiny
• allows supervisor to experiment on subjects
• aims to make them productive
• reforms prisoners
• helps treat patients
• helps instruct school children
• helps confine but also study insane
• helps supervise workers 

What FOUCAULT is describing is the transformation in Wester societies from a former of power imposed by a RULER or a SOVEREIGN to a new most of power called PANOPTICISM

The PANOPTICON is a model of now modern society organises it knowledge and its power its surveillance and training bodies. 

OPEN OFFICE - not just a trendy design but it is also and efficient system for the bosses of the office - everyone can communicate and work as a team - but he can see if people are skiving - the fact that you are constantly in view means you don't want to be caught skiving - so it stops you from doing it. The boss being sat there is an institutional reminder just to work hard. 

E.G. THE OFFICE - program 

• knows he is constantly be filmed, causes him to modify his behaviour - he wants to put on the face of being a perfect boss which makes him do silly things, but just this act of him being followed is enough to change - acting in the way you think that a correct and normal citizen should behave. 

PANOPTIC - way to describe layout of buildings where constantly being watched. 

BARS - traditionally now open plan rather than having little booths - change from being intimate and social spaces where you were free, where now you are constantly being watched and slightly uneasy - you can make the space your own. 

Modern clubs/pubs and less comfortable than old pubs - easier to be spotted

DEVELOPMENT OF PANOPTICISM 

• google maps
• streets
• CCTV

We are constitanly being reminded in many different ways that our lives are being recorded - this starts to build in on us, the fear of being caught out which then leads to the idea that we would be more socially productive and well behaved citizens

PENTONVILLE PRISON - school!

It is not just physical spaces, not just the design of spaces that work in a PANOPTIC way - for it to have an effect it has to be visible, know that it is visible and know our lives are being watched

e.g. Register - panoptic sign that every day of uni lives are being recorded and that is available to people e.g. if you don't like someone you can pull up someones records of attendance, notices - you can be measured against other people. 

Fundamentally your knowledge of yourself is transferred to the tutor. 

Keeping records of you - keeps you in line

LEEDS COLLEG OF ART 

• Over 20 CCTV cameras - you are recorded just about everywhere, everything is permenantly logged. 
• Cameras are now not hidden because it is more effective that they are to be seen so that people know they are being watched and will behave
• Speed Cameras - some dont work and are just there as visible reminders to behave
• IT rooms - they can access your computer and every single website you have ever been on while being at college on the college network. 
• Identity badges - proof of who we are - visible indication of status through the colour - this can control the different social relationships. 

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN POWER, KNOWLEDGE AND THE BODY

'The power relations have immediate hold upon it (the body) they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs

FOCAULT 1975

This CAUSES us to become DOCILE BODIES - which are produced by modern society which means; self motoring, self-correcting, obedient bodies (not to be confused with lazy) - it makes sure you don't rebel, it makes you work harder

DISCIPLINARY TECHNIQUES

"That the techniques of discipline and gentle punishment have crossed the threshold from work to play shows how pervasive that have become within modern wester societies"

This is as much about as making people stay healthy so that they can work harder and do more work for the bosses

The union wants to lower pensions and raise the pension age - people are living longer now so that people have to work for 7 years longer - rather than saying well done for being healthy, so you have to work longer and harder. 

Constantly in our society we have visible reminders that your body in on display e.g. billboards, telly, magazines - health and beauty - look good naked - constant reminders...no one makes you go to the gym and fret about how you look, you do it to yourself, you control and self-regualte and perform in certain ways. 

TV - your are fixed, isolated, receiving instructions etc - metaphor of the P....

FOUCAULT AND POWER

• His definition is not  top-down model as with MARXISM
• Power is not a thing or a capacity people have it is a RELATION  between different individuals and group, and only exists when it is being exercises
• the exercise of power relies on there being the capacity for power to be resisted
• 'Where there is power there is resistance'

power is not a thing they can have and can wheel - it is a RELATIONSHIP

e.g. tutor only has power over you because you let them have the power - you are willingly let them have the power. 

There is also the power of RESISTANCE - tutor thinks that you have power over you but you can resist. 

FACEBOOK - so panoptic - if you use Facebook, everything that you post is going to be watched by close circle of friends, you don't act like yourself, you act like a performance of yourself. Losing jobs because of things poster on facebook. 

VITO ACCONDI - FOLLOWING PIECE - 1969 - conceptual artist

examples of creative project respond to the ideas of panopticism. 

Pervy artist with pervy hair! 

he stands outside the gallery and follows the first person who walks out around the city for the whole day until they get to some place he cannot get in. 

VITO ACCONDI - SEEDBED - 1972

seedy type of art - pervy...

social experiment - perve wanking and fantasising about the person walking above. 

CHRIS BURDEN - SAMSON 1985

when it is exhibited - you have a big beam of oak which is clamped against the gallery, each click of the turn-style will push against the beam and eventually ruin the gallery - the more people visit = destruction

KEY POINTs

• MICHEL FOUCAULT
• PANOPTICISM as a form of disciplin
• Techniques of the body 
• Docile Bodies. 

There is always something controlling your actions