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EXISTENTIAL TECHNOLOGICAL REALITIES OR HEDONISTICAL SHOWMANCE

- Introduction - From gloomy public spectacle of pain

To the soul as the prison of the body

- New perception of the human body in the space - The physicality of the body and its limitations

- References

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Introduction

The Reality Shows like Big Brother form the first moment of creation start defining new realities

which were based not on documentation of human activities but was a dawn to new cultural and

behavior era.

Whimsical constructed studio of Big Brother show is a laboratory of creating activities rather than

examining its 12 inmate’s gesture, an environment which it’s after math is become more and more

clear these days. The Truman Show was based on an idea which somehow shows the whole

transformation of an experience of a man who is facing a hidden and completely unknown gaze

towards himself into a subject which in one point knows that he is going to interact with a new

unwanted host and it was the critical point of time which mummified Jeremy Bentham idea of

surveillance starts to function again. "The feeling of being observed"

Showmance is one of the breed of this new social demeanor, it was first conducted in the lodge of

The Big Brother show and afterwards opens its way to film industry which became the title of

second episode of American series "Glee" that released on September 9, 2009.This program

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which is located in a school assembly (reminiscent of Teen Big Brother Show) was watched by 7.3

million American viewers.¹

This hypocritical word itself brings a good perspective of what has happened during this new era

of Reality Shows a new culture which only can be created under public surveillance, a subliminal

ethic which defines something that forsaking Romance into a performance which directly

connected to the observers (audience) and without them it is only an interpersonal relationship.

This "Democratization of Voyeurism"² which Paul Virilio thought as a major iconic risk that

overexposed even our most private activities has an hedonistic reaction in this encampment which

complete the real time dialogue between the inmates and spectators.

Now it has been time that we passed the nascent of camera surveillance in public spaces but the

question is how they really change human social activities? I don’t want to magnify extreme

situations like terrorist attacks, demonstrations or poaching of human rights what I want to point

out is the omniveillance of video optics as new layer of public society which can be in a live

interaction with the dwellers of the city itself. To put it in other way; The Big Brother show is

happening inside a complete isolated space and without any communication to outside for a

certain time which you can survive in, but what if we ignore all the barriers like Media historian

notes that 'today’s circuit of communication and the data bases they generate constitute a

superpanopticon, a system o surveillance without walls, windows, towers or guards'³ and to add

upon that what if this mentioned superpanopticon act as a conducting device rather just as a

controller ?on the other hand if showmance is a successful performance in this newfangled

social unit then why should we spare the whole public squares like streets ,squares and parks

from it? Why cant city like London which I think is fare to call it mother city of surveillance have

open areas in title of “Love passage” which you can find giant and small exposed 'Mickey'

cameras in order to broadcast heroic moment of love to the whole world, or as Rem Koolhass

describes in the Park of Aggression section in” The City as Meaningful Environment" in 1972:

'In this recreational area, rudimentary structures were erected to correct and channel aggressive

desires into creative confrontations. The unfolding ego/world dialectic generates the continuous

emergence of conflicting ideologies. Their imposed coexistence invokes childish dreams and

desire to play. The park is reservoir of sustained tension waiting to be released.'

This will be the moment which spectators and city dwellers beginning to overlap each other. This

new function is not only happening between people whom sitting in front of their laptops or TV

sets tracking people in the public spaces of their city or other cities towards the world, this real

time animated images can also be projected into the public areas itself from other areas in town

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which they can compare their activities to other neighbors and other worldwide dwellers as an

iconic city images or self integrated real time video from their self phones.

As Alex haw describes in CCTV London Internment, Entertainment and Other Optical

Fortifications:

'The Police increasingly maps showing CCTV positions on both streets and highways. in 1998 the New

York Civil liberties Union published a polished , detailed map coordinating all surveillance camera positions

in Manhattan , while the New York City surveillance camera players encourage community activism

,generating quick hand-drawn maps of surveillance across the world .The institute for Applied autonomy

collaborated with players to produce I-see ,an interactive map which enables citizen to take the 'path of

least surveillance' in Manhattan .The blind spots of Amsterdam Boston and Ljubljana have subsequently

been mapped.'

But the scenario can be completely different if this map of movement is located in pedestrian and

gathering areas through city public spaces, if the cameras are fully recognizable and also the

destination of the broadcasting defined to the public why would somebody wants to latent

him/herself from being captured .

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Bentham idea was based on a performance that prisoners have in front of a not recognizable but

perpetual power which hosting them, this power force them to act differently as they do without

any Inspectors, until the moment which this feeling of being observed becomes internalized and

they are ready to interact with civilized world again.

Technological limitation of the gaze and the specification of the prison as he imagined leads him

to define a revolutionary theatrical scene which transformed architecture from it massive and solid

attitude into light and expose new technological language which was never seen before.

What I want to argue is by evolving and evasion of Bentham Panopticon idea from its own context

(as he himself prospected) into the public life and also considering the dissolve of the

technological surveillance limitation (CCTV instead of panopticon central core) and the new

destination of surveillance which is common and everyday public and also private spaces is it

possible to define a new kind of spatial qualities?

This question can be layout into two more specific questions, First Can the current urban design of

cities and also the architecture itself embody this new technological explosion?

And the second one which I am more interested in; As I describe in the beginning ,arriving the

new technologies as well as new definition of human image in society creates new cultural issues

which was never experience before as I am more focused on theatrical definition of human

performance in society. Can we say the current context of human activities is interacting directly to

the new social human perception of space and does architecture have any suggestion or

alternative to this new visual expanding era?

For entering this discussion I will give an image from human activities through time in relation to

control and I will discuss how it transformed from its primitive characteristic to its new realms.

This spectrum of controlling in human social life which was the consequence of civilizations starts

from a corporal punishment like torture into the Modern form of punishment which was for the first

time addressing the soul instead of the body that needs a social device "surveillance”,” the art of

controlling mind over mind" and as a reaction "counter surveillance" which was a disobedience

strategy from the part which ought to be control this turnover in this new electronic era leads to

recent definitions like "sousveillance" which was titled as "existential technologies" and at last a

completely Democratic reciprocal social behaviors which dissolve agonized and deprived intimacy

from surveillance that can be referred as a polar sousveillance which is based on activities that

happened and invented towards social life in the theatrical scene of new public and private spaces

like 'Showmance'.

Then I will ensign the human body as an icon which the perception of it changed during the

conformist and nonconformist societies.

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This leads to physical reality of the body in relationship to politics (politics of body); its speed, its

perimeters and peripheries and its locus.

From gloomy public spectacle of pain

To the soul as the prison of the body

Michel Foucault in the beginning of his book "discipline and punish, the birth of the prison"

portraits the brazen torturing of Damiens the regicide on March second of 1757 before the main

door of the church of Paris .This event as he describes can give a wide perspective of how

physical and public execution was on that ritual day.

It was in the late 18th century as he ensigns when in Europe and United states,” that the entire

economy of punishment was distributed" .

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It was that time which the word "prisoner" and all which was related to its definition especially in

relation to public and also its formation starts to change.

"Russia 1769; Prussia, 1780; Pennsylvania and Tuscany, 1786; Austria, 1788; France, 1791,".

Foucault’s analytical descriptions for the primary changes which leads to new understanding of

man on that time:

1- Disappearance of torture as a public spectacle and over-exposing the condemned, alive or

dead to the public view

"It leaves the domain of more or less everyday perception and enters that of abstract

consciousness … As a result, justice no longer takes public responsibilities for the violence that is

bound up with its practice."

2-Using the prisoners in urban works like "cleaning the city streets or repairing the highways, was

practice in Austria, Switzerland and certain of United States such as Pennsylvania".

Public transportation of prisoners also faces a revolutionary change, any reciprocal visual and

theatrical elements between prisoners which have to be transformed from one point of the city to

the other point distinctly downgraded.

"It was finally abolished in April 1848.While the chain-gang, which had dragged convicts across

the whole France, as far as Brest and Toulon, was replaced in 1837 by inconspicuous black-

painted cell-carts."

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3-physical body as the major target of penal repression like the theatrical presentation of it

disappeared towards the beginning of 19th century.

Then It was not about to have any form of physical contact ( at least as little as possible) to human

body ,though it was the tendency to reach something other than the body , the human body

serves as "instrument or intermediary" that leads the body to enters a new vast field which it was

not about itself and it was only about the situation and about a new metaphysical mold which is

going to serve new mental rules that at last going to set him free "A system of constrains and

privations, obligations and precipitations" but if someone has to be executed ,instead of deaths-

man Foucault use the word "disconnectors" for the executioners. Injected tranquillizers project the

feeling of pain from the condemned to the executioners, which he or she would be the one who

can fully experience this serene moment of decease.

If the performance of the body which leads to transaction of the guilt has a kernel that occurs the

act then what is going to be judge and suppressed is not going to be the body, this "juridical

subject" which he claims as the application of law created a new verdicts that opened a new

horizon toward the penal system and its nest.

"The apparatus of punitive justice must now bite into this bodiless reality."

Michel Foucault, Discipline and punish 1975

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The human kernel idea magnifies a question how can you define the shadow behind the act? And

also how can you influence the soul of the prisoner and "neutralize his dangerous states of mind,

to alter his criminal tendencies"?

This new transparent state of human move much forward in order to open a course in direction of

the reality of individuals, the question of what they are, which can be separately study from what

they do (mentally disordered minds).so the man as an object of knowledge was the key to conduct

a new base for treating him differently in his traverse during the deterrence.

'Uprising the body as the productive and subjected investment of knowledge'

Foucault pointing out the feudalism, at early stages which the physical and torturing increased

suddenly –The body on that time was the only property that they have and they could control, and

that’s why the forced labor and the prison factories appears in the development of the mercantile

economy .which changed in industrial system as they need free market in labor. That as he claim

and I mentioned before leads to 'corrective detention'.

We considered the soul as the objective secret and curable part of the criminal which in the latter

idea was the key to modern punishment. But the case is the body was always involved in political

field which all the process is taking place on its perimeter.

But the relationship of power and body can also cross the boundaries which is only about to be

invest it as a force of production (Fordism also in the late industrial economy which was

transformed into service and knowledge economy somewhere between in the late of 1960s and in

the middle of 1970s).This new understanding of body can be realized in what Foucault called

political technology of the body and how the institutions are working trough this era is in a sense

microphysics of power or as he developed it in the later years of his life 'governmetality' .

As he describes this outstanding definition

'The study of this micro-physics presupposed that the power exercised on the body is conceived

not as a property, but as a strategy….that one should decipher in it a network of relations,

constantly in tension, in activity, rather than a privilege that one might possess; that one should

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take as its model a perpetual battle rather than a contract regulating transaction or conquest of a

territory. In short this power is exercised rather than possessed'

This perpetual interaction between humans and the power which reformed its status to absorb the

ability to be burgeoned in new subjective and corporal territories, can be defined as it is exercised

and experimented, which is the only way of creating this nascent reality.

'This power is not exercised simply as an obligation or prohibition on those who do not have it; it

invest them, is transmitted by them and through them…This means that these relations go

right down into the depth of society, that they are not localized in the relations between the state

and its citizens or on the frontier between classes that they do not merely reproduce, and

although there is continuity, there is neither analogy nor homology, but specificity of

mechanism and modality. And at last they are not univocal.'

The arrival of these micro powers has its own side effects as he points out a perennial

confrontation, focuses of instability, which can lead to any kind of power relation inversion. it is

talking about position which easily flows and change its location statutes and functionality a new

world of turnovers and destructions that is its own seed to grow.’ the effect that it induces on

the entire network in which it is caught up'.

This way of approaching and studying of body is not talking about the state of body and its own

surrounding as a small state but focused something more than a localized and physical

conventional boundaries .it addresses the 'body politic' which subjugate it by putting it in this new

realm of relay, communications and support for the power and knowledge relations.

In the 20th century the effect of modern power extended its way from the places which needed

direct control to their dwellers into more widespread social communities such as schools hospitals

and factories ,in these new arrival institutions the form of power and control changed its

appearance and its boundaries as its audience were not convicts and prisoners (for these kind of

institutions as nests for arriving supervision, there were also used the same logic in 19th century as we can find a lot of

example on which even the physical pattern of panopticon remains in places such as schools, factories and barracks

but what was changed later was during the time which free labor economy and in continue consumption realm began to

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ascent when there was a need to define new methodology and direction of control in order to continue the existence of

power) central core of panopticon dissolve from its position. But the question was where can be the

new stand for this form of power which can guarantee its preserve during this new era of

ceaseless social movement. In conformism type of governing like Communism and also other

examples which one the practical image of if can be as I mentioned before what was happened

during 1940's and 1960's in United states during the mass production and consumption

characteristic of highly developed economies which was called Fordism that as Taylorism (a

technique of labor discipline and workplace organization, based upon supposedly scientific studies

of human efficiency and incentive systems) in Europe in beginning of 20th century which also

picked up by Lenin and added to nascent Soviet industry because of highly conformity and

immobile form of centralized power it couldn’t resist to technological change so system like

Fordism as a Regime of accumulation broke down .The new economic situation which was shifted

away from manufacturing and industry moved towards knowledge and service economy ,this new

era that can suit the perception of Foucault Microphysics of power and at last Governmentality .

This Post-Fordism realm is famous for how it describes fluidity of Capital. And also bringing

individualism and comfort to working areas (White collar-workers); Feminization of work force is

also one the aspect of Post Fordism.

What am I going to discuss now after this brief history of control navigation towards time, is the

new performance of human in confrontation through this new ascent of internal surveillance which

leads him to move in a world which surveillance become something different than a hierarchal

power implementation but also as a new form of real-time communication towards others and also

its environment which help him to achieve more and more governing himself and his

self-regulating activates . But for sure this Technologies of self is not something that can be

formulated in an isolated reality, society and urban life is one of the most important context of this

study, Normalization, Self-esteem are some the aspect of Technologies of self which Nikolas

Rose describe in his book inventing our selves published in 1996.And all of them derived from the image

that human creates for himself from the society and its communications.

New digital and broadcasting technologies force the characteristic of surveillance into an era

which from the first was not meant to be, Sousveillance is one this new interactive production of

A tendency which show how a counter or reverse reaction to power can create a mechanism that

act exactly the same as its source. To watch the watchers, to control the controllers or policing the

police.

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Sousveillance which was first coined by Steve Mann is a combination of a French word sous

means below in contrasting to sur in surveillance, which means above (eye in the sky).that brings

the cameras form higher authorities and Architecture into people. This notion can be discuss in a

lot of manners like how people for example in Iran recently in post election 2009 use their mobile

cameras to broadcast that severe public torturing images and videos of the government police

authorities as some of the only ways to confront this situation or the night captured from LAPD

officers while they were beating an African-American Rodney King by a normal citizen which was

aired by news agencies around the world in 1991.

What I want to address here is not the uprising of new part of the society as controllers or

observer but what I want to bring out from the technological side effect is the role of these new

icons of urban life even if they are as a part of the architecture or if they are attached to human

body. One the major characteristic of these video cameras or any surveillance devices in

nowadays cites is routed in source of its creation that is panopticon of Jeremy Bentham in the late

18th century which realized gaze and the surveillance as a hidden ubiquity. This atmosphere

forces all the prisoners to act in the limitation of the law because they know that in any moment

they can be watched, but they are prisoners and this mechanism is a system to control them but

what if this scenario and this theatrical event is not happening to control and become a visual

monologue between the performer and the audience. As I mentioned in the beginning of the

article program series such as The Big Brother Show is not only a realty capturing of inside people

lives but it is a generator to create new acts which directly connected to the existence of the

surveillance cameras and the whole audience behind it. It is not just a moment in a stadium or on

the background of Oscar ceremonies which people in ordering to show themselves shake hands

or push themselves forward it is continues show which wants to recreate human contemporary

life, and as far as the they are sure that a great amount of people are watching them they start to

invest and govern themselves to has the best effect as possible, a new life in front of the whole

society of humans and also possibilities that’s what I can call a performative reverse surveillance .

This is a kind of Govern mentality which only happens in the presence of the audience whether

they are physically available or their non blinking eye of them are gazing. That was one the

revolutionary changing moment of prison when Bentham suggested the three or four prisoners’

cell for the panopticon building a social rehabilitation in the prison. But the non physical and non

interactive participation may work better in the case of self-esteem because there is not any

constant judgment about the performer so he would create the imaginable observer for him or her

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self and also the limitation of the audience can be as wide as the whole network of global

connectivity.

Shomance which I referred to as a reflective performance in so called romantic situation during

The Big Brother show can be a good example of this transformed social behavior of man in front

of the broad audience of this popular TV series but the point is 12 inmates of this show do not

have any connections to outside a complete prison like isolated space but what if we expand this

new forms of relationships or on the other hand this new conducted social behaviors trough

outside and real' urban life a new city life which will welcome video surveillance cameras instead

of preventing them as I mentioned before . New kinds of also public activities which dissolve

immodest gesture form all Omni-veillance observers. City icons which their prophecy are bringing

out human from its dark anonymous lazaret. You-tube (self broad casting parts)is one the first

attempt to this new field of human characteristics but what if as I said before it happened in urban

life we have Google earth street view cinematic frames from city streets , but interesting point of

that is the face of public is faded in those images of Google-earth (if the city is a public area then

why should that happen)this is the problem that we still are facing today immodest gesture of

surveillance a quality which can change by the vitality that this new connectors can bring to

society. But the question is how architecture can and urban spaces react to this new human

activities and also physical consequences. News publishing found their way from street and

square walls into Newspapers and TV screens and laptop monitors toward mobile phone LCD's

but it never lost it strength in real city life even if they give their position to commercial publicities.

Imagine the Time-square in New York City can be an active participatory Tele-surveillance urban

space which broadcast all the human activities there, which they do there were 604 video

cameras counted only in Time square NYC in 2005, but if they are completely marked and also

the destination the broad casting is also apparent, these real time animated images can also be

projected in other part of that city or any other city of the world. A new era which man in his social

can always find a substance and portrait in real time for himself.

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New perception of the human body in the space.

Paul Virilio in his article the visual Crash which was published in 2002 tried to argue how image of

man changed during the global Tele-surveillance and the advent of universal real time which he

claims abolished the historical primacy local time.

He describes that as a visual crash that is one the aspect of this new ascent technology stand

against that was presented in the pre-existing mass-media 'image at the distance' ¹

'The destiny of every image is magnification' Gaston Bachard.

The 'ubiquity of the live' bring new sight not to the perception of mans surrounding but to real time

understanding of much broader limitation as a single proliferated image.

The perspective of real time ,an event whose political and historical importance will be exactly

analogues to the invention of one-point linear perspective in the Italian Renaissance.'¹ This

quality of space addressing the dissolve of distance in this new rendered reality, in Renaissance

perspective the hierarchical arrangement of people in a painting (in order to emphasis on one or

more) was based on the point that they are being located and the distance of them to the

vanishing point which make them bigger or smaller ,but in new perception of man by reinforcing

of this new technology all point can vanish at once so distance become completely a fragile quality

but this distance less presentation of the image is not for the first time that is happening now ,

The Persian miniature painting which was developed in 13th century give an image of world and

human which is based on equality (in size)of all elements which was illustrated in the space. This

distance-less equality was a religious idea which wants to say all humans in the eye of perpetual

Omni Voyance that has his gaze upon them are the same.

What is happening now is real-time animated image of space and humans which all detail of an

activity can be transmit to any place.

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'This space-time is less an analogical re-presentation than a pure and simple numerical

presentation of places, objects or persons in question.'

' The implication is the image coincides with its subject, that there is no longer the least interval

between the two …Thus since the interface assumes the role ,in the real time ,of the surface

things ,holding themselves apart from one another in the space of the world.'

The question that can be asked now is how can this image integrate and interact with the physical

and real world, the projection of informations in urban facades, architecture or on human body can

be one the first steps but what I want to argue is because the limitation or lack of physical quality

of the information world can this new image of 'real time space’ affect the way that you also create

a physical world itself?

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Bentham Icon in UCL

The physicality of the body and its limitations

In the Panopticon scenario which Jeremy Bentham published in 1791, there is a complete

gradient of body positions and its movements of the actors of this theatrical scene, the prisoners,

the guards and the superior authority.

This differentiation of the space also upraised by the new way of looking at architectural

techniques.

'Bentham typological revolution dissolved the traditional fortification of mass in the pursuit of an

architecture of light'.

This lightness and transparency which came across on that ,leads to an architecture which I call

the architecture of observation but what is the victim and target of this gaze ,isn’t it something than

the human body itself?

Human body was always the subject of control even the time which its torturing become a

theatrical public act.

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This lightness of architecture can be translated into transparency which modernism movement

starts a wide realization on that but it can be presented in also different ways what Zaha Hadid

suggest for her channel portable pavilion is a blurred passive architecture space inside which its

all aims is to magnify on the objects inside which the human body is one of the most important of

them so an architecture which is a scenario between productions and the customers.

This transparency rule completely the opposite in the kernel of the Panopticon A place which

Robin Evans noted four years before Foucault that none of the Panopton drawing explicitly shows

the operation of the lodge a place that can be the dungeon of the building. This bodily loss of the

inspector is exactly the moment which it connects directly to all cells prisoners felt that they are

mentally and perpetually connected to the authorities.

Foucault in his lecture in 1967 Heterotopias which was published by the French Journal

Architecture /Mouvement/ in 1984 give an example of the cemetery as an prototype of an urban

landmark which is connected to all parts of the city equally as long as every families has someone

there and how it transformed from inside the cities to outside of the city borders towards time.

As I illustrated the vertical cemetery as a suggestion for presenting the connection of the death

reality to everyday life of the people (2007)

Jeremy Bentham also goes further he has dedicated his mummified body to the University College

London and there is still a monument of him there.

Which Alex Haw point out from him thoughtfully:

'The apparent omnipresence of the inspector …with the extreme facility of his real

presence'

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Design for vertical city cemetery 2007 final thesis Tehran

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1- http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2009/07/comiccon-glee-producers-spill-secrets-of-episode-2.html. Retrieved 2009-09-06.

2- Paul Virilio Visual crash ,ctrl [space] Rhetorics of surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother, The MIT

Press 2002

3- Alex Haw CCTV London AA profiles 52

4- S,M,L,XL O.M.A Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau ,Exodus ,or the Voluntary prisoners of Architecture I

5- Alex Haw CCTV London AA profiles 52

6- Michel Foucault Discipline And Punish The birth of prison ,chapter The body of condemned

7- Mayhew, Susan (ed) A Dictionary of Geography (Article: Governmentality) Oxford University Press, 2004

8- Rose, N. (1996) Inventing Our Selves. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

9- Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom: reframing political thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

10- Paul Virilio Visual crash ,ctrl [space] Rhetorics of surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother, The MIT

Press 2002

11- Alex Haw CCTV London AA profiles 52

- Hedonism, 2004-04-20 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

- A brief history of Persian Miniature By Katy Kianush - Eploring Equiveillance, University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, Anonequity Project - Sousveillance: Inventing and Using Wearable Computing Devices for Data Collection in Surveillance Environments, Surveillance & Society -