critical positions on the media and popular culture [lecture notes]

technology will liberate us... lecture notes

cts seminar - panopticism. [notes]

Institutions and institutional power - panopticism

1791 - The Panopticon - Foucault saw this as a metaphor for discipline & social control. 

MICHEL FOUCAULT (1926 - 1984)
- Madness & civilization 
- Discipline & punish : the birth of the prison. 


Madness & civilization 
- The great confinement (late 1600s)
 > beforehand, mad people, those other than the norm were almost accepted i.e the village idiot...
 > this wasn't just the insane, included criminals, single mothers, unemployed , the idle.
 > they were forced to work, through threats and violence
- People began to see these 'houses of correction as a gross error'
- The combination of people, the mad, criminals etc... began to corrupt everyone else in the institutions.


This marked a shift from physical control to mental control 
- which still goes on. 

& the emergence of specialists - doctors - psychiatrists
these were there to legitimaise the institutions 

Internalised responsibility
>shift from someone else controlling them, to their own conscience.

Deviants used to be punished in the most humiliating / violent / public manor possible
GUY FAWKES 
- This was meant not to correct their behavior but to control them, by showing what will happen if they do wrong.

Disciplinary society & disciplinary power
Foucault describes discipline as a technique of modern social control 

JEREMY BENTHAM'S PANOPTICON
proposed 1791 but never actually made.
- Bentham thought it could have multiple functions > school > asylum > but mostly... a prison.

A circular construction with rooms around the outside and a central tower with a view of all the rooms.
Each room is back lit so that the subject is clearly visible.
The central tower is in darkness so that the inmates cannot see into the central tower.

Inmates are permanently on display
and permanently isolated

They know they are being watched but are not able to verify it due to the central tower (representing institutional power) not being lit 
> the effect this has is that inmates will always behave in the way they think they should if they're being watched.
> because of the belief that they are always under scrutiny.
> people in turn begin to control their own behaviour.

Eventually - there didn't need to be guards in the tower because the physiological effect brought on just from believing that they were being watched was enough.
Perfect mechanism for control.
- People build up internal discipline
foucault called it a "machine for the automatic functioning of power" 

The panopticon also allowed for measured performance of inmates - another mechanism of social control
They then assumed responsibility for their own actions > making them more productive. 
it's to do with the arrangement of the space > allowing for scrutiny by the institution and pushes production from the worker/inmates/students...

-reforms prisoners
-helps treat patients

PANOPTICISM
this is the emergence (for foucault) of a new model for control.
panopticism is about training. training the minds of the people under scrutiny.


RELIES ON THE KNOWLEDGE YOU'RE ALWAYS BEING WATCHED, AND ARE AWARE OF IT. IN TURN MAKES YOU WORK HARDER BECAUSE YOU THINK THAT YOU'LL BE CAUGHT OUT.

Examples of panopticism in practice.
-Open plan office 
The Office - Ricky Gervais puts on a facade that he's the perfect boss for the cameras because he knows he's being watched and others will see it.
-Libraries
No one tells you to be quiet or to control yourself, you just do...
-Art Galleries 
-Bars 
Modern bars move away from stalls and seperate compartments in favour of more open plan bars with good visibility throughout.

CCTV, Google maps. 
these build into you the fear of always being caught out because there could always be someone watching you.

Pentonville prison
-lecture theatre aims to make people more productive.

However it doesn't apply only to the design of a space.
-The register
-Staff files - doesnt know what's in it.
Paranoia 
the idea that people are keeping records on you
-Visible reminders that they are being monitored, so they won't step out of line.

Prevention methods. (fake cameras etc) 
college cards > red & blue differentiates between students & staff.
Monitored hours - clocking in & out of college

Relationship between power, knowledge & body 
-direct relationship between mental control & physical responses. 
People become 'Docile' obedient bodies. - produced by modern disciplinary society.
society
-Self monitoring
-self correcting
-obedient. 
Disciplinary techniques.
-government campaigns about going to the gym
-means people will be more productive as they're healthier. 
- people should work longer and harder now because they are healthier. 
Panopticism relates to the body
Body is always on display > make yourself anxious

Television is like a metaphor for the panopticon 
with everyone focused around a central point yet they are all watching individually.


Foucault & power 
Power isn't a 'thing' which people have, that they can wield.
It is a relationship
The exercise of power relies on there being the capacity for resistance.

1984 - film

Facebook is also panoptic.
Everything you post will be recorded so people aren't themselves.
It's a performance


Vito Acconci 'Following piece' (1969)
follows someone - stalking
live in the illusion we are in control of our actions/situation.

Chris Burden - Samson (1985)


Foucault - Panopticism as a form of discipline
               - techniques of the body 

mechanical reproduction... finishhhh!!

Read the Walter Benjamin's essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'. Write a 300 word analysis of one work of Graphic Design, that you think relates to the themes of the text, and employing quotes, concepts and terminology from the text.

The essay can be found online here.http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

In the essay 'the work of art in the cultural age of mechanical reproduction' by Walter Benjamin, Walter Benjamin significantly evaluates the role of technology through photography as an instrument of change, How mechanical reproduction has helped share art to the masses and essentially bringing a whole uprising in social economics, art was originally made by the rich for the rich, creating a social divide between the rich and the poor, however with the aid of mechanical reproduction it meant that the poor could also own the same piece of art as the rich person balancing out social economics also helping with educating the poor. I am going to relate this idea to a certain piece of graphic design, the first piece of graphic design which came to me what relates to the themes of the text is the 'keep calm and carry on' poster, and I feel is possibly one of the better examples of mechanical reproduction within graphic design the way it was been reproduced so much it has kind of lost its 'aura' but means it has been shared worldwide and you can pretty much find one of these posters decorating someones bedroom or a small cafe anywhere.

Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.

One might subsume the eliminated element in the term “aura” and go on to say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. 

the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced

To pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a perception whose “sense of the universal equality of things” has increased to such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique object by means of reproduction.

The keep calm and carry on poster was origi

Although I do personally hate these posters, or what they have become today, some meaningless poster with bad layout and a cheesy caption replacing the old 'keep calm and carry on',

Athena Procopiou

Born in Greece and raised in Switzerland, Athena Procopiou grew up in a creative home, filled with fairytales, paintings and music.

marxism and design activism lecture - 3rd november

Marxism and design activism


aims: 
- to introduce a critical definition of ideology
- to introduce some of the basic principles of marxist philosophy
- to explain the extent to which the media constitutes us as a subject
- to introduce 'culture jamming' and the idea of design activism


'The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it' - Marx, K. (1845) Theses on feuerback. (theirs no point in thinking without following it with action)

Marxism is:
-a political manifesto. leading to socialism, communism and the 20th century conflicts between capital and labour
-a philosophical approach to the social sciences, which focusses on the role of society in determining human behaviors, based on the concept of dialectical materialism.


-marxism lead to the rise of the soviet union, also uprising in china and cuba.

WHAT IS CAPITALISM.
-a society where control of the means of production - the role of making money is revolved around a few people, everyone works to make a small amount of people money.
-A marken is where labour power is bought and sold
-Use of money as a means of exchange
-competition/meritocracy - (if you end up at the top of society it is because you were meant to, because you're better off..)


Communist Evolution


-Primitive communism - the tribe society - everyone worked together, everything was free, their was no greed..
however eventually hierarchies would develop, someone has something someone else doesn't.




Marx's concept of base/superstructure

BASE

forces of production - materials, tools, workers, skills, etc.
relations of production - employer/employee, class, master/slave, etc.


SUPER STRUCTURE


social institutions - legal, political, cultural
forms of consciousness - ideology


''The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class strugglers.' - (Everything - art, history, politics all can relate back to class and a certain political attitude.)

                    __________________________________________________

‘In the social production of their life men enter into definite, necessary relations, that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary it is their social being that determines their consciousness. ' - Marx, (1857) ‘Contribution to the critique of Political Economy’

(-society produces our lives, where we are in life we are forced into relations that we dont really have control of.

The base - determines the superstructure which the determines our lives.

Examples.

At a certain stage in their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production ... 

          …From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution.  - if you chance capitalism you will change our attitude to each other - ie, change our art and everything...

The State

‘…but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’ (Marx & Engels (1848) ‘ Communist Manifesto)
- they think that the queen is incharge.
-the state act in such a way as to control the workers and keep them in line, either by controlling the way they think about theirselves of by shooting them. If the workers get out of line the army is called in to shoot them.

Religion - is the ultimate trap for the worker in a sort of marxist reading. - ''religion is the opiate of the masses'' - karls marx.

The way in which a certain set of ideas masks of distorts, allowing you to see only a certain part of the world and creates in people false conciseness - we dont understand the true nature of society and our role in it.

The reason we are in this false conciseness is because of certain mechanisms which are in place.

ART AS IDEOLOGY.
people had this idea how art is one persons free impression however it has never been like that, in old days the only people who made art were the ones who could afford educations, women were never aloud to be artist, only white rich men make art.
Art is only purchase by Kings and Queens, so a culture of art is created for rich people.

SOCIETY = ECONOMIC, POLITICAL & IDEOLOGICAL

Ideology in the medie, newspaper.

Rupert Murdoch claimed he could control politics, when news corp struck a deal with the labour party Rupert told his editors to switch the party they backed to labour and they got in power, then switch back to tories and tories got in power again.

The times is aimed towards the educated people, more politically focused, it even has it owns typeface.
The star is written by educated people but is just dumbed down, they write about things they think lower-class people would be interested in, football, tv and tits.
People read this paper and think it is the way their lives should be lived.

Commodity Fetishism

A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour. This is the reason why the products of labour become commodities, social things whose qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible.

Marx, ‘Capital Vol. 1’

                            _________________________________________

Our society is unfair,

-The assets of the worlds top three billionaires are greater than those of the poorest 600 million on the planet

=More than a third of the worlds population (2.8 billion)live on less than two dollars a day

-1.2 billion live on less than one dollar a day

-In 2002 34.6 million Americans lived below the official poverty line (8.5 million of those had jobs!)
-Black American Poverty double that of whites

-Per capita income in sub-Saharan Africa =$490

-Per capita subsidy for European cows = $913

Why do people not do anything about this?