When I began to think about generative systems, I thought about an algorithm I’d played with before. Using the New York Times API I pulled facets and clubbed them into different colors highlighting the overload of information we received during a day.
During the development of this project and while pulling and making sense of how to politically frame information overload, the code stopped working due to an error with the main word analysis library I was working with - RiTa.js.
Therefore I began to think about other things. Lately, I’ve been reading a lot about Foucault’s theory of Panopticism — the theory about the development and nomarlization of surveillance and control. Through technology surveillance is being reproduced (architecturally), extended (psychologically, deeply ingraining the feeling of being watched in a person’s psyche), and therefore being made ubiquitous. Furthermore, coupling surveillance with the growing idea of “sousveillance,” the feeling of being watched and control is extremely present.
The feeling of being watched is very commonly propagated in sci-fi literature. And so, I turned to the covers of books like The Stranger by Albert Camus and The Panopticon Writings by Jeremy Bentham.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/books/review/the-panopticon-by-jenni-fagan.html
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49552.The_Stranger
https://www.versobooks.com/books/554-the-panopticon-writings
https://editor.p5js.org/meghag/sketches/-tajrDJBy
Circles are integral to the idea of being watched.
In my first iteration, I began to think about concentric circles with the “you” that is being watched placed in the center. I developed a generative system that makes a random number of concentric circles with each circle having a random number of circles. The randomness here is key to the idea of we know we’re being watched but we don’t really know how many people are watching us. Maybe its none but that idea and feeling never goes away.
However, this seemed clunky and overwhelming. I tried to parse it out and have separate layers but overlaying the two circles was difficult. It felt like too much was happening in a small poster.
Instead, I decided to simply do a gradient of concentric circles. The center remains the “you” being watched” and the circles around the multiple layers that are watching you. It took the original idea and simplified it.
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https://editor.p5js.org/meghag/sketches/C7C1jRIWf
.png)
https://editor.p5js.org/meghag/sketches/C7C1jRIWf
Finally - the poster is meant to question rather than answer. Subvert and interrogate the idea of being watched. Therefore, I added a box to question “Are we being watched more than we’re seeing?”
