Project Description: Big data is on to us. Our digital footprint and media practices are susceptible to government, corporate, and third-party surveillance. In a world of networked media and surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, 2019), the future of art continues to negotiate the boundaries of an Orwellian state of mind. The omnipresence of surveillance devices and technologies has facilitated a “controlled” society with little to no privacy, as we simultaneously exist in the physical and the virtual realm – yet neither here, nor there. Everything we say and do is monitored, witnessing a giant disconnect betwixt the analog and the digital. The crossroads within surveillance and these moving images can be imagined as a social field (Bourdieu, 1972). There’s too much space and distance; it’s all very voyeuristic. Many artists use surveillance technologies to make art, while others refer to surveillance itself in art to reimagine future societies and proposing alternative futures. This artwork illustrates an assortment of elevated vigilance and explores the Foucauldian notion of constant surveillance – both from outside and within – infiltrating even the smallest aspects of everyday life. Be it biometrics, border control, data mining that tracks our sleep, fitness, mood, menstrual cycles, and health to wearable technology, interactive clothing, the ‘non-human’ gaze, or artificial ‘metaverse’ environments wherein the experience of individualized emptiness takes centerstage. The chaotic nature of this void results in a deafening ‘no signal’ while the physical body thematizes surveillance and sousveillance as the site of both objectification, contestation, and resistance in a growing digital Panopticon. 

So the question remains... are you watching me, watching you?