PanoptiBot: Defacement in the Surveillance Age

Accès

À propos

Panopticon

/pa’näpti’kän/

noun: a circular prison with cells arranged around a watchtower, from which prisoners could at all times be observed without knowing whether or not they are being watched.

The modern panopticon of surveillance capitalism is constantly watching us, drawing us in, and coercing us to make decisions we think are our own.

By tempting people to interact with our installation, we’re trying to show them how their everyday actions are recorded and used to deface the way they see themselves and the world.

Our installation, PanoptiBot, will be a series of giant robotic faces on free standing walls made of lights, monitors, mirrors, wires, and tubes.

Viewers will be able to engage with the CCTVs and monitors fixed to the faces touch-free and socially distanced.

The sculptures will look like beasts that became self-aware and assembled themselves from a pile of electronic waste (and will actually be constructed of recycled materials). This is meant to represent how the trappings of surveillance capitalism serendipitously united into a monster capable of mass manipulation.

It’s our hope to use the systems of surveillance capitalism to make people contemplate the hazards of engaging with it — while also giving them a striking digital keepsake of Nuit Blanche Winnipeg 2021.

Liens

• Toxic toxicart.ca

Organisateur

Illuminate the Night presents Toxic

We all put on a facade in one way or another. It’s simply not practical to be our true selves in every situation. We must both suppress and protect our egos with our own psychic armour.

With our work, we try to bring the inside out. Our layered creatures, beings that are not strictly organic or electronic, reveal tangled complications beneath their surfaces. By installing them directly on the streets of cities across the country, we try to get people to contemplate what they're hiding.

--- Each year, the "Illuminate the Night" open call is held for artists to propose pieces that will enthrall, excite and possibly introduce Winnipeggers to something they have never seen or experienced before at Nuit Blanche. Projects are selected by a jury of artists and art professionals and are featured in Winnipeg’s downtown core. ---