Documentary Practice - Surveillance Media

Surveillance Media

Surveillance is the act of observation or monitoring, usually of places, people, and activity, and typically without the subject's knowledge. Much of contemporary surveillance involves observation from a distance with the help of electronic devices, such as telephone tapping, directional microphones, covert listening devices or "bugs", subminiature cameras, closed-circuit television, GPS (Global Positioning System) tracking, electronic tagging, motion tracking, satellites, internet and computer surveillance.

Historically, surveillance has often been associated with governmental and other large organizational security practices. However, artists and activists have challenged those conventional practices. An early example is the film Empire, made by artist Andy Warhol in 1964. It consisted of an extreme long shot of the Empire State Building, held for eight hours in real time, challenging the boundaries of surveillance and watchability. More recently, scholars such as UCLA cinema professor Steve Mamber, have turned attention to the growing trend of using inexpensive, small cameras to unobtrusively record events of daily life. To examine hidden-camera video practices, in 2003 Mamber asked acquaintances if they or anyone they knew might have access to such footage, creating an online archive of the footage. Mamber described the growing practice as "both a widely pervasive activity and an oddly unexamined one." In response, he established the UCLA Center for Hidden Camera Research, another example of how emerging technologies are shifting documentary practice. (see External Links)

Another practice that has emerged out of the introduction of new surveillance technologies is "inverse surveillance", also known as Sousveillance. Launched in 2004, CARPE (Capture, Archival and Retrieval of Personal Experiences)is a project conceived with the idea of recording and archiving one's whole life. Some of the technologies developed within this project have become potential new tools of documentary practice. For example, the EyeTap, developed by University of Toronto Professor Steve Mann, presents itself as an ideal device for continuous and inconspicuous recording as well as inverse surveillance.

Some scholars assert that these new devices enable us to imagine a new form of citizenship (the "monitorial citizen") that hinges on documentary practices. This concept is illustrated by parents watching their small children at the community pool. They look inactive, but they are poised for action if action is required. The emphasis is not so much on information gathering as it is on keeping a watchful eye—even while the monitorial citizen is doing something else.

Projects such as The Canary Project’s photographic monitoring of global warming effects (see External Links) and the Center for Land Use Interpretation's Data Base of citizen-created documentation of land use practices exemplify the link between surveillance, emerging documentary practices and monitorial citizenship.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science, in partnership with Amnesty International, presents another example of how new media are allowing surveillance and documentary practices to inform each other. This partnership uses satellite imagery to help NGOs document atrocities in isolated crisis zones such as Darfur and Zimbabwe. By purchasing images from commercial satellites that correspond to mapping coordinates, NGOs are increasingly able to provide visual evidence of refugee camps and burned villages; events and activities that would be impossible to image without the satellite technology. (see External Links)