Panopticism: Society and Surveillance

We had our first Lecture on the Panopticon, a theory of institutional power.  The lecture discussed both the work of Jeremy Bentam (1971) and Michael Foucault  (1926- 1984).  Foucault believed there had been a shift in power, that the emergence of forms of knowledge gave specialists a form of power, taking power away from those who traditionally held it, e.g a King or the church.  With these new developments in society individuals were made responsible for their own conformity, discipline began to be seen as a technology aimed at keeping society under surveillance.  Jeremy Bentam created the Panopticon, a way of holding prisoners completely different to traditional prisons whereby those deemed socially unproductive were locked away and hidden from view.  In the Panopticon they could always bee seen, studied and observed.

THE PANOPTICON:

The way the Panopticon was constructed with a central watch tower and individual cells spread out around it in a circular structure, allowed the inhabitants to always be seen without ever seeing.  The prisoner can never tell whether they are being observed or not so they are always completely subservient.    This allows for power to be constantly maintained by those watching.  The Panopticon “disindividualises power” (page 65) Those watching cannot be seen, they are recognized more as a force than as individuals, making them seem all the more in control that the prisoners.

The Panopticon is highly efficient; it reduces the need for numerous guards, as due to the individualization of inmates the normal issues with keeping numerous people deemed unfit for society do not apply.  The belief that there is someone unseen constantly watching them, leads to the inmate becoming “the principle of his own subjection” (page 66), eventually prisoners become so aware of the feeling that they are being watched there is no-one needed to watch them anymore, they begin to self regulate, through both fear and enforced obedience. It was thought to strengthen power, because it never had to intervene, by its design it did that, acting directly to affect individuals without any physical intervention being necessary.

The Panopticon was thought to be largely beneficial to science; it could be used almost as a laboratory.  The separation of inmates allowed them to be monitored and experimented on, both psychologically and physically.  Experiments were performed to test medicines, punishments, attempt to correct individuals, test aptitudes, asses characters and monitor various effects.  Numerous experiments were tried out even on children, teaching one child things commonly believed, whilst telling the other differently e.g the moon is made of cheese.  This according to scientists lead to some ground breaking conversations when the two individuals were bought together as adults and allowed to discuss.   These are some of the main reasons why the Panopticon was outlawed, due to being against human rights.

Julius said that the Panopticon was “to the modern age, to the ever growing influence of the state, to its ever more profound intervention in all the details and all the relations of social life.” This meant tht as society becomes more withdrawn within itself, and people become more private, structures of power such as the Panopticon could be used by the state to maintain a certain amount of control and understanding as to what is going on around us.  Julius also believes that  through power structures the individual is not suppressed rather “carefully fabricated”, whether this in fact any form of improvement can be left up to individual judgment. However I personally am not convinced that it is.

SOCIETY AND SURVEILLANCE:

There are numerous examples of how the Panopticon has influenced our society.  The phrase “Orwell was right” is a highly common phrase in our current social climate.  With numerous institutions watching individuals at all times, for safety, advertising and numerous other reasons.  One way in which our society has almost made light of this is through shows such as Big Brother, whereby contestants are constantly watched and experimented on, through a variety of weekly tasks and challenges either earning, a luxury shop or rations.  Similar to experiments undertook in the old Panopticon, whereby prisoners would be asked to perform a task and based upon, speed, efficiency and how well the job was done his pay would be decided upon.

The general feeling that our society is being watched, however, is not unfounded with security cameras on every street corner, and software that monitors our online activities.  Software called Lexicon has been developed that monitors our online conversations picks up on products that may interest us, our mood and also sells on this information to other companies. 

THE IPA:

Within the advertising industry also there is a certain amount of panoptic traits.  If you look at the IPA and their website these are evident.  Firstly to allow access to the site you must login with a username and password are needed, this highlights how you can be tracked and followed throughout the site, they can view what you have looked at, posted and the work you place on the site.  No part of the process remains anonymous.  The work you post on the site can be assessed for aptitude; the IPA Effectiveness Case studies similarly monitor this.   They also sell click throughs to advertising clients.  Monitoring what you click on, which links you choose to access, and what you choose to view during your time on their page.  This monitoring and reporting is a clear panoptic trait. The IPA is also largely involved with the government, with numerous links and projects involvement on their page, this government involvement was always a large influence on the Panopticon as it was the state wishing to be in control of the masses that lead to its creation.

Overall the Panopticon, despite having been outlawed due to its violation of human rights, still largely influences modern life.  Raising the question was Orwell right? Are we heading into a society where we are all watched and controlled or is this just another development leading to a more effective, efficient and safe society?

http://www.ipa.co.uk/

(Panopticism, Foucault)

The 7 Key Traits of Creative Teams.

1. Innovation emerges over time

Frequently when looking from the outside collaboration can’t be seen, it is an invisible collection of small, yet vital ideas that lead to the final innovation.  Each person creates a small part of the final idea, with their team taking this idea in a way that, individually a person may not have thought to take it.  This collaboration may not been visible without scientific analysis.  When the right ideas are combined in the right structure, collaboration can bring together successful innovation.

2. Successful Creative Teams Practice Deep Listening

It is important to collaborative creativity that you are able to listen and respond, not just think up your own ideas.  It is important that your creative minds work together, not just listen, then plough on with your own ideas.

3. Team Members Build on Their Collaborators’ Ideas

When Teams use deep listening their ideas are constantly being developed and taken further.  No person could have a great idea without being influenced by those around them, without being able to bounce your ideas of someone, there is no real opportunity for them to develop substantially.  The hard work of one person is no match for the hard work of many.

4. Only Afterwards Does The Meaning Of Each Idea Become Clear

No one person is solely responsible for an idea, because no idea can reach its full potential until its been interpreted by others.  An idea can’t take on meaning until its woven together with another, or built up by your creative peers.  When working within a creative team you must be willing to accept other people’s interpretation and development of your ideas or your idea will remain meaningless. 

5. Surprising Questions Emerge

The most creative results occur when a team either looks at an existing problem in a new way or finds a new question that needs solving.  This causes ideas to be transformed into questions and problems.  Creative research has proved that creative groups are more effective at finding new problems than solving old ones.

6. Innovation is Efficient

Improvised innovation is a good example of how innovation can be efficient.  It will allow you to come up with a vast number of ideas, often with more useless ideas than good ones.  But the good ideas can often turn out to be something really special, which will make up for or the failed ideas.  However, its not just the two extremes some are mediocre and will merely take some work to be developed into a really innovative ideas.  And at the end of the process when the bad ideas are discarded we are just left the innovation and none of the failure.

7. Innovation Emerges From The Bottom Up

Most creative teams are highly self sufficient, needing no guidance they can react to changes around them and also form of their own accord, creative people naturally joining together and producing a team.  The team transforms an individuals stroke of imagination into group innovation.  This is not a system that is preferred by most management teams as it creates an uncontrolled outcome, and is riskier and less efficient.  However, when successful the creative result is far greater than anything that could have been thought up by an individual.

(Group Genius, Keith Sawyer, Pages 14- 17)

Tony Kaye, a New Romantic?

Tony Kaye, an advertising man, an artist, a rebel and ultimately a creative.  He is the man behind of some of the most debated adverts of our time, as well as some of the most controversial art pieces.  Is he just determined to break all the rules or is he using old traditions of the art world to affect his modern work? And create pieces that produce controversy, inspiration and groundbreaking movements within industries across the board.

He has a substantial body of work across both the advertising and art industries.  The diversity of his cultural production, moves fluidly between the disciplines, in a way that seems entirely post modern.  His work visualizes what the majority couldn’t even begin to dream up, with a consistent aesthetic addressing more than most would dare, in a manner more readily associated with the art industry than that of advertising.

A Romantics view of art is just that, romantic, choosing to follow the heart rather than the head.  In contrast to the traditional art practices, whose origins steam back to the Ancient Greeks and Egyptians, and were highly structured with certain rules.  Romanticism is largely self-fulfilling, Kaye is a good representation of the Romantic rebel, striking out against the rules, producing work that values originality, and expresses a subjective viewpoint.  Kaye’s resistance to institutional control is evident in all of his work. He believes there to be a large distinction between his two separate bodies of work, claiming his art is a pure activity, whereas his advertising is contaminated.  This is in keeping with the quintessentially romantic notion that an artist is an agent of feeling or imagination, as opposed to the commercial or applied artist who is compromised by a client or market. 

The perception of Kaye within the advertising industry is “of a creative who is able to call tune and who produces advertisements that display particular vision and transcend the constraints of the product” (Art & Advertising, Joan Gibbons,Page 98,)

One good example of this is his advert ‘Unexpected’, for Dunlop in 1994:

In this advert Kaye shows he is not afraid to disorientate the viewer by entering strange, threatening and even uncanny territory when producing/ directing advertisements.  This example, demonstrates a sensory overload characterized by the unusual visuals (created by layering artificial colour over black and white visuals) coupled with a quasi-hypnotic soundtrack,  (Velvet Underground - Venus in Furs) This created a fantastical world, exhibiting a mix of things which both un-nerve and intrigue the viewer at the same time, ultimately drawing them in.  This advert demonstrated a majority of the four motifs, which underpin the Romantic Movement; expanding the bounds of experience, the unpredictability of life and a loss of innocence. 

Another key example of this would be his advert ‘Twister’ for Volvo in 1996:

This opens with a visual of two foreboding landscapes, with dramatically lit skies, playing on the belief that nature reflects human emotion.  It progresses with the vast cyclone moving through landscapes we presumed could withstand anything, in particular a visual of an aged tree being ripped from the ground, as though it were nothing more than a piece of litter dropped that day, has a particularly profound impact, as we realize the sheer strength and power of what we are being shown.  Once again he uses image manipulation and sound to create a mood and emotion for his work.  And once again this work demonstrates a majority of the four underpinning motifs of the Romantic Movement; man vs nature, the unpredictability of life and the loss of innocence. 

Both adverts show just a few of these underpinning motifs but with a highly evident influence from one of the main theories behind Romanticism, the theory of the sublime.  A theory created by an 18^th century German philosopher, Kant, who identifies the sublime as an aesthetic quality, similar to beauty but subjective.  Referring to an indeterminate relationship between imagination and reason.  This theory of the sublime being something that’s overwhelming but exciting can be seen to have largely influenced both of these advertisements. 

These examples show how the Romantic Movement has heavily influenced Tony Kayes work and is embedded with what he produces, whilst also clearly demonstrating that all arts are fluid and what is relevant in one, is relevant in another and everything is influenced not just by what comes before it, but by what is happening all around it, not just art practices but also with more academic movements.

Personally despite all the examples of Tony Kaye’s work being largely influenced by the Romantic Movement, I would not say he was a Romantic, anymore than I would say he is a post-modernist.  He is a man who appreciates the evolution of the artistic movement and allows it to weave itself into his work influencing and developing it.  However, he creates pieces, in a variety of different art practices, which can only be described as thoroughly individual and perhaps, the beginnings of a movement in their own right.

(Art & Advertising, Joan Gibbons, Chapter 5 Tony Kaye)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-aesthetics/#2.7

Strategy: Unilever and Knorr

This advert was not one I had seen before but I felt this only made me want to analyse the strategy behind it more.  With Unilever being an international company it is no surprise that ads are targeted specifically at individual countries.  This specific advert is targeted at the Vietnamese population, at a significant time in their calendar Tet, Lunar New Year, in a similar way to how the British population receives numerous specifically targeted adverts at Christmas time, each year.

This advert would definitely be described as using a High Feeling/ Low Thinking strategy.  The advert plays on the feeling of togetherness created at this time of year, using people’s emotions to draw them to the brand.  The imagery of every person in the country experiencing the phenomenon created by a postcard sent from mother to son, and everyone being a part of it, and the recipient seeing it in the street before he even realizes the message is meant for him, is highly poignant.  The feeling of togetherness is not just within his family when all are reunited at the end of the advert but within the entire country as it reminds everyone what this time of year is all about.  It would be described as High Feeling/ Low Thinking, because it uses peoples emotions to draw them to the brand, it doesn’t say this product is the better brand for you to be cooking with, it just creates an emotion within the public that makes them want to buy it, without thinking too much into it. 

They use the endline “Every meal is an opportunity”, this adds to the effect described above, and creates a ‘soma’,(The Advertised Mind, Eric Du Plessis) a split second decision, whereby the target audience gains an overall positive or negative emotion about the product.  In this case it is definitely positive, creating a feeling of unity and togetherness, which will henceforth be associated with the brand.