The Plays and Arts of Surveillance: Studying Surveillance as Entertainment

Abstract

This paper suggests a direction in the development of Surveillance Studies that goes beyond current attention for the caring, productive and enabling aspects of surveillance practices. That is, surveillance could be considered not just as positively protective, but even as a comical, playful, amusing, enjoyable practice. A number of recent trends suggest that there is a potential for unmistakable entertainment in the operation of a number of contemporary surveillance practices that merit further empirical and theoretical study. The paper discusses several examples that are illustrative of these trends, such as computer games and artistic presentations. Although this analysis does not downplay the problematic and negative features of current surveillance practices, it aims to accentuate some of the ways in which surveillance-enabling technologies are able to perform entertainment functions.

The Prum Regime: Situated Dis/Empowerment in Transnational DNA Profile Exchange

“…By under-exploring the empowering, productive, enabling, or even entertaining aspects of surveillance (for an exception: eg Albrechtslund and Dubbeld 2005), such case studies often fail to explain why some surveillance tools and practices are actively supported and adopted by those who are also affected by them. Because in such case studies surveillance technologies are merely seen as instruments through which power is exercised by some actors on others, surveillance is couched in the tradition of Foucault's relatively early work on disciplinary power (Foucault 1975;Paras 2006).…”

“…For example, in his illuminating chapter 'Tear down the walls: on demolishing the panopticon', sociologist Kevin Haggerty argued that 'important attributes of surveillance that cannot be neatly subsumed under the "panoptic" rubric have been neglected' (Haggerty 2006: 23). He noted that because the panoptic model directs our gaze to the oppressive dimensions of surveillance, it does not 'fit neatly within the preoccupations of [this model...] that surveillance can be experienced from both sides of the lens as "fun" or liberating' (Haggerty 2006: 28); such as in the case of computer games (Albrechtslund and Dubbeld 2005), social media, or the use of mobile phones. In a similar vein, David Lyon (1994; argued that surveillance is not solely oppressive but often has enabling and empowering effects as well (the 'Janus face' of surveillance; see also Dubbeld 2006).…”

Surveillance is Sexy

“…As with any work seeking to advance arguments about the political uses of sexualization or eorticization, there is a danger of getting mired in debates about, among other things, the 'effects' of sexualized and pornographic materials. In my analysis I have (sometimes hesitantly) positioned these materials and practices in the context of Albrechtslund and Dubbeld's (2005) call for work on 'playful' or 'entertaining' surveillance. But in positioning 'surveillance porn' as play or entertainment, and as part of the popular culture of surveillance, I am aware that alternative viewpoints would immediately contest such an upbeat analysis, and want instead to emphasize the harmfulness of pornography, and perhaps especially the increasing harms that new regimes of pornographic production, distribution and consumption propagate (Hearn, 2008).…”

“…The surveillance uses of new technologies, and the consolidation of a culture of surveillance in contemporary societies, have received a lot of attention, including some interesting work on playful or subversive approaches to 'surveillance society' (eg Albrechtslund and Dubbeld 2005;Koskela 2008;Monahan 2006), and a little on the potential for sexualizing surveillance -notably in the work of Hille Koskela who, in a series of articles, repeatedly and tantalizingly alludes to the potential sexualization of surveillance, though mostly by reference to its unauthorized voyeuristic deployment by CCTV camera operators (Koskela 2002(Koskela , 2003(Koskela , 2004(Koskela , 2008see also Hillier 1996). Where my approach will divert from Koskela's is in her conclusion that the desexualizing of exhibitionism as a form of political empowerment is the only strategy capable of subverting surveillance via hijacking exhibitionism.…”

Blowtooth: a provocative pervasive game for smuggling virtual drugs through real airport security

“…Blowtooth is specifically designed to exploit the affordances of international airports: environments in which people are subject to particularly high levels of intrusive surveillance and security monitoring, and that previous researchers have even identified as a place specifically unsuitable for pervasive games [11]. In everyday experience, high levels of surveillance can be both simultaneously thrilling and frightening; the possibility of harnessing these sensations in a game, or indeed any other art form, has great potential [1]. This paper, therefore, describes the application Blowtooth that has been developed to explore the limits of pervasive gaming in public spaces where constant surveillance has become the everyday norm [19].…”