Sunday, 27 March 2011
Saturday, 12 March 2011
Friday, 11 March 2011
Panopticism.
Michel Foucault's social theory that developed from Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon prison, designed for supervision of all inmates from one central point. Inmates in such prisons could not see the watcher, but were aware of his/her presence, this in turn effects behaviour.
Foucault claims that this is reflective of modern day society, the state or government keeping their population under surveillance - with new technologies enabling near on 300 pictures of our faces on a daily basis, this theory has never been more pertinent than now. We are constantly reminded of the dangers that lurk and that if we see anything that "doesn't fit with normal day-to-day life" that we must report it immediately to the Police. In particular, the anti-terrorist squad. We have turned against ourselves, from being so aware of our own behaviour through implied constraints, placed there by unseen forces, we have become obsessed with everyone else's behaviour too.
We watch our neighbours and comment on every movement they make, we trust no one. Except our ever loving, ever caring government and it's 'love police'. They are the ones that protect us, they are the one's that want to keep madness at bay and trouble away.
I just find it hard to comprehend that this is the way a huge majority of us live our lives, we're constantly being scared by words, albeit extremely clever words, but still, they're just letters strung together. Visual imagery is a powerful source of manipulation, posters stating things like "KEEP BRITAIN SAFE" instantly implies that we're not safe, nothing is safe unless we're all watching with our beady eyes keeping a check on all things untoward. (Art is manipulation, but that one's Tom Abrams).
Independent thought is slowly dying out, within the next 2 or 3 generations books will become a thing of the past, it's not 'cool' to read or have an education, it's cool to watch x-factor and talk about how blah-blah is a bitch because she OMG LYK TOTALLY slagged off yadder-yadder. Entertainment is so huge right now, NOT TO BE MISSED tv shows, and THE BEST THING ON TV reality shows where "celebrities" do things like eat a leaf. OH NO. Who goes?! YOU decide, look how we're letting you in on our not-at-all-rigged TV show, look how apart of this YOU are. You can be one of these people too, you can take a quiz on facebook and FIND OUT WHICH PUSSY CAT DOLL YOU ARE!!! OMG AMAZINGGGGG.
And you can ultimately spend your life floating from identity to identity, all with a little help from Primark, or Primarni, as we like to call it, cause YEAH lol. we like HIGH FASHION for like £2. AND it only took one 6 year old girl 12 hours to make this.
Okay, i'm not beefing at Primark, they do what they do, and they do apparently have fair trade.
Back to my point, independent thought is threatening - reading develops cognitive ability, we learn to be critical and we learn to analyse and form opinions from an analytical point of view and this is something very beautiful. Surely you would want this from your people? Surely the world would be a much better place if people had their own thoughts and opinions and didn't download their identities from urbanoutfitters.co.uk? You'd think so, but whilst we're on the subject, the fact that Arts & Humanities have been cut with the latest 'ohnoes we need to save da muniz' funding escapade, free thought is looking pretty grim.
I'm not saying we're all going to turn into cabbages over night, but it seems like we're slowly getting deeper and deeper into an extremely painful conditioning process. I admit, I don't sit at home reading the complete works of Wordsworth or drowning in socialist literature. I'm a contradiction, i'm typing this on a fucking macbook, for christs sake. But thats my point - there's no escape from it.
I'm just confused about how absolutely hysterical everything actually is?
Foucault claims that this is reflective of modern day society, the state or government keeping their population under surveillance - with new technologies enabling near on 300 pictures of our faces on a daily basis, this theory has never been more pertinent than now. We are constantly reminded of the dangers that lurk and that if we see anything that "doesn't fit with normal day-to-day life" that we must report it immediately to the Police. In particular, the anti-terrorist squad. We have turned against ourselves, from being so aware of our own behaviour through implied constraints, placed there by unseen forces, we have become obsessed with everyone else's behaviour too.
We watch our neighbours and comment on every movement they make, we trust no one. Except our ever loving, ever caring government and it's 'love police'. They are the ones that protect us, they are the one's that want to keep madness at bay and trouble away.
I just find it hard to comprehend that this is the way a huge majority of us live our lives, we're constantly being scared by words, albeit extremely clever words, but still, they're just letters strung together. Visual imagery is a powerful source of manipulation, posters stating things like "KEEP BRITAIN SAFE" instantly implies that we're not safe, nothing is safe unless we're all watching with our beady eyes keeping a check on all things untoward. (Art is manipulation, but that one's Tom Abrams).
Independent thought is slowly dying out, within the next 2 or 3 generations books will become a thing of the past, it's not 'cool' to read or have an education, it's cool to watch x-factor and talk about how blah-blah is a bitch because she OMG LYK TOTALLY slagged off yadder-yadder. Entertainment is so huge right now, NOT TO BE MISSED tv shows, and THE BEST THING ON TV reality shows where "celebrities" do things like eat a leaf. OH NO. Who goes?! YOU decide, look how we're letting you in on our not-at-all-rigged TV show, look how apart of this YOU are. You can be one of these people too, you can take a quiz on facebook and FIND OUT WHICH PUSSY CAT DOLL YOU ARE!!! OMG AMAZINGGGGG.
And you can ultimately spend your life floating from identity to identity, all with a little help from Primark, or Primarni, as we like to call it, cause YEAH lol. we like HIGH FASHION for like £2. AND it only took one 6 year old girl 12 hours to make this.
Okay, i'm not beefing at Primark, they do what they do, and they do apparently have fair trade.
Back to my point, independent thought is threatening - reading develops cognitive ability, we learn to be critical and we learn to analyse and form opinions from an analytical point of view and this is something very beautiful. Surely you would want this from your people? Surely the world would be a much better place if people had their own thoughts and opinions and didn't download their identities from urbanoutfitters.co.uk? You'd think so, but whilst we're on the subject, the fact that Arts & Humanities have been cut with the latest 'ohnoes we need to save da muniz' funding escapade, free thought is looking pretty grim.
I'm not saying we're all going to turn into cabbages over night, but it seems like we're slowly getting deeper and deeper into an extremely painful conditioning process. I admit, I don't sit at home reading the complete works of Wordsworth or drowning in socialist literature. I'm a contradiction, i'm typing this on a fucking macbook, for christs sake. But thats my point - there's no escape from it.
I'm just confused about how absolutely hysterical everything actually is?
Monetary value?
What happened to i'll bring the bread, you bring the butter? The age old tradition of trade, thats what I like.
This little beauty is a stamping machine, all thanks to the wonderful Roger Berry.
If the till roll doesn't run out, and neither does the ink, how do we attach some kind of value to this stamp?
Do we ever really think about value anymore? Do we think about the way this will effect our lives, or how beneficial it is going to be to us?
We don't generally have to make these choices, it's made for us. A fixed price, and we only have to decide whether or not to buy, if we were faced with this choice, how much would it say about us?
Sunday, 6 March 2011
Friday, 4 March 2011
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