Uterus Project

These are all examples of the floor plan and layout of a Panopticon. The design is still used in modern prisons. 

This is an example of Art VS Social Class. The art of the poor class. This was an original photo and concept of the queen of MySpace: Jeffree Star. This photo and concept was directly copied by renowned photographer Steven Klein.

Panopticon and Facebook

If you have a Facebook you have surrendered a certain amount of privacy/anonymity/individuality in order to socially collaborate on certain interests in your life. You are allowing access to the interests you display on the Internet. In the Panopticon you are constantly in view and could at all times be being watched. In the Panopticon there is nowhere to hide. With Facebook you can make specific choices on what you choose to hide from the public. If you don’t want people to see that you like a certain thing you don’t have to “Like” it. It is a surrender of a certain amount of freedom but you can have control of how much freedom you choose to surrender. Influences of the Panopticon are definitely visible in the heart and design of Facebook. Advertisers as well as the company have control over everything that is posted on the site and with that they are able to track our every move and respond in a way that benefits them. By collecting that data they have an influence on Facebook users by being very specific with what is advertised. There is a sense of control being held over us but we have surrendered to that control. We have the choice of how much is invested into the creation of our Facebook identity. It’s not a prison because we can escape it, at least for now. I guess it somewhat depends how far people will soon go to avoid feeling lonely.

The Voluntary Panopticon

To consider Facebook a structure similar to the Panopticon would seem to be a valid point. But “similar” would be as far as one could go in that argument. 
 

Because the Panopticon is based on the premise of there always being a chance that prisoners are being watched by an unidentifiable overseer, the supposed inmates would have to censor their own behavior every day at all hours. The concept of an overseer, or supervisor, is apparent in the Facebook world as well. However, because Facebook is a social networking site on which members can control whether they want to join, and what is displayed, posted, and visible on their profiles, the mystery of being watched and caught disappears.

If the Panopticon, for example, had a rule stating that inmates were not allowed to be in relationships with other inmates, hypothetical lovers would constantly be hiding in secrecy, knowing fully well that there was a high risk of getting caught. 

 Facebook also puts forth expected standards, which, if broken, will result in being reported or removed. In some cases, this can lead to a removal of one’s entire profile. These standards include behavior that can be seen as “unacceptable,” such as “violence and threats,” “hate speech,” and “nudity and pornography.” However, unlike the Panopticon, not every move of one’s life is recorded on Facebook. Therefore, a Facebook user can get into a fight, scream hate speech down the block, and engage in pornographic photo shoots, and by avoiding posting it on Facebook, not have any trouble with the supervisors.

This all comes down to the amount of control the person being watched has on what is visible to the viewer. The fact that inmates in the Panopticon cannot see or know about the overseer plays to the favor of surveillance. Every move an inmate makes will be carefully considered, along with potential consequences. Facebook, on the other hand, makes itself apparent in providing terms to users before they agree to the conditions. This leaves a fair amount of power to the members, as they can selectively censor their profiles.  

Katie Condon

The Panoptic Agreement

Michel Foucault when writing chapter three of his book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison must have certainly had some advanced knowledge of the Facebook apparatus. The way Facebook intersects with Foucault’s text seems too comparable, too suspiciously relevant to be coincidence. 

Foucault defines a “capillary functioning of power,” one that trickles down from the top to minute sectors of the everyday. The breadth of this capillary functioning of power can be accounted for in full. Blood circulates to the far reaches of our body, dividing as it moves further from the organs that are capable of distributing such power. Facebook is at the top of this sort of hierarchy. In fact, Facebook created this hierarchy. The Panopticon is an architectural system of surveillance and captivity marked by a central tower of observation (Facebook) that “arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immedietly.” These cells that the tower is able to observe constantly are the equivalent of a Facebook account and the profile page that is associated with it. The user, by activating their Facebook account has essentially stepped in to one of these cells surrounding the panoptic tower.

 Foucault claims that the Panopticon induces in the inmate “a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.” This idea speaks directly to the public persona that is embodied by Facebook’s users. The user’s image is broadcast unflinchingly in the way that their given information suggests. The “automatic functioning of power” can be read as: the image projected by the user, is exactly the truth that is recognized by the person (or system) watching. For Foucault the panopticon turned a prison from a “house of security” into a “house of certainty.” One is no longer on constant guard for behavioral regulation, as all behavior is recognized constantly and instantly. The whole can be extracted from the surface. In line with the success of surface projections, Foucault notes that the panoptic mechanism provides “perpetual victory that avoids physical confrontation.” This couldn’t be more relevant to Facebook. The perpetual victory is the idea that what the user says, how the user appears, is how they are seen by others outside of their own cell. A person can live vicariously through their online profile. Projecting an idealized version of the self while avoiding any real “physical confrontation.” In this sense, the panoptic mechanism is a tool. Perpetual surveillance is embraced for the benefits of a manicured self-image that the system affords. -Kevin Barrett Weil

Panopticon=Facebook

I don't have Facebook, I never have had one, but even the politics of the internet have really been exposed to everyone (even though it was never really hidden) that what is done on the internet will stay forever on the internet.  The idea of posting on a mandated site about everything your doing in your life never quite made sense.  So you can pretty much break Facebook down into a complete diagram of a panopticon:
First there's the idea that you are entering onto a site that is monitored.  Every post, every picture, ever tag is cataloged and even stamped for approval. 
Then you have the idea that everyone else could see what you are posting, friends, tagging, interests, etc. Facebook did try to enhance security, but the idea of it is a joke.  Most people add "friends" that are one time acquaintances or people they havent even met. Also, hacking is so huge right now, I can go onto Youtube and type hacking into Facebook and there are about 100,000 videos of the step by step process.
Next there is the idea of posting content to morph yourself into this alter ego personal, not only through your "profile" page, but the images you post and even down to the games that they have that embellish gaming renditions of house, if you will. 

The only difference between facebook and a panopticon is the blatant disregard of caring or maybe even the want or need to be objectifying your life or yourself to other people as if your are important enough for other people to actually care or want to know what you had for dinner.
The panopticon is at least a controlled situation that is taken out of your hands to change (enless you are the enforcer), whereas Facebook is a symbolization that control and having this all seeing eye is obviously no issue to anyone and yet people get freaked out by the idea that Google saves and actively screens what you are searching.

mcluhan model

via wiki:

In Laws of Media (1988), published posthumously by his son Eric, McLuhan summarized his ideas about media in a concise tetrad of media effects. The tetrad is a means of examining the effects on society of any technology (i.e., any medium) by dividing its effects into four categories and displaying them simultaneously. McLuhan designed the tetrad as a pedagogical tool, phrasing his laws as questions with which to consider any medium:

• What does the medium enhance?
• What does the medium make obsolete?
• What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier?
• What does the medium flip into when pushed to extremes?

The laws of the tetrad exist simultaneously, not successively or chronologically, and allow the questioner to explore the "grammar and syntax" of the "language" of media. McLuhan departs from his mentor Harold Innis in suggesting that a medium "overheats", or reverses into an opposing form, when taken to its extreme.^[18]
Visually, a tetrad can be depicted as four diamonds forming an X, with the name of a medium in the center. The two diamonds on the left of a tetrad are the Enhancement and Retrieval qualities of the medium, both Figure qualities. The two diamonds on the right of a tetrad are the Obsolescence and Reversal qualities, both Ground qualities.^[77]

A blank tetrad diagram

Using the example of radio:

• Enhancement (figure): What the medium amplifies or intensifies. Radio amplifies news and music via sound.
• Obsolescence (ground): What the medium drives out of prominence. Radio reduces the importance of print and the visual.
• Retrieval (figure): What the medium recovers which was previously lost. Radio returns the spoken word to the forefront.
• Reversal (ground): What the medium does when pushed to its limits. Acoustic radio flips into audio-visual TV.

Transubstantiation

Hey, everyone!

This is what I was trying to articulate when we were talking about cult objects:

Transubstantiation: "The miraculous change by which according to Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox dogma the eucharistic elements at their consecration become the body and blood of Christ while keeping only the appearances of bread and wine"
Also, somebody has done some rough math and figured out how big Jesus would have to be for his body and blood to be consumed through transubstantiation up until 2005: http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/transubstantiation.html

Steph Krim

A Short History of Photography and Modern Public and Photography

A Short History of Photography by Walter Benjamin 1931

Benjamin discusses the changes in social and psychological dynamics in society as it moves into a mass-media age. He explains that as mechanical reproduction progresses, the aura is disrupted.

Tone: expository, factual, anlaytical
Outline:

The original or authentic art

The camera vs. the eye: "optical unconscious"

The gaze before and after corruption of aura

The photographic process: slow, few options

Photo vs. painting: No photographer will ever be as great as a painter

Atget, surrealism

The aura is ruined by reproduction

Shooting the banal

Photography in politics, societal issues

Photo as art or art as photo?

Terms/names:
Paderewski: pianist
Paganini: violinist
Busoni: pianist
Atget: French street/architectural photographer; surrealist
aura: invisible radiation
physiognomy: face/character



The Modern Public and Photography by Charles Baudelaire, 1859

In this writing, Baudelaire is concerned with how creativity is affected by modernity. He believes that the popularity of photography will diminish the power and beauty of art.

Tone: sarcastic
Outline:

Titles vs. representation

Truth smothers beauty

Artists appeasing the audience

Wonder

Photo as art vs. art as photo

Talent vs laziness

Art becoming corrupt through photography

Photo should exist as the handmaid, memory aid, scientific tool

Terms:
Symbolist: rejected realism, late 19th century France. For spirituality and imagination.
Vaudevillist: theatrical amusing performance
Physick: mystery of medicine
Amour et gibelotte: Love and meat stew
Misanthropie et repentir: misanthropy and regret
Perfidious: deceitful
Tomfooleries: foolish behavior

fall parlor room lineup

Please keep an eye out for the fall Parlor Room poster and subsequent email announcements for details about lecture time and location.

All Parlor Room lectures are open to the public, so please forward this to any and all who might be interested.

September 24: Sina Najafi

October 11  : Walead Beshty 

October 15: Moyra Davey

November 8: Jay Prosser

atget's surrealism

wiki:

Eugène Atget (February 12, 1857 – August 4, 1927) was a French photographer noted for his photographs documenting the architecture and street scenes of Paris.

Organ Grinder (1898)

An inspiration for the surrealists and other artists, his work gained wide attention only after his death....

...The emptiness of most of his streets and the sometimes blurred figures in those with people are partly due to his already antiquated technique, including extended exposure times which required that many of his images be made in the early morning hours before pedestrians and traffic appeared.

The mechanical vignetting often seen at some corners of his photographs is due to his having repositioned the lens relative to the plate on the camera—exploiting one of the features of bellows view cameras as a way to correct perspective and control the image. He often said, "I have done little justice to the Great City of Paris", as a comment on his career.

aura ish

sherrie levine

from the Met's website:
In 1981, Levine photographed reproductions of Depression-era photographs by Walker Evans, such as this famous portrait of Allie Mae Burroughs, the wife of an Alabama sharecropper. The series, entitled After Walker Evans, became a landmark of postmodernism, both praised and attacked as a feminist hijacking of patriarchal authority, a critique of the commodification of art, and an elegy on the death of modernism. Far from a high-concept cheap shot, Levine's works from this series tell the story of our perpetually dashed hopes to create meaning, the inability to recapture the past, and our own lost illusions.

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claudia angelmaier

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Oliver Laric's Versions (video version)

Holly Myrick

I am Holly Myrick. I'm interested in photographing empty spaces were people have been but are not present in the moment I'm capturing. I also enjoy shooting architecture in odd ways. I like to make simple and easily recognizable objects somewhat confusing and distorted. I also enjoy people at unexpected moments.

Samantha Selin

I am interested in looking at the tensions between the tangible and the abstract through the exploration of nostalgia and memory. A lot of what I do is through investigations of process, tactility, and movement. I photograph to understand the concrete aspects of my experiences in relation to the intangible traces of my memories. 

Kara Peters

I am interested in photography as a narrative. The creation/destruction of the content is very much a part of my process. By creating more provocative work I am demanding a response immediately confronting the direct content of the photo, allowing underlying themes to become visible.  The idea of the visible/invisible is something that intrigues me and is a part of my work.