#ctrlspace

ctrl [space] rhetorics of surveillance 

the sharply visualised panoptic space of contemporary culture is rapidly shifting towards a post-optic one in which observation is quickly giving way to information gathering systems, databases and the monitoring of biological and chemical agents. the implication of the subject as a no-way passive presence in a system of social regulation in which data collection - from flat-out panoptic monitoring to the emergence of biological and genetic surveillance is mined for profiles. this profiling will doubtless link every sort of civil, medical, financial or legal transaction into increasingly dense accumulations in which the discreteness of identity becomes embedded in the territorialisation of the self in networks, the primary form of media culture. in this networked information sphere, identity itself becomes an interface. it is an infrastructure that targets by insidious invisibility

addresses the need for biometric systems for safety reasons, due to ubiquitous paranoia. these biometric platforms enable the creation of an ‘invisible shield’. under this new rubric security, invisibility is a self-deception, in which vulnerability is implicit, and in which passivity is expected, the unremitting erosion of individual privacy comes face-to-face with a technical apparatus proposing identity as statistical 

existing and proposed surveillance strategies focus on physical threats, on tracking, on identity profiling, on data-mining and on providing prophylactic ‘shields’ that identify threats to material culture. an invisible spectacle

‘we continue to come up with ever more ingenious ways to transcend the limits of the flesh’