CTRL [SPACE]: Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother [Hardcover]

Thomas Y. Levin (Editor), Ursula Frohne (Editor), Peter Weibel (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 2002

This book investigates the state of panoptic art at a time when issues of security and civil liberties are on many people's minds. Traditional imaging and tracking systems have given way to infinitely more powerful "dataveillance" technologies, as an evolving arsenal of surrogate eyes and ears in our society shifts its focus from military to domestic space. Taking as its point of departure an architectural drawing by Jeremy Bentham that became the model for an entire social regime, CTRL [SPACE] looks at the shifting relationships between design and power, imaging and oppression, from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries.

From the photographs taken with hidden cameras by Walker Evans and Paul Strand in the early twentieth century to the appropriation of military satellite technology by Marko Peljhan a hundred years later, the works of a wide range of artists have explored the dynamics of watching and being watched. The artists whose panoptical preoccupations are featured include, among others, Sophie Calle, Diller + Scofidio, Dan Graham, Pierre Huyghe, Michael Klier, Rem Koolhaas, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Thomas Ruff, Julia Scher, Andy Warhol, and Peter Weibel. This book, along with the exhibition it accompanies, is the first state-of-the-art survey of panopticism—in digital culture, architecture, television, video, cinema, painting, photography, conceptual art, installation work, robotics, and satellite imaging.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Published in conjunction with an exhibition at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, this timely catalog of the emerging genre of surveillance art is the first to compile critical essays discussing the history of surveillance, dating from Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon in 1787 to the present. The catalog includes many well-known Western artists and offers exposure to some who are lesser known. Curator and coeditor Levin has gathered a mixture of important original and previously published essays by some of the most respected postmodern theorists in this collection, among them Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Victor Burgin, and Slavoj Zizek. The layout mirrors the sensibility of the exhibit but is distracting, with overlapping type that can actually make reading the book difficult. This mammoth catalog includes biographies of the artists and authors, 950 illustrations (350 in color), and an exhibition checklist. Recommended for academic libraries with contemporary art collections.
Krista Ivy, California State Univ., San Bernardino
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"CTRL [SPACE] is resonant reading... [a] weaving together of artistic projects and critical texts."
— Foster, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"The essays are superb, but as you might expect, it's the images that'll blow you away."
— Angela Gunn, Time Out New York

"This timely catalog... is the first to compile critical essays discussing the history of surveillance."
— Krista Ivy, Library Journal

"The range and scope of this catalogue is extraordinary... an intellectually stimulating and visually engaging publication."
— Katie Mondlock, PhD, CAA

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 665 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; First Edition edition (May 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262621657
• ISBN-13: 978-0262621656
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #636,460 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful and Useful, November 2, 2002

By 

flying-monkey (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: CTRL [SPACE]: Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother (Hardcover)

Have you ever wanted a book that not only informs and educates you about surveillance and social control, but also offers you visual examples and responses from a varied and unusual selection of academics, journalists, artists, film-makers and more? I may be unusual, but I know I have!

CTRL [SPACE] offers not only new artwork and new articles from important researchers and theorists like Lev Manovich and Peter Weibel, including a fascinating piece on the links between the eye of God and modern surveillance by Astrid Schmidt-Burkhardt, but also: reprints of classic pieces from the likes of Foucault, Virilio, Deleuze, extracts of work on the cold war and computing by Paul Edwards and top-class investigative journalism on the NSA's Echelon system by Duncan Campbell, descriptions of efforts to resist surveillance from groups like the Surveillance Camera Players and the Institute for Applied Autonomy, and reconsiderations of both artistic, architectural and philosophical contributions to surveillance theory from Bentham to Warhol and Yoko Ono.

Although, it features almost no contemporary work from the field of surveillance studies (David Lyon, Gary Marx, Clive Norris et al.) it is a combination of sourcebook and idiosyncratic lucky-dip of contemporary surveillance discourses. This book is MIT Press at its best: it is beautifully-produced and does full justice to the work of the artists and commentators featured in the exhibition upon which it is based. The only slightly irritating feature about its otherwise admirable design is the use of intertextual footnotes in light grey, which are sometimes hard to read.

Altogether - recommended and worth it even at this price.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Watching and Being Watched, March 14, 2004

By 

roy christopher "frontwheeldrivedotcom" (Portland, OR, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: CTRL [SPACE]: Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother (Hardcover)

They're everywhere: tiny cameras, webcams, security cameras... video-capturing devices are almost as ubiquitous as the banner ads for them: "Watch anyone, anytime." We're all stuck somewhere between reality TV and a TV reality. Following the panopticon from an eighteenth century architectural drawing by Jeremy Bentham to the pervasive surveillance of the twenty-first century, CTRL [SPACE] is a comprehensive history of watching and being watched.

This massive tome includes writings by such luminaries as Steve Mann ("Reflectionism" and "Diffusionism": New Tactics for Deconstructing the Video Surveillance Superhighway), McKenzie Wark (To the Vector the Spoils), Lev Manovich (Modern Surveillance Machines: Perspective, Radar, 3-D Computer Graphics, and Computer Vision) and Timothy Druckrey (Secret Agents, Security Leaks Immune Systems, Spore Wars...), as well as philosophers like Michel Foucault (The Eye of Power: A Conversation with Jean-Pierre Barou and Michelle Perrot), Paul Virilio (The Visual Crash), Jean Baudrillard (Telemorphosis) and Gilles Deleuze (Postscript on Control Societies). CTRL [SPACE] also includes full-color photographs of the work of many artists preoccupied by the spread of the panopticon: Sophie Calle, Diller + Scofidio, Dan Graham, Pierre Huyghe, Michael Klier, Rem Koolhaas, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Thomas Ruff, Julia Scher, Andy Warhol and Peter Weibel, among others.

CTRL [SPACE] represents the first state-of-the-art survey of panopticism--in digital culture, architecture, television, video, cinema, painting, photography, conceptual art, installation work, robotics and satellite imaging. It is truly a required text for those watching and those being watched.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Rhetorics of Surveillance: Good Book, Bad Layout., March 26, 2003

By 

Jon (Sac Town) - See all my reviews

This review is from: CTRL [SPACE]: Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother (Hardcover)

its got it all. this book has a wide collection of wonderful text on the history, use, politics, future, and concepts of surveilence. its like a text book, but its not. the only complaint i have is the foot notes are in the middle of the pages in a ligher font and it makes it kind of hard to read the actual text on the page. and they have these red lines all over the place in the background of the text. good book, bad layout.