Course Description

Course List

MIT 3436G (Winter 2009)   Surveillance & Visual Culture

Course Description
This course explores techniques and technologies of surveillance (and their subversions) by ‘visualizing’ the relations between power, design, representation, and subjectivity. Historically, surveillance was visualized as the ominous and intrusive practices of government and corporate powers, but we now increasingly encounter surveillance in our everyday lives in ways that are also desirable, pleasurable, harmless, or invisible. This lecture course will explore visual media such as photography, video, film, and television, and visualizing media such as databases, the Internet, biometrics, RFIDs, geospatial technologies, and machine vision. We will investigate how these media and practices affect and construct notions of identity, class, race, sexuality, and pleasure, and we will question the erosion of boundaries between human/machine, enclosure/modulation, and privacy/publicity. Readings range from Michel Foucault, Anthony Giddens, Marshall McLuhan, Steve Mann, Paul Virilio, John Fiske, Gilles Deleuze, and Guy Debord, and screenings include works by Harun Farocki, the Surveillance Camera Players, David Cronenberg, Wodiczko Krzysztof, George Orwell, and the Situationists.

This course is no longer active. Please contact FIMS Undergraduate Student Services, fims@uwo.ca, for more information.



Top