Flatness,Spectatorship, and Panopticism.
Flatness,Spectatorship, and Panopticism
In Jaron Lanier’s writing he describes the web to of taken on a sort of “flatness”. He describes this flatness as not meeting the expectations of using the web and creativity to generate new ideas and works. As he puts it, “the online culture is fixated on the world as it was before the web was born” (Lanier, 4). Lanier believes the web was created to explore new concepts and take on a culture of its own, yet it has done the exact opposite. Lanier uses music as an example of this. The last distinct form of music created was hip-hop and this was created long before the web. From this example Lanier states that since the era in which the web was created people have been less creative. People use the web as a medium to discuss old media, for example commenting on entertainment from the past. In other words, the web is a “petty up of preweb culture” (Lanier, 9). Lanier describes "flatness" as the lack of creativity to explore and create new ideas and projects since the era of the web.
Ranier believes that theater now a days “involves spectatorship and that spectator ship is a bad thing” (Ranier, 3). He believes this because a spectator is ignorant; they don’t know or live, they simply look. He proposes that we reform theater by eliminating these spectators. In other words, we have to create a theater where viewers “learn and become active participants in a collective performance instead of being passive viewers” (Ranier, 3.) In order to do this, spectators have the difficult job of crossing the lines between being actively and passively participating. As Ranier puts it, the theater “should call for spectators who are active interpreters, who render their own translation, who appropriate the story for themselves, and who ultimately make their own story out of it” (Ranier, 11). In summary, the theater should be reformed so that spectators become both storytellers and translators.
Foucault discusses Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon. This is basically idea that there is a tower within a building and at the center it is possible to see prisoners being held within. In this situation, every individual is trapped with no means communication. The point of this was that power should be visible yet unverifiable. Foucault states that the means of this is “to strengthen the social forces - to increase production, to develop the economy, spread education, raise the level of public morality; to increase and multiply” (Foucault, 9). An example of this can be how we are always being watched on the internet. Although there is not a direct power that we can see, they are watching, influencing, and trying to control us by constantly bombarding us with advertisements and ideas that they have observed us taking an interest in.
Foucault, Ranier, Lanier all discuss how technology has altered our society's political, economical, and social roots in art. Lanier's concept of "spectatorship" could recreate new media art and destroy Lanier's concepts of "flatness" in art today. To create new art, and destroy "flatness" everyone, including the audience, has to take action. Foucault's ideas can stimulate everyones creativity by making them obligated to do their tasks.
