Jacques Ranciere explores the relationship between a spectator watching a performance and the actors that are performing, but claims the role of a spectator to be paradoxical in his article “The Emancipated Spectator.” Although it is necessary to have spectators to put on a performance, Ranciere believes that being a spectator is a bad thing because it involves looking at a spectacle (Ranciere, 1).” This action is morally wrong because he believes that just looking is “the opposite of knowing… and the opposite of acting (Ranciere, 2).” This passive action is inexcusable and the spectator must be active instead of remaining captured. “The spectator is separated from the capacity of knowing just as he is separated from the possibility of acting (Ranceir, 3).” Therefore, Ranciere desires a theatre where the spectators are active and, similar to Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, pass the distinction of the spectator and actor to become a spect-actor. Until the spectator becomes completely involved in the performance by judging or engaging with the actors, the spectator will not be emancipated.
In Jaron Lanier’s “The Unbearable Thinness of Flatness”, Lanier speaks about how even though times have changed and technology has continued to accelerate, many things remain the same. This “flatness” in the digital world is caused because “the whole point of connected media technologies was that we were supposed to come up with new, amazing cultural expression (Lanier, 9)” instead of reverting back to the past. “In the pre-digital world, we already had all kinds of shlock you now find on the net (Lanier, 2).” Most of these materials have been “recycled” which has been causing problems for new media since no new leading technologies have emerged. Examples are of Wikipedia, which is basically just another encyclopedia with the difference is that it is digitally formatted, and Linux, which is only an update of its older version. The lack of innovation and originality has made new media bland, and software engineers are “stuck” in this realm of “flatness.”
The last article is of Michel Foucault’s “Panopticism”, which is based on a prison building Panopticon designed by Jeremy Bentham. In this area, prisoners are able to be constantly supervised without noticing due to a backlighting effect. Each of these prisoners are individually locked in their own cell, where supervisors can watch them though the wide-open windows. The purpose is “to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power (Foucalt, 5).” Foucalt relates this concept of panopticism to a governing idea behind a disciplinary society. This “invisible surveillance” can be used in multiple scenarios, whether it be a prison, school, workplace, or even an insane asylum. “The panoptic schema makes any apparatus of power more intense; it assures its efficacy by its preventative character, its continuous functioning and its automatic mechanisms (Foucalt, 9).”