1. Introduction& Background
1.1 Introduction
Last year, I came across the scripts of Cory Doctorow’s keynote speech at the 2011 SIGGRAPH conference, where he declared that we modern humans “copy like we breath” and predicted that copying is becoming easier. (Huff, 2017) During the period of proving whether his statement is right, I encountered The Pirate Cinema, which could be a typical and persuasive example showing the copying process always running on the Internet without stopping for a second. However, one more interesting subject is that the artwork itself is a surveillance system operating all the time and making the hidden law-breaking copying visible, which might lower the copy freedom. In the essay, how stakeholders surveil one another and also interplay with The Pirate Cinema and whether the copying should be liberalized would be discussed.
1.2 Background
The Pirate Cinema is created by Nicolas Maigret andBrendan Howell. And there are two versions, one is “VIDEO INSTALLATION VERSION” (Fig.1) and the other is “LIVE PERFORMANCE VERSION” (Fig.2).
Fig. 1 VIDEOINSTALLATION VERSION (Source:thepiratecinema.com)
Fig. 2 LIVE PERFORMANCE VERSION (Source:thepiratecinema.com)
The former one is on-the-spot installation art like “a monitoring room, making hidden activity and geography of real-time P2P transfers on networks visible and depicting uncontrolled digital content dissemination in a connected world.” (Fig.3) (thepiratecinema.com) The latter one is an online video channel where every audience can enjoy freely as long as (s)he has an electronic device access to the official website of The Pirate Cinema.
Fig.3 Geography of real-time P2P transfers on networks
(Source:thepiratecinema.com)
Additionally, in the artwork, the intercepted information is mainly from the pirated videos being downloaded from The Pirate Bay at that moment. (we-make-money-not-art.com & cnbeta.com) Some backstage fabrication of how Maigret had access to the data was detailed in Torrent Freak: “Somewhere in a datacenter in Austria there's a dedicated machine that has only one mission: download and share the 100 most popular files on Bit Torrent (Fig.4) and turn these bits and pieces into apiece of art.” (Ernesto, 2015)
Fig.4 The first 19 of the 100 most popular files from The Pirate Bay
(Source:thepiratecinema.com)
2. ViewerSociety- Synopticon & Panopticon
Mathiesen (1997) proposed that “we areliving in a viewer society”, since a pervasive obsession with the act of watching has something to do with both Synopticon and Panopticon. (qtd. in Steve,2017) The two parts below are discussing the relationship between the surveillant and the surveilled (i.e. who controls whom by virtue of watching power) within the artwork.
2.1 The Panoptic Gaze
2.1.1 1st. Relation is between Creators & P2P Users
As the creators, Maigret and Brendan are the chief controllers who master the surveillance work to monitor which kind of copy righted movies are downloaded by the internet users and where the cinema is downloaded from and where they are going to be shared. All these data including geographical locations are also designed to be represented on the screen. (Fig. 5) And what’s more, they can decide whether the systems continually capture themost popular 50 torrents downloading or top 100. They just like the guards inthe panopticon who can observe what criminals are doing while cannot bewatched. This is extremely alike the P2P users downloading copyrighted workswithout paying who are under surveillance but know nothing about it.
Fig. 5 Users’ IP addresses are shown atthe top of the screen
(Source:thepiratecinema.com)
2.1.2 2nd. Relation is between On-spot Audience & P2P Users
Apart from the designers, the audience whovisit the exhibition standing in front of the screen and “appreciate” the workcan be another role conducting surveillance process, monitoring how the piratedmaterials dealt with by the users. Although the audience surveilling people arenot as powerful as the designers, it cannot be denied that they areparticipating in the surveillance system and becoming to be situated in thedominant position through their gazes, “reducing the rights of the watched” oneswho even don’t realize they are under monitor at that moment. (Lyon, 2006)
2.2 The Synoptic Gaze
Apart from "the few watching the many" (Panopticon), an environment where "the many watching the few" (Synopticon) has been enabled by the mass media at present. (Steve, 2017) There are two relations of the Synoptic Gaze existing in the online version of this surveillance art, which look interesting thus it would be explored in this part.
2.2.1 1st.Relation is between Online Audience & P2P Users
The Pirate Cinema is not only uploaded on the Internetas a recording version but also broadcasted as a real-time version. From thisperspective, the behaviors of the P2P users are totally exposed to visitors.Although the P2P users constitute of a big pirate community, to some extent, theyare still less than the watching group formed all through the whole world. Therule-breakers are under visitors’ indirect surveillance and the surveillantscan conduct the act of looking just with a click on the “Play” button on thewebsite whenever they like, after which they watch the composition of results the community brings as though watch a TV program.
2.2.2 2nd. Relation is between Audience & Creators
In addition to the monitoring of the above privacy offenders, the second is concerned about the artists’ actions which are also uncovered indirectly. Even though the position of the designers seems extremely dominant and powerful, the looking relationship between them and audience is not completely imbalanced, because whether Maigret and Brendan use the data and fragmented scenes collected from the torrent file sharing process to invade the P2P users’ privacy and offend the laws is not absolutely masked but also undergoing the netizens’ online examination. This could be another example of Synopticon represented in this artwork, which richly and further gives grounds for the discussion of its relations with the Panoptic Gaze.
3. Voyeurism
Both the Panoptic Gaze and the SynopticGaze are fueled by a desire to look, which film theorists like Christian Metz(1982) name “Scopophilia,” or the love of watching. (qtd. in Lyon, 2006) Thefragmented film collages are captured and then rearranged into a continualseries of Mosaic-like scenes, to some extent, an original and unexpected moviecomes out. As Norman Denzin (1995) states as a“voyeur’s gaze” is one way to understand the “cinematic society” that revealsthe voyeuristic desire to look. (qtd. in Lyon, 2007) Thus, when watching thenew cinema, the audiences share theroles of “voyeurism”. (Lyon, 2007)
3.1 Audience’s Obsessive Gaze at the surveillance art
The fascinating Pirate Cinema seduces the audience not to stop watching, which is associatedwith Freud’s theory (1999) - out of curiosity is one cause of objectifyingothers (indirectly included) through the gaze. (qtd. in Albrechtslund, 2008) Justimagine when we travel to the specially-designed monitor room and immerseourselves in the visual torrent-file-exchanging world, accompanying with theintermittent and abrupt sound of the captured frames. Even if the rearrangedcinema seems chaotic and crazy, it inevitably turns into more attractive one.The unknown and unpredictable objects and the curiosity they evoke alwaystantalize audience to keep watching, and The Pirate Cinema is exactly such sort of examples. No matter whether we areappreciating the installation on the spot like at the Sight + Sound festival inMontreal or just sitting in front of the screen to watch the 24-hour onlinelive cinema, we are highly likely to be obsessive about the uncontrolled and amazed results, expecting about what kind of images and sounds would burst into our eyes and ears and what surprises occurring next second.
Apart from mere curiosity, the formation of the ego is also facilitated by the“curious gazing” at other people, which is relevant to Lacanian “mirror stage”(1977) and revealed in the interaction among all the participants of The Pirate Cinema. The tracked filmscenes and sounds would remind the audience of what popular audio-visualcultural products (TV show, porn, music video, etc.) others are pursuing, additionally, the geographical information of the origins of files and the destinations isconstantly notice the watchers whether they are part of the surveilled whofrequently use peer-to-peer to exchange files (or infringe copyrights) and what categories of files they received or sent out can be monitored.
3.2 Creators’ Obsessive Gaze at the surveillance art
As the master of the surveillance artwork as well as control system, Maigret and Brendan themselves are also the audience. While they are evaluating their own achievement, the similar sense of curiosity would make difference in leadingthem to the unexplored and amazing virtual cinema world. Then almost the same consequence that they cannot stop themselves from watching would produce.
Seemingly, it is true that the two creators are absolute dominators of the surveillance system, however, they are trapped into the object created by themselves as well. In Lyon’s mind (2006), “the more that can be seen, the more we want to see”, which is reflected in Maigret and Brendan’s improvement and extensionfrom the short-lived “VIDEO INSTALLATION VERSION” to the long-term “LIVE PERFORMANCE VERSION”. Different from the former version intercepting the most viewed torrents in transit then discarding them after immediately projected on the screen, the latter one is an instrument in essence, carrying out the performance of downloading a selection of torrents and “producing specific temporal and formal structures”, which lasts the total quantity of time required to download a set of files. (thepiratecinema.com) From this, it is obvious that not only the number of data captured but also the amount of time to display the surveillance artwork monitoring the pirated files sharing have increased.
4. Discussion & Conclusion
The above analysis of the gazerelationships inThe Pirate Cinema further confirm that we are situated in the viewer society and surrounded by Synopticand Panoptic Gazes, “both of which are part of a larger surveillance assemblage”. (Steve, 2017) As Maigret said, from a broader perspective, their surveillance art “could (also) be quickly tracked by authorities or copyright trolls” while performing the surveillance on the torrent traffic. (Watercutter, 2013)
Through the artwork, it can be seen that even though in the current situation where we’re surveilled, people are still resolutely pirating. Activated by the voracity of human nature, men’s morality and consciousness are unable or impossible to be promoted to a high level synchronously. If only asserting copy freedom can inspire creativity without considering surveillance and control, who can ensure that the chase for maximum individual freedom of duplication wouldn’t touch off extensive plagiarism, harm the living of creators and undermine the whole society’s enthusiasm to create? (ZHU (myself), 2016)
However, this does not mean humans should be under strict surveillance and the copy freedom should be restricted. If humans lose liberty to do whatever we like, this could drive us crazy and push us toward death. The depressive atmosphere and depressed emotions would destroy our creativity as well, since we cannot relax and release our real nature, feeling we are controlled all the time. Therefore, appropriate copying activities, like production software downloading and authorized P2P file exchanging, express humans’ pursuit of freedom, which might spark various creative thoughts.
All in all, there is nothing absolutely good or bad in the world, and the surveillance is no exception. The balance of the freedom and the surveillance should be well-considered and attentively coped with.
References
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