eBook

Loving big brother : performance, privacy and surveillance space

McGrath, John E. (John Edward)

2004

Overview

In Loving Big Brotherthe author tackles head on the overstated claims of the crime-prevention and anti-terrorism lobbies. But he also argues that we desire and enjoy surveillance, and that, if we can understand why this is, we may transform the effect it has on our lives. This book looks at a wide range of performance and visual artists, at popular TV shows and movies, and at our day-to-day encounters with surveillance, rooting its arguments in an accessible reading of cultural theory. Constant scrutiny by surveillance cameras is usually seen as - at best - an invasion of privacy, and at worst an infringement of human rights. But in this radical new account of the uses of surveillance in art, performance and popular culture, John E McGrath sets out a surprizing alternative: a world where we have much to gain from the experience of being watched. This iconoclastic book develops a notion of surveillance space - somewhere beyond the public and the private, somewhere we will all soon live. It's a place we're just beginning to understand.

• Publisher: Routledge
• Subject: Electronic surveillance / Electronic surveillance -- Social aspects / Electronics in crime prevention -- Social aspects / Performance art / Popular culture / Privacy, Right of / Reality television programs / Technology and the arts / Video recording in the theater
• ISBN: 0415275385, 9780415275378, 0415275377, 9780415275385