Image:Plumbingsurveillancelightvectorpainting.jpg

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Lightvector painting entitled "Seen Through the Glass, Darkly"

This is a lightvector painting that I made of one of the plumbing fixtures that's in the men's room about halfway down MIT's "infinite corridor" (third longest corridor in the world), which connects buildings 1 through 10.

The title "Seen Through the Glass, Darkly" is in reference to a technosocial inquiry on surveillance, and, in particular, the manner in which surveillance (machines that watch over us) replace the God's eye view with other humans or human-made machines watching over us instead (e.g the security guards' "eye in the sky"). In 1 Corinthians, 13:12, "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known" we have a sense of equiveillance (sur/sousveillance symmetry), in the sense of "I know even as also I am known". However, the idea the lightvector painting explores, is the manner in which surveillance strips us of this equiveillant balance, and replaces God's view with human (false) gods. There is also the utilitarian view of Foulcaultian surveillance to make the world run more efficiently (hygiene, reduced water consumption, etc.).

Automatic flush technology was originally developed for use in prisons, but then spread to other areas of the world, like airports, stadiums, and finally, to the universities like MIT.

I captured the lightvectors on 4 by 5 inch Ektachrome film using a home made image capture system connected to a wearable computer, with control of an electromechanical shutter. The light source was a T8 fluorescent tube run from the wearable rig's 900 volt power supply. The fluorescent tube was run between the base station (home made image capture system) and the subject matter, in order to create a soft illumination.

I scanned the lightvectors using a Leafscan system that I was able to get Leaf to donate to the MIT Edgerton Center, where I also did a series of lightvector paintings ("Microseconds and Millennia") before assisting with planning and renovation from the former Strobe Lab. The Leafscan product pulls the film tight into a metal frame, so that it has pretty good registration properties. The Leafscan is one of the few scanners that will take large format film, although lightvector paintings are now almost always done entirely electronically to avoid or automate image registration.

License: eyetap.org/sel.txt.

Copyright (c) 2004, Steve Mann.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this experience
under the terms of the ePi Lab Shared Experience License, Version 1.0
or any later version published by the EyeTap Personal Imaging Laboratory.

In compliance with the Terms of this license, the full resolution version is hereby provided as a link: http://wearcam.org/seenthroughtheglassdarkly_dechirped.jpg

See also http://wearcam.org/darkly.htm for philosophical context, discourse, and background.

I, the creator of this work, hereby grant the permission to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. Subject to disclaimers.

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