Beyond the Panopticon

Spatial Networking

The new Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, much like Jeremy Bentham’s design for the Panopticon, is a space organized by a system of gazes. Bentham’s prison is described by Michel Foucault as “so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible. The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately.”

But what of the “theatres” one finds in institutions such as the Granoff Center or the ICA? Whereas the Panopticon was designed as a means of control and surveillance, the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts is perhaps its antithesis- a building designed to facilitate an unprecedented degree of creative freedom and artistic collaboration. And yet, despite the opposed programs of each building, the mechanism by which both spaces operate is perhaps similar enough to warrant further investigation.

Bentham’s design is an example of a centralized plan, where one privileged entity can exert complete control over others by means of the gaze. The spatial organization of the Granoff Center, on the other hand, is a distributed, decentralized network of gazes, in which seeing and being seen are in constant flux. The gaze is extended. The way in which spaces open up to others, and create lines of sight throughout the structure, is fascinating to observe in practice. The building comes alive by eyes opening to one another, observing, engaging and reacting to each other. The Granoff Center, as in other buildings designed by DSR, exhibits the distributed gaze as a liberating mechanism, rather than a restrictive one.

The Distributed Gaze

In the past decade, the work of Diller Scofidio + Renfro has heralded the emergence of a new architectural paradigm – or at least, the latest phase in the convergence of the Symbolic with the Spatial. Both the Granoff Center and the ICA are characterized by an integrated, read/write infrastructure, made possible by a mellifluous blend of spatial and representational environments. The work of DSR, perhaps more than any other firm working today, offer the opportunity to explore the proliferation of mediated, online interactions (e.g.Skype, Chatroulette, IM), in ways that challenge us to fundamentally reconsider our basic assumptions about the built environment and the boundaries of the extended gaze. These buildings demand new modes for calibrating the equilibrium between the spaces within and the spaces in between.

Most buildings on the planet are now woven together by a hidden tissue of screens. Be this as it may, social networks are still built upon spatial networks, even if the ways in which these networks delimit themselves, overlap, and intertwine are obscured. A window into an adjacent space presents a self-evident continuity. A window into a non-adjacent space, vis-à-vis a screen, is an open boundary for the extended gaze. These buildings remind us that windows and walls allow (or disallow as the case may be) the gaze to permeate a space, and impregnate it with meaning. What new modes of creative possibility emerge when the gaze is extended beyond our periphery? What new architectural forms emerge when we realize that a screen can operate as both a window and a wall?

Open Circuit Television

We propose to initiate the first phase of this spatial network, by tapping into the existing read/write infrastructure (camera and screens).

Granoff Center
-Plug into existing projectors in “living room” spaces
-Receive streaming video from CCTV in building
-Transmit data through a lightweight web app(built in Processing)
-Receive data from web app, display through projector

ICA
-Use computers in the mediatheque, installing a lightweight web app(built in Processing)
-Application accesses webcam, transmits video to the web, to be received at other locations