Surveillance Culture

It was not without some amusement that I glanced at the newspaper advertisement that said, “Real people. Now featured in our shop window.” Like with all good advertisements, it was the headline that caught my eye. But the body copy was altogether a different thing. Here’s a sample, reproduced in its entirety, and absolutely faithful to the original.

“Watch four men live in a sealed glass box for 15 days straight! Making its Asian debut, the award-winning Urban Dream capsule will feature the actors cooking, sleeping, shaving and even showering in public view. It is a performance as real as it is theatrical — a shower becomes slapstick gymnastics, and dinner becomes a dance. “

But the fun has just started. Not content with the fact that they are practically living their open book lives as a window display, you also have the option to fax or e-mail them at any given time of the day or night! And the best part of all is that this is something organized by the National Arts Council of Singapore in order to make Singapore an ‘Arts City’. Now who says these ministry guys don’t have a sense of humour?

Anyways, I was rudely reminded of this advertisement when the item was featured on a television channel. After the mandatory coverage and the P2C’s, the correspondent at the station had a phone-in interview with one of the members of the group. And she popped the big question… not why or even how they came-up with this crazy idea. Not even about how they felt about it or what they hoped this would achieve. She asked them if they considered this entire ‘Urban Dream Capsule’ thing voyeuristic in some way!

Beat that! Although I haven’t been in Singapore for long, if there’s one thing I have noticed, it is the omnipresence of the nifty little voyeuristic agent called the ‘camera’. It is all-pervasive, all-encompassing and all-mighty. Most traffic signals have it to ensnare speedsters. All banks and ATM machines have it in order to discourage criminal intent. Shopping malls have it as a kleptomaniac deterrent. Offices and commercial complexes have it for employee and/or visitor monitoring. Private apartments have it in-your-face to discourage salesmen from troubling their residents and supermarkets and convenience stores have it to monitor shoplifting. A recent proposal even calls for cameras to be mounted in all HDB lifts!

Nothing escapes its beady electronic gaze and if you are unfortunate enough to be from some other culture where privacy still continues to exist, you’ve had it. However, I can still come to terms with all this. After all, there are times when I’m willing to have my privacy invaded in the interests of the greater common good. But the camera has gone from being an innocuous monitoring device to a stealthy surveillance equipment. Ready to record at all times.

It’s actually a little scary when you see that it is omni-present. What looks like a mirror in the bathroom could have a camera lurking behind it. Most office corridors open into the frame of a haughty wall-mounted lens. ‘Sensitive’ areas of companies are guarded by spools of magnetic tape and security guards play peeping tom with their array of screens, focused continually on various levels, nooks and crannies of buildings. I’ve been told that the immigration lane at Changi has close to 26 cameras! Whatever for? The cross-section of a potential illegal-alien? Things have come to such a pass that my neighborhood Kopi-O vendor has an insidious Panasonic perched atop his cash counter.

You even have it on hand phones for heavens sake! Is that creepy looking man with his phone in front of him merely peering at a number on the screen? Or is he blatantly violating your personal space to capture you in tiny mega-pixels to later super-impose your face on the heaving bodies of Internet porn characters. Why does that slimy looking character in the gym need to use his phone during an undress session? Is he playing peeping tom and capturing parts of your anatomy for a drooling session with his cronies later on. The little electronic monster has enabled otherwise harmless people to become sinister roving eyes.

But maybe, just maybe, it is only me who has gotten this whole thing wrong. Considering all that I’ve said, there is the possibility that these ‘artists’ are a bunch of guys who are so bugged with the surveillance culture in Singapore that they’ve decided on an elaborate spoof. Maybe this entire living-in-a-window-display thing is an intellectual mockery of the rest of our lives. Which the cleverly hidden and sometimes camouflaged cameras monitor constantly.

Wonder when this urban dream will end?