Jamais les enjeux de la surveillance dans la société n’ont été autant mis en avant dans les discours politiques et la presse internationale que depuis les divulgations d’Edward Snowden sur les programmes de surveillance américains, durant l’été 2013. Plus d’une dizaine d’années auparavant, l’exposition CTRL [SPACE] au ZKM de Karlsruhe avait montré comment, depuis longtemps, les mécanismes de la surveillance, des médias de masse et la convergence de leurs fonctionnements se reflétaient dans l’art contemporain. Peter Weibel pointait dès les années 60, dans ses installations et ses écrits, les comportements contradictoires qui se développent dans une société de surveillance. De la société de surveillance à la société de contrôle, la société spectaculaire, puis post-Spectaculaire, jusqu’à l’actuelle société de sousveillance, c’est-À-Dire de la cybersurveillance et de la dataveillance, l’influence de ces mécanismes a toujours fait controverse. Alors qu’une approche artistique s’attache avant tout à la manipulation, voire à l’effacement de l’individu et de sa réalité, une autre approche se concentre sur les possibilités de créativité et d’inventivité qui se présentent à l’individu au sein d’une société caractérisée par la surveillance et les médias de masse. La présente recherche se situe dans la tension qui émerge entre ces deux positions. Le point de départ est le terme observer, qui renvoie à la fois à un acte perceptuel et à un acte d’adaptation. En même temps, tout acte d’observation s’insère nécessairement dans une « relation » d’observation. Et il faut envisager la réversibilité potentielle de la relation. En effet, l’art contemporain révèle des tactiques de contre-Surveillance et de contre-Observation, cette dernière étant révélatrice de la façon dont nous vivons les changements socio-Politiques – notamment depuis le 11 septembre 2001. Une théorie et une pratique de la (contre-)observation sont nécessaires afin d’analyser l’esthétique qui apparaît ainsi. / He matter of surveillance has never been as present in political discourse and the international press as much as since the divulgence of the American surveillance programs by Edward Snowden in the summer of 2013. Nonetheless, more then 10 years earlier, the exhibition CTRL [SPACE] at the ZKM in Karlsruhe had widely shown how the mechanisms of surveillance and mass media and the convergence of their functioning had, for a long time, been reflected in contemporary art. Since the 1960s, Peter Weibel had already pointed to the contradictory modes of behaviour that develop in a society of surveillance in his installations and writings. From the society of surveillance to the society of control, the spectacular society, and then post-Spectacular society, to the current society of “sousveillance”, that is of cyber-Surveillance and dataveillance, the influence of these mechanisms has always been discussed with controversy. While one artistic approach focuses mainly on the manipulation, or even disappearance of the individual and their reality, another approach concentrates on the possibilities of creativity and inventiveness that present themselves to the individual in a society characterized by surveillance and mass media.The present doctoral thesis situates itself in the tension that emerges between these two positions. The point of departure is the term to observe that signifies a perceptual act as well as an act of adaptation. At the same time, every act of observation necessarily takes part in an observational “relationship”. Therefore, the potential reversibility of the relationship has to be taken into account. Effectively, contemporary art reveals tactics of counter-Surveillance and counter-Observation. The latter give insight into the way we deal with socio-Political changes – especially since the 11th of September 2001. A theory and a practice of (counter-)observation are necessary to analyze the aesthetics that have appeared in this regard.

The topic of this thesis is the biopolitics of video activism vis-à-vis racialized police violence. It is written against the backdrop of recent developments in the critique of two central concepts in field of biopolitics, namely Giorgio Agamben’s bare life and Michel Foucault’s biopower. Offsetting their respective framework, Alexander G. Weheliye (et al.) has introduced the imposition of race onto bodies as anterior to biopolitics. I incorporate this in a critique of Pasi Väliaho’s notion of biopolitical screens. To facilitate grounded theorizing, a field study of police accountability video activist groups in the United States was conducted. I argue that their observed practices should be seen as forms of embodied counter-surveillance and I situate them in the racially saturated field of visibility specific to the U.S. context. Moreover, I argue that the practices entail an extension of corporealities which is not inherently political in the sense of overt discursive iconography. It is, however, ideologically disrupting in how it networks politicized bodies through time and space. I conclude that raising the video camera to “look back” in the face of racializing assemblages constitutes a rights claim to a political subjectivity, however not necessarily in terms of polity or citizenship. Instead, the media practices are transversal and hold the potential to entail a political subjectivity ontologically anterior to state sovereignty.

I Abstract (in English): Diploma thesis Visual lifelogging: automatic memories and picturing ordinary deals with the topic of visual lifelogging in the context of current visual culture. It describes visual lifelogging in the context of photography and as an amplification of human abilities. Diploma thesis deals with history and lifelogging as a whole and it describes its forms, describes the tools of lifelogging and it deals also with topics of surveillance and its contrary, sousveillance. It explores visual lifelogging mostly from the photographic point of view and it deals with the use of different technologies to augment human memory or other human abilities.

L’état de surveillance dans lequel est plongée la société contemporaine contraint à ériger des dispositifs spécifiques de sécurité. Les méthodes de surveillance utilisées relèvent principalement de l’observation et de l’écoute. De ce fait, le septième art, jouant sur « l’audio – visuel », se serait réapproprié certains de ces dispositifs comme celui de la caméra de surveillance.Ce travail de recherche s’inscrit dans le courant des Visual Culture Studies, etcherche à faire l’archéologie puis l’analyse d’un regard particulier, tel que le cinéma de fiction l’actualise très souvent depuis plusieurs années, celui des caméras de surveillance. Ainsi, la prolifération de ces images de surveillance dans les filmsmontre l’impact de phénomènes sociaux dans la représentation tant des images desautorités, que celles produites par les citoyens A travers les concepts de la surveillance, en passant par ceux de la sousveillance, la caméra de surveillance aucinéma apporte des points de vues divers sur le monde qui nous entoure en puisantégalement dans des représentations hybrides via l’intermédialité proposée par les films. / The contemporary society is immersed in a state of surveillance, which forces it to set up specific security devices. The surveillance techniques used are mainlybased on observation and listening. Thus, cinema, as an audio and visual art has adopted some of these devices, such as the surveillance camera.This research takes part in the Visual Culture Studies, and aims to offer anarcheological description followed by the analysis of a specific gaze, that of the surveillance cameras, which has often been actualized over the past several years through narrative cinema. Consequently, the increased presence of thesesurveillance images in the movies shows the impact of social phenomenons in the representation of images produced by the authorities and those produced by private citizens. With the notions of surveillance and sousveillance, the surveillance camerain cinema displays several points of view of the world that surrounds us, using also hybrid representations through the intermediality offered by films.

CyborGlogs are lifelong log files of personal experiences that are captured without conscious thought or effort. By creating cyborglogs on a continuous basis, we can enable various novel applications where the lifelong records are used as memory aids or for personal safety. This thesis presents the development of a mobile application that provides the tools to instantly capture, archive, recall, and share our personal experiences on widely available cameraphones. To achieve this goal, a client-server computational framework is designed and implemented to support real-time interaction among the users. Three fully functional prototypes supporting three major mobile platforms (J2ME, Symbian, and iPhone) are presented to show the feasibility and flexibility of this framework. Finally, this thesis shows an early prototype which demonstrates the idea of mediated reality on cameraphones using various integrated sensors. This prototype explores the possibilities of developing truly intelligent wearable applications on mobile devices in the future.

CyborGlogs are lifelong log files of personal experiences that are captured without conscious thought or effort. By creating cyborglogs on a continuous basis, we can enable various novel applications where the lifelong records are used as memory aids or for personal safety. This thesis presents the development of a mobile application that provides the tools to instantly capture, archive, recall, and share our personal experiences on widely available cameraphones. To achieve this goal, a client-server computational framework is designed and implemented to support real-time interaction among the users. Three fully functional prototypes supporting three major mobile platforms (J2ME, Symbian, and iPhone) are presented to show the feasibility and flexibility of this framework. Finally, this thesis shows an early prototype which demonstrates the idea of mediated reality on cameraphones using various integrated sensors. This prototype explores the possibilities of developing truly intelligent wearable applications on mobile devices in the future.

In this examination of citizen surveillance, I engage with Foucaultian and Deleuzian conceptualizations of surveillance, power, resistance, control, and desire, to explore the motivation(s) of community members who film and disseminate footage of the police. Methodologically, I conducted semi-structured interviews with community stakeholders to study the latent thematic ideas embedded in their responses. These themes represent the underlying motivational factors a citizen surveiller may have when filming the police. In my analysis of these themes, I explore: citizen surveillers’ logic for resisting power; citizen surveillers’ understandings of power; and, citizen surveillers’ reported approaches to both passive and active forms of resistance. Subsequently, there appears to be an underlying desire for power and a resistance to power when filming the police. However, given the exploratory nature of this study, there is a need to continue investigating the theoretical and under substantiated claims about citizen surveillance and its association with race, gender and socio-economic status.

While both public opinion and scholars around the world are currently pointing out the danger of increasingly popular life-logging devices, this book articulates this debate by distinguishing between automatic and manual life-logging approaches. Since new definitions of life-logging have excluded the latter approach and have been mainly focused on effortless life-logging technologies such as Google Glass and Quantified Self applications in general, the second part of this thesis theoretically frames life-stowing.Through extensive etymological research, I have defined life-stowing as a manual and effortful practice conducted by life-stowers, individuals who devote their life to sampling reality in predefined frameworks. As part of this book, an historical overview introduces life-stowers and distinguishes between Apollonian and Dionysian varieties of these practitioners. Lastly, in order to understand the future reception of life-stowing, particularly in relation to digital media, I have disclosed my ongoing life-stowing project to a small audience. / Den samtida samhälls- och forskningsdebatt, där de allt mer populära teknologierna för life-logging ofta framställs som farliga, vidgas och utvecklas i denna bok genom ett särskiljande av automatiska och manuella tekniker för life-loggning. Eftersom nya definitioner av life-loggning i stor utsträckning har exkluderat manuella tekniker och fokuserat på egenmätning som inte kräver så mycket av användaren, såsom GoogleGlass, innehåller avhandlingen också ett teoretisk utforskande av begreppet lifestowing. Genom omfattande etymologisk forskning definieras life-stowing i avhandlingen som en manuell och ansträngande praktik utförd av life-stowers, personer som vigt sina liv åt att samla och spara bitar av verkligenheten enligt fördefinierade ramar. I den historiska översikten introduceras två typer av life-stowers, den Apollonianska och den Dionysiska. Slutligen, för att förstå det framtida mottagandet av life-stowing i relation till digitala medier, presenteras författarens egna life stowingprojekt för en mindre publik.

The privacy and surveillance issues that are consequences of the Internet of Things are the motivation and grounding for this thesis project. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a scenarioin which physical objects are able to communicate to each other and the environment, by transferring data over communication networks. The IoT allows technology to become smaller and more ubiquitous, and by being integrated in the environment around us, the world is becoming increasingly connected. Even though these developments will generally make our lives easier and more enjoyable, the Internet of Things also faces some challenges. One of these are the aforementioned privacy and surveillance issues that are the results of transferring sensitive data over communication networks. The aim of this thesis project is therefore to answer, both in a theoretical, as well as in a practical way, the following research question: How can the Internet of Things be more accessible and safe for the everyday user? Accordingly, the Auster online platform, the Auster app and the Data Obfuscation Kit were developed to provide people with the tools and knowledge to construct home automation projects themselves, as an alternative for using applications from governments and corporations alike. The aim is to create a way to endow people with the capability to exploit their talents, realise their visions and share this with a community joining forces. By enabling people to create their own home automation projects, personal data is kept in the user’s possession and the collection of data by governments and companies alike is prevented. Moreover, by giving the control over technology back to the user, creativity and innovation in the field of the Internet of Things in domestic environments are expected to increase.