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Wednesday 7 November 2012

Introduction to "Digital Voyeur"

Desire of Codes by Japanese artist Seiko Mikami
A voyeur, as defined by Oxford Dictionaries, is "a person who gains sexual pleasure from watching others when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity"or "a person who enjoys seeing the pain or distress of others", but the colloquial definition has evolved to include any person who gains pleasure, not necessarily sexual, from observing a person or people, often during intimate activities. Usually, the voyeur will not have a relationship with the person or people they are watching, and the "voyees" won't know they are being observed. A particularly succinct definition I found on thefreedictionary.com states that a voyeur is "an obsessive observer of sordid or sensational subjects" which I think perfectly sums up the tendencies of the majority of the population in the western hemisphere. 
It's human nature to want to watch other people in order to see how their lives differ from ours. Our curiosity also leads us to invade private moments and the misfortune of other people when we know we shouldn't be looking for the sake of the people involved. This form of voyeurism has led to an explosion of social networking sites and reality television shows which allow the public to observe the lives of other people. The introduction of camera phones led to gross exploitation of people's relationships and misfortunes. As soon as something starts happening, be it fights, attacks or accidents, people will be ready with their cameras so that they can publish the footage on the internet or sell it to the newspapers. 
With the increase in social networking and media coverage of celebrities, the public are becoming more and more worried about the security of their own privacy. People now feel that they are being constantly watched by CCTV as well as being exposed to the world through websites such as Facebook. Is this concern unfounded, or a real threat to their livelihoods? Surely if you're not doing anything wrong then CCTV shouldn't bother you, and you can censor your own Facebook and control how much information you let others see. But perhaps this new age of almost unlimited access to images and information has gone too far and private lives are no longer private. 
As part of my research I want to interview people about their experiences with being watched as well as how they have taken advantage of new technology to observe others. 

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