INTRO

Over the last few years, I have been in this writers block of how to write about perception. 

Not that anyone has asked my opinion on the subject, but I’ve started and thrown out several essays on the topic, tackling from the more meta ‘big picture’ to the more micro ‘everyday life’ viewpoints, and none of it has really stuck. 

I feel so apprehensive about artificial intelligence, and how it is making the world around us a lot more, for lack of nicer sounding words, inept. My friends tell me that I sound geriatric, of which I know I do. Having been born in 1988, I (and my generation) came of age with the beginnings of the technologies that have become a requirement in order to “live”; we also came of age in tandem with mass surveillance. 

I have felt ‘surveilled’, in some way, my entire life. Something is always watching me; it isn’t necessarily bad or good, but I always have this odd feeling of being watched twenty four/seven, even when I’m alone in my own home. Sitting in a dark room, on my notes app as I type this, watched. I loathe it. 

I’m sure I could therapize it, but I believe a large part of it is starting life at the birth of the world as we know it today.

We are watched twenty four/seven. Street cameras on every corner, cameras on our phones and computers that are easily hackable (if you’re a tech freak), our homes can have a camera out to the sidewalk, the list goes on.

With the growth of technology came a rebirth on the topic of our own perception. We all curate ourselves to fit the best mold of what we think we should be, whether in person or ‘digital’. We are told that we are ‘so special’ and now, on social media, we get to prove that to the world. 

All of us are just so fucking special.

All of us are just so fucking unique.

All of us. All of us. ALL of us. 

None of us are boring. None of us are ordinary. None of us are merely ‘living’. We can’t do that. We have to put our every breath, every move, every political belief, every thought, every thing, everything everything everything on social media. We have to prove ourselves ‘special’. Every single party. Every single dinner. Every single move. Flash photography. Run it up on social media. Go, go, go. Take a hit, take a hit, take a hit. Like this, like this. Watch this. WATCH. THIS. 

Why? Is everyone else as okay with this as they all seem to be? Are you? Am I? 

I know my viewpoint isn’t breaking new ground, but I’m more wondering if I can better say what I want to say on this subject, over the course of the next several months, through art. What is it to be perceived? What is it to be watched? What is it to be surveilled? 

Mass surveillance. It’s happening, it’s here, it’s you. Now what?