Response 7 - Steve Mann

I was instantly hooked on Steve Mann’s ideas of “Reflectionism” and “Diffusionism” by means of technology and well thought out procedures of questioning officials. Mann begins the article by listing the disturbing extent that surveillance is being used on the public. The thought of cable companies seeing you watch television or security guards looking through your clothes is rather disgusting and leaves citizens without a say in their private matters.

Steve Mann’s experiments are meant to attack these unjust means of surveillance, by reflecting these same practices back at the “oppressors”, both secretly and obviously. I found his pieces to be very realistic and able to capture the discomfort and manipulation that is normally portrayed by us, the shoppers. The feedback that Mann gets from the store clerks and security guards makes me want to buy the ingredients necessary to follow these “recipes.” His ingenious WearCam sunglasses are hilarious, a little bit of Cyclops and Robocop all mixed into one. The interesting aspect of these inventions is that just like a normal surveillance cameras in banks, the video stream is controlled from an outside source. In Mann’s case, his “manager” or people watching on the Internet control the video.

It was interesting how when clerks and officials were under surveillance, they lost control of the situation, and Mann was able to manipulate their judgment. Mann questions when a rule is valid and when it is not? In “My Manager” Mann is able to relate with a store clerk by convincing him that the camera is a part of his uniform, allowing Mann to change the rules regarding photography in the store. It was even more convincing when Mann made it look like the camera was glued to his hair, making it difficult to take off. I found the t-shirts mounted with acrylic rectangles to be very clever and a perfect example of Reflectionism, since just like surveillance cameras, we don’t know if there is a camera going and whether someone is watching.