Peter Weibel ::
The Panoptic Society or Immortially in Love with Death, 2001

interactive work on DVD
part of the dislocations - DVD [2001]

Coproduction of Peter Weibel and the ZKM | Institute Visual Media; iCINEMA
Centre for Interactive Cinema Research, University of New South Wales
Graphic design: Skye Daley, Daniel Wright

    This DVD-ROM piece is a time slot into the future of our emerging panoptic society. Prisons will be commercially run by private institutions, which have to make money with their inhabitants. One way of capitalization on the prisoners will be pay per view, pay per mail, pay per e-mail, pay per phone. Naturally the more interesting the crime, the more interesting the prisoner, the bigger the public, the bigger the profit. Therefore prisons will compete about the most prominent and pervert prisoners. The cruelest killers will be the fatal attractors in this panoptic society, gaining fame, glamour and money. They will become the secret stars of media society [see the Oklahoma-Bomber Timothy McVeigh]. As consequence some people who have nothing achieved in life in a traditional way and in regular manner, will commit crimes and murders of utmost actrocity to become rich and famous in a way that our panoptic media society favours. These people will become so important for the maintenance of the media system, that they after their death will be secretely replaced by virtual doubles and avatars.