Synopticon: Surveillance Society
“You no longer watch TV, it is TV that watches you (live).”
— Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (1981) [1]
“The constant division between the normal and the abnormal, to which every individual is subjected.”
— Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (1975) [2]
The COVID-19 pandemic was more than a public health crisis — it became a decisive moment in which digital surveillance and social control penetrated everyday life. Under the pretext of contact tracing, the state collected real-time data on citizens’ movements, contacts, and locations. The mandatory wearing of masks and restrictions on movement functioned as mechanisms through which the state directly disciplined the body. Throughout the pandemic, we found ourselves consuming all information in real time through the internet and television, growing deeply dependent on what those screens told us. Society was placed within a structure of double suspicion: the state treated citizens as potential violators to be monitored for compliance with public health regulations, while among citizens themselves, a pervasive gaze of mutual distrust spread — each person a possible source of contagion to the other.
The performance Synopticon: Surveillance Society steps directly into this structure. The synopticon is a concept proposed by sociologist Thomas Mathiesen, referring not to the few watching the many — as in Foucault’s panopticon — but to the modern condition in which the many simultaneously watch the many, mediated through mass media. The pandemic media environment made this structure visible in the extreme. Everyone looked at the world through a screen, while the world seen through that screen in turn constructed everyone’s perception of reality.
In the performance, Naehoon Huh wears a camera-fitted mask object and walks through public space, filming the people around him in real time. Eunu Lee wears the same mask object and sits in front of a monitor, filming the screen. Yet neither of them knows where that footage is being sent — or who, if anyone, is watching. On the streets, people are genuinely wearing masks. That is a reality that cannot be denied. Yet that reality is not uniform — some wear masks, some do not. The moment this uneven reality passes through the camera, the system detects faces without masks and automatically overlays them with a virtual mask. What remains on the monitor is a world in which everyone is masked.
This is not a complete lie. But neither is it the complete truth. The constant division between the normal and the abnormal that Foucault described is here automated by algorithm. The system detects the unmasked face as abnormal and quietly corrects it — without a human to judge, without a subject to take responsibility. Those who watch the corrected image on screen receive it as reality: everyone is wearing a mask. That edited image then reinforces real behavior and social norms in turn. As Baudrillard observed, we are no longer watching the screen. The screen is watching us. And where that gaze originates — we do not know. Media does not reflect reality. It produces it.
The one who films hides their own face behind a mask; the faces of those who are filmed are replaced by digital masks. Both the one who surveils and the one who is surveilled ultimately lose their original face. This structure makes visible the way surveillance operates not merely as a tool of control, but as a process that selectively deletes and re-edits reality itself — simultaneously transforming both identity and the perception of what is real.
The question we raised in our earlier project Hikikomori — concerning the development of technological networks and the processes of transformation within social structures — continues into this work. The isolation and control imposed by the pandemic echoes the structure of voluntary withdrawal and social alienation that Hikikomori embodies. The paradox of connection through technology and isolation through technology is today becoming more acute than ever. That paradox is not merely a matter of individual choice. If the system already constructs our gaze and our perception of reality, what choices are left to us? [3]
In a system where the subject of judgment has grown indistinct and algorithms automate the normal, the surveillant gaze has left any single origin behind and permeated the everyday life of us all. Are we watching others right now — or are we already being watched? And the reality we believe we are seeing: who, exactly, made it?
[1] Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 1981.
[2] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 1975.
[3] https://eunu-lee.com/hikikomori-installation-view/