Inside the Digital Panopticon

Inside the Digital Panopticon combines Panopticon JVA from 7 Precarious Fields with Inside SAP. The latter was created with recordings of the headquarters of SAP, one of the world’s largest software company. Originally, one recording was intended for 7 Precarious Fields, but was not used as the resulting panorama did not live up to Spinatsch’s expectations. However, the recordings became the start­ing point for the series Inside SAP 1–4. The recordings were made in three locations (ground floor, top floor, a meeting room) in one of the three SAP buildings, whose star-shaped layouts correspond to Bentham’s panopticon like the JVA correctional facility in Mannheim.

Inside SAP 1 – Detector is a video installation with two synchronized monitors. For this recording, the camera was programmed to record two images within three seconds in each position, resulting in 419 image pairs. Sequence A on the first monitor shows the 419 image pairs for three seconds each in chronological order. They look as if they were taken by an in-house surveillance cam­era. For sequence B, software superimposed the image pairs so that only the differences between the two images remain visible, e. g. movements of people or objects, but also technical imperfections and errors during image capture. Consequently, a large number of images are entirely black, since no move­ments or errors occurred within the three seconds. The 419 resulting images are shown on the second monitor for six seconds each.

Inside SAP 2 – Detections and Detection Details are two series of twelve, respectively four, single images from sequence B, printed on photographic paper, for further examina­tion of the detections.

Inside SAP 3 – Sunburn Meeting is a series of eight single images from a recording made in an empty SAP conference room, ready for the next meeting. They show details of the room and look like the ostentatiously “creative” corporate photography often used in annual reports.

Inside SAP 4 – Atrium 4.0 is a panorama recorded on the ground floor of the atrium. It shows an art work commissioned for the building, visualizing data flow, and an industry 4.0 demonstration station used to show how products can be customized during industrial manufacturing processes.

Inside the Digital Panopticon consists of the Inside SAP series and a 4K video of a travel­ling around the panorama Panopticon JVA. A panel shows the panopticon-based layouts of the the correctional facility and the three SAP buildings, a daily schedule of the cor­rectional facility, and a list of all the compa­nies SAP has bought up since 1991. Inside the Digital Panopticon ponders the implications of the fact that the layout of the SAP headquarters and the correc­tional center in Mannheim are both based on Bentham’s panopticon. The inmates’ cells match the work areas, and the glass elevator in the SAP headquarters takes the place of the correctional facility’s central control tower – an indication of security strategies as well as architectural fashion. However, the decisive analogy concerns the control function of the both institutions – the transition from the analog, physical panopticon to a digital, psychological panopticon. In the analog pan­opticon, people’s physical movements are observed. In the digital panopticon, algorithms analyse the virtual traces left by flows of goods and money, generated by the use of apps, cus­tomer cards, credit cards, and social media.