About PanoptiCam

PanoptiCam is an interdisciplinary research project from UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, UCL Public and Cultural Engagement, and UCL’s Bentham Project.

Project updates will be announced on the PanoptiCam twitter stream, with hourly pictures broadcast from Jeremy (in his usual waking hours, when his box is open) over at Panoptistream on twitter. Daily timelapses of what Jeremy sees are collected over at the PanoptiCam Youtube channel.

What are the ethics of all this, and recording what he sees? We have checked! We believe the observation of behaviour in public spaces is acceptable provided we do not identify individuals, but also that by filming them and their responses we dont reasonably place the participants at greater at risk of criminal or civil liability, or cause damage to the participants’ financial standing, employability, or reputation. We believe that we have clearly signposted that visitors to Bentham are being recorded, for however long PanoptiCam will be operational, and that recording in this public space poses no risk to participants if they operate within the normal bounds of acceptable human behaviour in a public space.

The PanoptiCam does raise ample room for discussion: please get in contact via @panoptiCam on twitter if you wish to discuss issues of digital surveillance.

In the News

PanoptiCam has been noted in the following articles:

• 25 Mar 2016: The Webcam of an 18th-Century Philosopher’s Skeleton, HyperAllergic
• 1 Sep 2015: Jeremy Bentham’s Auto-Icon | 100 Wonders (video) Atlas Obscura
• 23 Jul 2015: What does the panopticon mean in the age of digital surveillance? The Guardian
• 17 Mar 2015: Watching you watching Bentham: The PanoptiCam, UCL News
• 16 Mar 2015: A.C. Estes, The Corpse of the Panopticon Creator Now Has an All-Seeing Eye, Gizmodo
• 16 Mar 2015: A.C. Madrigal, The panopticon creator’s memorial now surveils visitors, Fusion
• 17 Mar 2015: E. McCarthy, Jeremy Bentham’s Memorial Now Watches Its Visitors Mental Floss

Project Team

The following people contribute to PanoptiCam:

• Dr Andy Hudson Smith, UCL CASA
• Steve Gray, UCL CASA
• Prof Melissa Terras, UCLDH
• Dr Tim Causer, UCL Bentham Project
• Nick Booth, UCL Public and Cultural Engagement
• Dr Rudolf Ammann, UCLDH