Panopticon – under the curator’s gaze

Written by Harriet Lloyd (Masters student at the UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies)

Ever get the feeling you’re being watched?

Drawing back the heavy grey curtains and stepping into the dark North Lodge from the bright sunlight of the UCL quad, it takes some time for my eyes to adjust to the dimness.

I am greeted by projected images, standing out against the darkness and surrounding me from all sides.

I’m standing in ‘Panopticon: Experimental Tales of Jeremy Bentham’.

‘Panopticon’ is a multi-disciplinary project and the result of two UCL Research initiatives – Design with Heritage (a knowledge exchange project supported by the AHRC and in collaboration with the V&A) and Transcribe Bentham. It brings together academic researchers, curators and designers, all interested in the life, influence and far-reaching ideas of Jeremy Bentham, to explore one common subject.

Jeremy Bentham is close to the hearts of many students here at UCL – his preserved head is in the care of the Institute of Archaeology and his auto-icon is an imposing presence in the cloisters.

Bentham’s ideology has infiltrated UCL right from its very foundation in 1826: education without discrimination against race, creed or political belief.

One of his most infamous ideas is the Panopticon.

Jeremy Bentham’s London was the London of the mid-18^th century. Crime rates were rising. Prisons were reaching capacity. The death penalty was an ineffective deterrent.

Bentham believed he had the solution – the more we are watched, the better we behave.

Designing all-seeing ‘inspection houses’, or Panopticons, Bentham envisaged circular prisons of 5–6 stories, with cells along the circumference.

Standing in the centre of the prison would be a tower from which the prison inspectors could gaze out – but the prisoners could not see in.

The prisoner could not know when they were being watched and had to assume that they were being watched all the time. CCTV cameras use the same principle. In the Panopticon, Bentham saw an exercise in ‘obtaining power of mind over mind.’

Although Bentham was not to see a Panopticon built in his lifetime, prisons based on the Panopticon design have been built across the world since his death in 1832.

Now, ‘Panopticon: Experimental tales of Jeremy Bentham’ is taking Bentham’s ideas and giving them a new lease of life.

‘Panopticon’ is a curatorial experiment. Clio Heslop, David Di Duca and Ollie Palmer from the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture – three of the minds behind the exhibition – have invited me to their trial run.

On display are images of Hogarth’s ‘Gin Lane’, Bentham’s drawing plans for a Panopticon prison and manuscripts of Bentham’s healthy recipes for Panopticon inmates, on loan from the transcribe Bentham project at UCL and UCL special collections.

The Panopticon exhibition explores the ways in which a visitor’s experience can be manipulated using lighting techniques.

Manuscripts and images are projected in different sequences, shifting attention from one corner of the room to the next.

Panopticon’s curators create different narratives using the same objects by manipulating the visitor’s gaze.

A camera is hidden in the corner of the exhibition room. Recording images in Infra-red, it constantly watches your movements.

Here power is in the hands of the curator – how is it possible to manipulate visitors to move around the exhibition space? Will you move towards the projected images, or will you stay rooted to the spot, spinning round on your heel?

The anonymous, Infra-red movement data collected by the camera will reveal just how much power the curator can have over your gaze and your movements.

You are being watched.

‘Panopticon: Experimental tales of Jeremy Bentham’ is a pop-up exhibition, running Monday–Saturday from 1–5pm at UCL North Lodge from 15 August–5 September.