From: Freeman Pascal
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 08:44:24 -0700

"Why oh why didn't I take the blue pill?"

-----Original Message-----
From: mann@eecg.toronto.edu [mailto:mann@eecg.toronto.edu]
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2001 7:54 AM
To: wear-hard@haven.org
Subject: Curatorial Essay for tonights Wearable Computing Exhibit

Tonight's Wearable Computing borgfest will be online
http://eyetap.org/tpw/
starting at 7:00pm Toronto time,
transmitting live video from 4 to 6 cyborgs, and also there will be
vote buttons to select my action (i'll be wearing remote body control
to cause my body to move in response to the tally of votes).

Video feed from the other 3 cyborgs will also be present but without the
connection of the corporate body of voting for body control.

Curatorial statement is in
http://existech.com/tpw/index.html

   Hopefully, there will be a re-enactment of Mann's 1975 piece entitled
   "My Manager" in which the body is liberated of its agency, and becomes
   a functionary in an obfuscational surveillance hierarachy. "My
   Manager" explores issues of agency, freewill, surveillance, and
   accountability, and brings us to think about the dangers of localized
   agency in a networked world. By receiving electric shocks from a
   body-worn computer, wirelessly connected to the Internet, the body is
   controlled by a "board of directors" who monitor remotely by way of a
   tap into the right eye of the body, making the body's agency
   complexified in the same manner that corporations are complexified.
   Just as corporate policy might have been enacted by committees
   comprised of members who no longer sit on these committees (or even
   work for the company anymore), the body can be liberated and set free
   by being bound to freedom. Thus the human body becomes a corporate
   body, responsive to its board (of directors) rather than to its brain.
   This "board over brain" performance momentarily allows the body to
   escape from the freedom implicit in a potential for any moral
   complicity. Because the board decides on the body's actions by vote,
   the result calls into question the freedoms implicit in democracy
   (e.g. voting). In particular, the body is compelled to take pictures,
   and therefore becomes a mere computer peripheral, and functionary, its
   right eye becoming an involuntary element of a surveillance society.
   See http://wearcam.org/itti/index.htm