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Big Fatherhttp://www-art.cfa.cmu.edu/www-penny/works/bigfather/bigfathercode.html
This work, made in 1992, focused on the sudden and profound occurrence of global networks of digital data. It uses the representation of surveillance as a way of addressing a larger issue. It places the viewer on both sides of the surveillance machine, simultaneously watching and being watched, being surveilled by the proliferated machine complex and consuming the product of that complex. In critical writing, the Foucauldian notion of the Panopticon is often counterposed to the Debordian notion of the Spectacle. Big Father proposes that these two are flip sides of the same, they function in a relay, informing and supporting each other. On a formal level the work explored the dynamics of proximity sensors in an installation context. While working on Big Father I began work on a rather ambitious project, a fully autonomous people sensing robotic artwork.