Nele
Willaert
October 13, 2004
Lev
Manovich: “Modern Surveillance Machines: Perspective, Radar, 3-D Computer
Graphics, and Computer Vision”
In his essay Manovich describes the development of linear perspective from its adaptation in the Renaissance to today. This “process of automation of vision” stands out due to a continuous development of techniques and technologies of linear perspective. Manovich describes four different approaches that complement each other in the emergence of modern surveillance technologies:
The main thrust of both linear perspective (“The most important event of the Renaissance”) and modern surveillance technologies is, according to Manovich, the establishment of “visual nominalism,” understood as “the use of vision to capture the identity of individual objects and spaces by recording distances and shapes”.
Linear perspective is the technology of “visual nominalism”: It makes it possible to represent and grasp three-dimensional objects and spaces with the help of two-dimensional maps, Visual nominalism defines the relationship between a concrete object and its representation, and it is for this reason that Manovich calls these technologies “modern surveillance machines”: They locate, identify, but also create (see 3-D computer graphics) the representations of objects (humans, perpetrator, criminals, terrorists, weapons, bombs, etc.) in a defined space. But linear perspective allows us not only to represent reality, but also to control, manipulate and create reality by placing its representations in new or other contexts/spaces.
In regard to “M” there are three main issues I want to discuss:
“M” tells the story of a city and its inhabitants, among which we are trying to locate (see the different maps of Berlin) and identify a murderer. Lag’s inhabitants neither know the murderer’s name, nor what he looks like. The police, as well as the criminals and the other inhabitants of Berlin, use different methods to create an image of the murderer. They use fingerprints (a two-dimensional representation of a real person) and examine his handwriting in order to get a description of his personality. The police examine the criminals’ passports in order to align the real person (the criminal) with his representation (the passport) and thus identify him clearly. They analyze photography from the scene of the crime to find signs that tell them something about the murderer’s identity. The population collects all information about the crimes and tries to construct an image of the murderer, even though this leads to a number of wrong suspicions. The entire city fails in linking the murderer’s representations as is circulates in the city to a real person. This situation changes when a blind man identifies the murderer by his whistling. The representation that finally identifies the murderer is not a visual but an auditory one. (Manovich – with regard to Lacan - emphasizes in his essay that the concept of perspective includes not only visual aspects but also everything that allows us to construct a relationship between an object and the image of this object. (Lacan: “What is an issue in geometric perspective is simply the mapping of space, not sight”.)
“M” itself is a movie and uses technologies described in Manovich’s essay. Like the characters in the film, the audience doesn’t get a visual image of Beckert. We see his shadow, hear his voice, see his handwritings and listen to his whistling, all of which representing the threatening presents of Beckert during the film. In the scene in which Beckert follows the girl, we don’t see him, but his whistling reveals his presence. Sound enables us to widen the perspective beyond the visible image: The spectator gets access to the off-screen space. “M” uses visuals frequently in such a way that we don’t see the film’s protagonists in spite of the fact that we might hear them (e.g. the speech of Lohmann). Additionally, the absence of Elsie is represented not only by the lack of her physical appearance but also by a lack of sound (or through her mother’s screams “Elsie! Elsie!”). In “M” sound makes the mapping of space possible. (Comment: In the film the mothers are the ones who are linked with sound: e.g. “Solange man se noch singen hört, wissen wer wenigstens, dass se noch da sind.”; Verbot, das Lied zu singen “Könnt ihr denn nicht hören?”)
Finally, “M” reveals to us that vision alone cannot succeed in mapping space and establishing total surveillance. The police and the criminals fail in identifying the murderer by using only visual surveillance technologies (reports, photography, maps, etc.), demonstrated by their dependence on a blind man to identify the murderer. But also we as spectators need sound to orientate ourselves in the fragmented visual spaces of “M”.