From Elisabeth:

Did Coppola predict the third-generation surveillance camera? From the last
shot of The Conversation, it sure seems like it. And as the Levin article
suggests, "the locus of surveillance has thus shifted, imperceptibly but
decidedly, away from the space of the story, to the very condition of
possibility of that story" (Levin, 583). The idea of surveillance as "the
condition of the narration itself" seems to push surveillance into a highly
textual position (Levin, 583). Indeed, as Levin describes the ECHELON
Project, he describes how "countries provide 'dictionaries' of keywords,
phrases, and names," making it clear that surveillance is linked quite
intimately to physical, textual means (Levin, 579). And in The
Conversation, the narrative relies heavily on repeated imagery and close ups
of the audio tape - its winding, playing, and rewinding - and the photograph
being looked at again and again.
This leads to the existential question raised by The Conversation and Dienst
's article. Coppola's film seems to beg the question: Do we only exist if
we are being listened to? Being recorded? The question of transmission
raised in Dienst then comes to mind, but with a twist. As Dienst writes:
"the post card figures the process of transmission rather than inscription,
sending rather than writing.is it possible to speak of a text or an image
being 'diffused' without positing a previous moment of stability when it was
only just 'written'?" (Dienst, 137). The twist in The Conversation is that
it is precisely the transmission and reception that give the conversation of
the film's title its validity; though it had been spoken before, it had not
been written until its transmission through the microphones and onto the
magnetic tape. Coppola transmits this existential quality of private
conversations - does it happen if nobody overhears it? - quite beautifully
in the mood of his film, but I'd like to discuss the implications of this
assertion thirty years later. Was this a product of its time, or do we
function in a textually exhibitionistic fashion, validating ourselves
through when and where we have been secretly recorded?

posted by whkc at 9:15 AM

Well, Julie got to it first; I was going to talk about the audio surveillance/aural emphasis in The Conversation (TC) vs. the video surveillance/visual emphasis in the Levine. I think she did a really great job already. Where we semi-diverged, though, was that I thought that the film did end up over-indulging the visual side of surveillance quite a bit (remembering that Harry’s project was not at all visual)- again and again invoking the would-be visual surveillance to accompany the audio surveillance of the opening scene (which is in fact the reverse of today’s surveillance mechanisms, which capture visual data but not aural data). I wonder what the specificities of either type imply.

In any case, another point i found interesting is Levin’s in reference to recorded surveillance imagery—“...this revisiting or ‘playback’ of an earlier moment is only possible because of the specific materiality of the surveillance as a repeatable, commodifiable videotape” (586). What is at stake here, as in Harry’s work in TC, is a certain indexicality of the surveillance that allows the viewer to really “believe in it,” as Harry said himself, even as it becomes a commodity, part of a market system in which dataveillance gets bought, sold, and produced. In TC, as Julie pointed out, the surveillance is a commodity for the Director, who is seeking information about his wife/girlfriend and her lover/co-conspirator. Levine points out that in Menace II Society, surveillance footage of a young man killing a store clerk gets sold for $59.95, so I think that it would be worthwhile to discuss surveillance-as-commodity and how it might be constituted in light of the shift from spatial to temporal indexicality that Levine posits.

Lastly, some random questions:
How is intimacy or a considerable lack thereof a defining element in TC?
(Is the lack of 'real' intimacy in Harry's life a cause of his obsession with surveillance? Is the act of 'real' sexual intimacy with the femme fatale in some ways transgressing Harry's identity as voyeur/data-gatherer and therefore leaving him vulnerable to having this identity compromised? How can we read the tapes being on during this encounter? Are we back to the paranoid's fear of intimacy with members of the opposite sex (but remember: he wouldn't divulge any details of his own life even to stanley)? Something else entirely, endemic to this society of surveillance?)
How can Harry destroy his entire apartment, including his statue of the Virgin Mary, frantically searching for a bug, and then sit down and play the saxophone? How should we read this gesture? (What role does music play in TC?)

posted by Jackie at 1:32 AM

From Sebastien:

Concerning Levin's discussion of "dataveillance," I'm interested in going beyond control through credit cards, machine-readable passports, etc. in order to focus more closely on the very comtemporary facial recognition that is making its way in society.

I found out in a newspaper article that the most "up and coming" face recognition system is called "Viisage", which has already been bought by various institutions, such as airports and prisons. Here are some quotes from their website:

- "The Company's face-recognition technology both enhances existing identification solutions and offers opportunities for a variety of new applications. Using a sophisticated algorithm based on Principle Component Analysis (PCA) developed at the Massachusetts Institute Technology's Media Lab, the Company's software translates the characteristics of a face into a unique set of numbers, which is referred to as the eigenface.

 The eigenface is used by both identification and verification systems for face comparisons made in real-time. Identification involves a one-to-many comparison of an individual's face against all faces in a database in order to determine identity; and verification is characterized as a one-to-one match of an individual's face to his or her stored image for the purpose of confirming identity. The Company's face-recognition technology is unique because of its capabilities of both rapid and accurate real-time acquisition as well as its scalability to databases containing millions of faces. Therefore, the software can instantly calculate an individual's eigenface from either live video or a still digital image, and then search a database of millions in only a few seconds in order to find similar or matching images. "

Here, I think it's important to note the emphasis placed on the "real" as well as the immediacy of the images, and the company's "devotion" to be "faithful" to both of them. Also, the notion of archiving as a means of control, of surveillance, is clearly exemplified here. As Levin puts it, "such technology will allow for the automatic, continuous remote identification and tracking of individuals in nearly all spaces, both public and private.." (580)

- Here's another I find fascinating, concerning who this technology is targetted to:

"for e-commerce and home workers, large database fraud reduction, casino surveillance, airport and other security and law enforcement applications. Viisage is leading the way to bring face recognition applications and products to market. Furthermore, Viisage's Biometric Systems Integration Services providing new solutions by combining face recognition software with other biometrics, such as iris, voice, signature and fingerprint technology as well as with existing identification card systems. Other applications include PC networks, retail point-of-sale and virtually any other application that requires identification or verification of an individual. Viisage envisions a day when society could be free from cards, keys, Pin's and signatures. A person's face will be the private, secure and convenient password of choice.

This is a clear example of many of our reading's link between the increasing circulation of images according to market fluctuations. Note the vagueness of "other security and law enforcement applications"...I think what really interested me the most here is the way that these new technologies are presented, under a sort of democratic "veil", a claim that this is done for the good of the nation, (even suggesting that this "service" will reclaim the individual's "privacy" even though it will clearly be yet another way to make personal data public) as an essential security measure. As Levin says it "the military reserves for itself levels of resolution that are orders of magnitude more precise than what is available to the public" (580), underlining the very undemocratic aspect of them. This is in no way "neutral" surveillance, in other words.

posted by whkc at 11:18 PM

From Bridget

Immediately after “The Conversation” began, I started to wonder what Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) represented. As a person, whose job is to survey others, he is far more paranoid than those being surveyed. And what do those being surveyed by Caul represent? Although they suspect that they are under surveillance, or rather that they could be under surveillance at any time, they are more conscious than paranoid. They seem to represent the Little Brothers Dean writes about.

From the beginning Caul displays his extreme paranoia at his neighbor knowing his birthday and having access to his apartment. In the end the roles of Caul and those he was hired to survey become clearer. In the end, the man whose job it is to survey others (Caul) is revealed to be a ploy. The characters originally under surveillance had their own means of surveillance, superior to those of Caul. This is exhibited in the end when he is under surveillance and can’t figure out how, and ends up tearing apart his entire apartment. Caul represents the paranoid and dilluded public, who is overly concerned with being surveyed and in the end, is in fact under surveillance. As viewers, we identify with him.

The sovereign, all seeing type of surveillance also comes into play in the movie. Caul is religious and believes in the all-seeing power of the Lord, and in the end, the Virign Mary becomes suspect as one of the objects possibly ‘watching’ Caul via Harrison Ford’s character.

The question is, what form of surveillance is more powerful/effective? Caul seems to represent the public, while those he was hired to survey, along with Harrison Ford’s character represent the Little Brothers, and God/religion represent the Big Brother. While it seems as though in the end, the Little Brother wins, it can also be interpreted that there is no end, in fact the key to surveillance and society is it’s circularity. From the paranoia of not knowing, to the surveillance to gain knowledge, to the knowledge that creates more paranoia. Is Levin trying to say this?

posted by whkc at 11:17 PM