London based artist Stanza is an audio-visual artist working with the concept of surveillance since 1982. “Underpinning his artworks are a whole series of potential problems about observation, invisible agency, and the ethics of the control space.”, as the work thematically centres itself around problems within space, installation becomes the perfect medium to execute such themes. Through the use of sensors, live cameras, robotics, and computing Stanza creates dystopian landscapes exemplifying the notion of control through surveillance.
The Agency At The End Of Civilisation (2014)
video
Code (Custom API), cameras, screens, speakers.
This work focuses on the A354 road, using cameras and ANPR technology and code to enact the data. When certain speeds are met the installation is coded to play messages. Below is the code for some of the generative sound. Other parameters such as make, model, colour, and date are also used to generate sound.
The sonic material is generated from these parameters and spoken by artificial voices. The installation begins to perform itself when the code is triggered by multiple vehicles creating a chaotic artificial soundscape from ‘voice’.
By vocalising intimate details of civilians’ lives through the mechanical voices, the work highlights ‘non-human’ and ‘digital’ communications, allowing audiences to see and hear systems often hidden within technology that use civilians as data input.
A philosophical position by Professors Charlie Gere and Graham Harman is presented on the work’s website. Harman compares the systems of surveillance to the panopticon, as both produce “homogeneous effects of power”. Stanza’s work interrogates the panopticon in a Foucauldian way, this work demonstrates its parallels to the panopticon by modelling itself on a surveillance system often used to discourage certain behaviours over the fear of being seen/watched. I find the demystification of surveillance to be the most salient aspect of the work, and something I consider within my own practice.
Gere states that this work can be considered a way to understand the world in a way that “does not reduce it to what is available to human consciousness.”, by modifying familiar yet mystified systems, audiences gain agency and power. I would argue that systems of surveillance often aim to reduce human agency and power, and so through this work it can be understand that Stanza is trying to reconstruct the audience relationships to such systems, allowing knowledge to be shared freely and then perhaps criticised. Gere also discusses this work with reference to philosophical frameworks “Speculative Realism, Object-Oriented Ontology, and the New Materialism”, these ideologies will be the basis for my further research in project two of the portfolio.
Artificial voices seem to be a recurring theme within works about surveillance. I feel as though these voices exemplify to audiences the theme of the works and perhaps the dystopian realities of surveillance; however, perhaps it is an overdone trope of this type of art? I plan on experimenting with artificial voices to be played back on the landline telephone in my prototype as a way to show audiences the themes I am trying to communicate; however, I feel unsure if this will be used within the file installation.
Within my current project, by applying some of the philosophical framework theorised by Foucault, issues on surveillance, particularly in regard to activism are more poignant than ever.
Bibliography
Stanza About, stanza.co.uk. Stanza. Available at: https://www.stanza.co.uk/about/index.html (Accessed: 9 December 2025).
‌Stanza About, stanza.co.uk. Stanza. Available at: https://www.stanza.co.uk/agency/index.html (Accessed: 9 December 2025).