Surveillance, itself, doesn’t scare me so much as a subject as it once did. Applying meaning-filters of performance and theatre in particular tend to ease the tension of the notion of constantly being watched - and judged.

But I like surveillance as a subject for another reason: because its a good metaphor for some element of how the human perceptual system operates. During what I think of as conscious awareness, the mind is typically always watching or listening (although its attention and level of focus tend to modulate). Mind itself, or maybe part of it, maybe something like “omnipresent surveillance”, like an “oh my god, did you just see what Gladys did?”

This quote is cool:

Indeed, without stories our experiences would merely be unevaluated sensations from an undifferentiated stream of events. Stories are the repository of our collective wisdom about the world of social/cultural behavior; they are the key mediating structures for our encounters with reality.