Watching Jeremy, Watching Me, Watching Jeremy

In his will, Jeremy Bentham, UCL's "spiritual founder", requested that after his death, his body be displayed in public, in what he called an "Auto-Icon". His preserved skeleton continues to gaze upon the university in a glass cabinet. Since 2013, a webcam (PanoptiCam) has been installed on the top of the Auto-Icon watching the reaction of passers-by looking at Jeremy's remains, and broadcasting the images via Twitter and Youtube.

Dr Rodrigo Firmino, Honorary Senior Research Associate at UCL Urban Laboratory, has been pursuing a project watching Jeremy Bentham watching him watching Jeremy, in an extension of his research interests on cameras being used to watch public spaces.

Rodrigo is paying Jeremy a visit every weekday, so that they can "talk" about surveillance. Every time, he shows Jeremy a different sentence - whilst also in the realisation that he himself has become a lab rat within the PanoptiCam project itself. Who is watching whom?

Rodrigo is inviting suggestions for messages to display to Jeremy - you can send an idea here. 

PanoptiCam is a project from the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, UCL Public and Cultural Engagement, and UCL's Bentham Project.

Links

• Watching Jeremy, Watching Me, Watching Jeremy blog
• PanoptiCam