The monitoring image

This is an image that observes, checks and keeps a continueous record of a process. The production of this image is based on the concept of pre-emption. Pre-emption is a technique for taking control over the future, to act on the basis of a possible future event. Pre-emption makes the future, that which is imagined, to become real. It’s protocol; to act to prevent something from happening, is of course one on which surveillance technologies are based. Everything is recorded IN CASE something happens. The recording is not done to memorize something, it is done to see what should not happen.

An example of a pre-emptive networked event. A girl is captured by a mobile phone after her dog pooped in the subway. Her picture soon finds its way to the web and eventually results in what you could call, a hait-campaign against the dog-girl who then quits her university in shame and published a photo of her dog and a public apology in Korean.

“Some said that posting the woman's picture was acceptable, but that posting her personal information was inappropriate.”
I think we should reflect on this event even earlier in its history, starting from the actual moment of producing the image.

The photographer of the dog-poop-girl was trying to prevent the girl from fleeing her ‘crime’ and proof was all she needed. Her imagination becomes real in the production of the image and not only then when it is posted to the web entering a network of blogs.
Could the connections made to the picture: reporting an incident through the picture and its resulting moral reactions and concerns be the motives for the photographer to make the picture? Or is it the characteristics of the technology of the mobile phone that is inscribed into its use, which makes this event pre-emptive.

The characteristics of the mobile phone with a fast connection to the web and being an ever present eye on the world, instigates a performative role of the image. In this case, the mobile phone image configures the future of the girl. Through the image the photographer is constructing, moral judgement as a networked event. An event that is supported by mobile technology.

The protocol for producing this kind of event through the cellphone image is nicely illustrated by wikipedia.