Signage and Surveillance: Interrogating the Textual Context of CCTV in the UK
The UK is one of the most surveilled societies in the World. CCTV systems prevail in both private and public space. Since 2000, a Code of Practice has required that signage is clearly deployed to advise of the existence of those systems wherever they are in use. Throughout 2002, examples of that signage were captured photographically, culminating in an exhibition of this material in October of that year. While arguing that the signage works closely in conjunction with the technological systems to which it refers, this paper focuses on this textual superstructure, using a Foucauldian approach as a means of shaping the discussion. It concludes that the signage itself has a number of possible effects. Most significantly, it argues that these texts, outwith the technological structures to which they refer, actively and substantially facilitate the 'automatic functioning of power'.