The emergence of photography and film as ”˜new media’ at the turn of the 19th century unsettled the ontological stability of visual arts. A century later we see a similar destabilizing of film with the emergence of a wide range of visual practices enabled by digital technology. As image making technologies proliferate from mobile phones and cheap digital cameras to surveillance videos the question of what constitutes a moving image regains significance.

Lawrence Liang's talk will focus on the regime of images produced by the hidden camera. The two key sites which display a discourse of the hidden camera have been in the Sting Operation and its revelation of public corruption, and leaked videos of private sexual intercourse. These are two important signposts of contemporary media life, and have been at the heart of debates over privacy, media ethics and legal disorder. While film theory has always been concerned with the ontological condition of the camera, there is an urgent need to reexamine the relationship between film studies and the incipient world of the moving image.

This talk will examine the philosophical consequences of the world of hidden cameras and ask what it means to think of our public and private selves and their mediation by the camera.