The Panopt is a restaurant in Shekland. The restaurant features cameras to watch the people at each booth incredibly closely. Each booth features cameras overhead, around the room, and under each table. Being at the restaurant made me feel like all of my warnings about the world to come had come true all at once. It was meant to be an art installation to comment on the nature of privacy, and is meant to illicit an experience of unease in the guests. It certainly was able to illicit it’s unease in me and my wife when I visited it last year.
The restaurant is filled with cameras in various locations. Most of them are in obscure positions and meant to be more of decoration than anything else. Outside of these random cameras, in our booth we had 4 cameras around us, there were 6 overhead pointing down, and 4 under the table (yes, pointed exactly how you think)
Transclude of The-panoptA diagram of the booths (in white), table (in orange) and the cameras + ranges (in red)
There are other layouts for other table types, but this is the most common one, and is at the edges of the restaurants, with more tables in the middle. Gimmick aside the food is quite nice. Originally they were serving food that appeared to be bland and prison-like to fit with the theme, however they later updated the menu to more appropriate options. In general the food was slightly above the standard of your average pub, and even had some Arzentian dishes I haven’t tried in a long time.
The whole time as we ate felt uncanny, while there are usually some sort of camera’s at most restaurants the cognitive dissonance was not aloud to silence our anxieties here. Everything is too real and too transparent. Obviously the restaurant is meant to take the notion of surveillance to a hyperbolic level, however you are actually eating while being that closely surveilled. It’s almost like you’ve gotten used to eating in a dark room your whole life and now have to eat in the light. It’s uncomfortable, it makes you self-conscious, and most of all it sparks a question about who’s on the other end.
Many people would say something like “I would never eat there”, or “I don’t like to be watched”, however the owner argues that you already eat in restaurants just like this all the time. The creator and owner of The Panopt, Tahren Aeilzenia is known for her fiction writing, and directing. She has created stories like The org, and movies such as The Machinist.
She originally created the restaurant to “make people aware of what’s coming”. Much of her commentary has been warning people of the implications of accepting a limitless stream of information about themselves being available at all times. Specifically the restaurant was an artistic protest of bill b-734-a, which allows Shekland law enforcement to take footage from any available camera to aid in investigations. The divisive bill has caused many issues already from officers using it to track their wives and criminals using the mandatory backdoors for all kinds of purposes. For Ailzenia everyone already eats in restaurants like The Panopt every time they go out.
Lawsuits
There have been various lawsuits against The Panopt. Many groups have hacked in to steal the data from the restaurant. Some in protest of the concept of surveillance, and others for much more nefarious reasons. Kathleen Miller for example ate at the restaurant with her ex-boyfriend Aelias Ta’krem, who later broke into the servers to steal and publish the under-table footage up Miller’s skirt online. Irene Talzera filed a lawsuit after one of the staff members managed to skim her credit card by watching her put her pin into the machine, this had been going on for months and became a class action suit. There have also been more generic lawsuits brought against the restaurant to convince the Shekland government to put in legislation to limit surveillance in all restaurants, not just The Panopt. Ironically continuing the cycle and spirit by which the restaurant was created in the first place.
A new dawn
Since these lawsuits the Panopt no longer stores any of the video footage from the table. In fact none of the cameras data is stored. This has lead to the panopticon becoming a more complex idea artistically, and has lead to many papers on the topic. Is it an invasion of privacy to be watched, if the watcher forgets. Several scholars have linked this to the idea of passing someone by on the street. They do quickly have access to see you, and watch you as they please, but for the most part they will forget you right away. In fact since the cameras forget instantly you may actually be less surveilled now in the restaurant than you are out in public.
However, it’s important to keep in mind the cameras are still real, meaning they could be watching you, or they might be turned off. This unknown of whether someone is even on the other end anymore sets a whole other set of privacy questions off.
If you’re in Shekland, and looking for a unique experience, I would recommend The Panopt, and have your eyes opened.