In some of the speculative cameras described in the article, the user/operator and cameras/sensors relationship moves very much away from the traditional relationship that point-and-shoot cameras had between their user and camera. One way in which this seems to be happening is along the lines of agency of the situation. In more traditional photo camera’s the agency of the capture is at the behest of a user’s specific action and choice to engage with the camera – simply having access to the device does not allow for a capture to occur. In some of the situations discussed by Ervin, the question of agency changes to one where the action switches over to one where the agency is at the beginning of the situation where the terms for a potentiality of photographic situations to occur are created. If one has a camera that can take pictures on its own, learn from its actions, an is always operating then the last opportunity for the agency of the capture (in the 20th century sense of the photographic capture) occur at the onset instead of the moment of the performative ‘click’ of the camera. So here we have a situation where the device is always performing at the user’s initial request, and performing on its own in a way that the used to require a union of performative relations between person and machine.
This question of the performative agency happening at the beginning of the situation opens up larger questions about the relationship to agency amidst the user/operator and cameras/sensors relationship as cameras out in public begin to take on the computational qualities described by Ervin. What happens to the relationship when the consent of situational agency is removed by increased proliferation of these devices in an unregulated manner that arises out of the conditions of America’s late capitalism? When will this capture performance start? What is the Amazon Ring gonna do to us (performatively)?
