Transparency

Medium’s goal to provide ‘reality itself’ or rather to conceal as much as possible the artificial apparatus of the medium. In Non-places such as airports and shopping malls, transparent architectural substrates such as glass are used widely, engendering in the inhabitant a sense that everything is in a state of total disclosure. The transparency of the window or the screen pose a promise of access while maintaining escapist illusions of utopia and heightening the desire to consume. To be transparent is to render the self measurable, legible and knowable; to relinquish data (1). Because of this, transparency is associated with privilege and mobility. Transparent architectures are deployed to ease both docility and consumption.

1 Hall, Rachel, The Art of Performing Consumer and Suspect: Transparency Chic as a Model of Privileged, Securitized Mobility. The Transparent Traveler: The Performance and Culture of Airport Security. Duke University Press, 2015. Pp 25-56.