The Unnatural Link Between Mothering and Technological Surveillance

The article is a curator's reflection on how mothering intersects with technology and surveillance, drawing on the 2023 MIT Press collection Supervision: On Motherhood and Surveillance, edited by Sophie Hamacher with Jessica Hankey. It describes how the book's essays on the baby monitor, the nanny cam and "virtual mothering" informed the curator's online exhibition, Wake Windows: The Witching Hour, presented by the MacKenzie Art Gallery. The exhibition's guide is Edgar, a 42-year-old mainframe computer from Claudia Cornwall's 1982 children's book Print-Outs, revived as an AI companion for a newborn.