...the app sends exhortations to maintain a consistent bedtime routine when it registers that she took too long to settle, or messages of praise when she sleeps through the night... Such sentimental flourishes present the monitor as a kind of benevolent aide, an expert-guided extension of the loving, protective parental gaze, instead of what it really is: a sophisticated surveillance device with a probably objectionable user agreement...
If Monitors suggests the intrusion of the domestic into the gallery space, it also punctures the pretense of the baby monitor as something other than a spy camera, just as capable of tracking adults at work as sleeping infants... laying bare the extent to which parenting is bound up with scrutinizing, supervising, monitoring - and opening oneself up to scrutiny in turn.
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