Panoptikon by Maria W Horn

The original panopticon-style prisons hold the unglamorous title of being one of the most torturous and dehumanizing methods of confinement ever devised. The state locked prisoners into permanent solitary confinement, arranging cell blocks to be monitored without the prisoners’ knowledge, ensuring that these tortured people lived in fear of the warden’s watchful eye at all hours of day and night. Born out of a solemn art installation at an abandoned panopticon prison, the new album Panoptikon by Maria W Horn emphasizes the crushing mental consequences of living in such an environment. The installation featured speakers placed throughout the cells, each one playing a singing voice in sporadic bursts, allowing the voices to occasionally intertwine and harmonize as each one cried out for the validation of its existence. Besides these voices, a sense of progression largely remains conspicuously absent from the album, as time stands still for the understimulated and disoriented people suffering through years of near-complete isolation. As solitary confinement remains a common practice throughout much of the world, the touching, tragic beauty of Panoptikon should motivate us to elevate these desperate, tortured voices as they wail out in search of harmony.