The all-seeing internet did not anticipate Frank Ocean’s next release would be the visual album “Endless.”

The internet did not anticipate the release of a Frank Ocean album on Thursday, August 18. With one hundred eyes, it assumes what happens in its periphery does not exist. The danger of existing in the body of a multi-eyed giant is how little we see when we expect we are looking at everything. A year past due and there was still no new album from Frank Ocean. In the year that followed, Frank Ocean, heightened anticipation with posts on his Tumblr page - a shot of “Boy Don’t Cry” magazine, poignant condolences during the loss of Prince, responses to tragedies in Ferguson and Orlando, and, most recently, a library due date card that referenced the album’s speculative release dates with ironic playfulness.Īs the month of July 2016 progressed, the internet salivated an ocean of expectation for the impending album’s release, but July passed. Since first mention of “Boys Don’t Cry” and its expected July 2015 release date, the internet has buzzed with news about Frank Ocean’s next move.

In this world of the giant and the giant tower, Frank Ocean was almost a casualty. In order to survive the reign of the giant, it is nearly impossible for a person to go through a moment without response to the hundred eyes - to snap, to tweet, to flutter off our existence in image and meme - as if our very lives depend upon it. Social media is Panoptes - the hundred-eyed giant from which Foucault’s panoptic essay gained its name. So powerful is the mind’s ability to project consequence, that a person will modify behavior to fit the context of contained space. But the uncomfortable brilliance of this structure, the portion often ignored in Foucault’s text, is that the prisoners need no watchman in order perform as if there is one. Although it is impossible for a single figure to watch all the cells at once, the idea that a prisoner is being watched by the all-seeing eye of the building’s core psychologically dictates prisoners modify their behavior in response to the tower’s watchful presence. In Foucault’s “Panopticon,” the philosopher describes an 18 th century precursor to today’s modern prison system - a tower manned by a watchman, surrounded by a circular corridor of cells.

Endless frank ocean full album