The origins of the concept may be traced in Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon and in the Enlightenment bienfaisance as expressed in the institutional reform of prisons and hospitals.
In Sur écoute. Esthétique de l'espionnage (2007), he draws on Foucault's analysis of the Panopticon and Deleuze's Postscript on the Societies of Control in order to show how the act of listening always entails issues of power and dominion.
The octagonal jail was designed by Thomas Young, modelled after Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon design for prison construction, common in mid-19th century Britain and North America.
His 2002 Audio/Video installation in collaboration with composer Victoria Jordanova at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art entitled "Panopticon" was published by ArpaViva label as a DVD and is distributed by The Cinema Guild of New York.