ABSTRACT
CCTV images can act exactly like any other external cue in retrieving specific stored information in the mind about past events and experiences. CCTV frames, as a ‘thing external to the mind’, are connected to ideas of social memory in two ways. CCTV frames become part of the current set of ‘hypermedia’ tools with which significance is bestowed and experience and memory are articulated and (re-)constructed. The specific kind of CCTV frame that becomes iconic might act as an especially potent ‘prosthesis’ or cue to social memory: it acts as well as in the memory of many other media events, as a tool that foreshadows the event. The narrative movements that use CCTV images for their pragmatic functioning, for the evocation of a socially memorable event, can be very subtle and very versatile. The evidential mark of the CCTV image lets the image become part of individual and intersubjective realms of experience.
