The contemporary human condition is under constant surveillance, through multiplicitous infrastructures that are accessing our interactions, with and without our permission, to produce data that feeds the entertainment, relationships, and the logistics of our lives. Concepts such as privacy and autonomy are no longer central to the Western concept of freedom, instead privacy is obscured as it is wrapped in corporate media platforms and hidden agendas that promise further convenience and connectivity.
Not only are we surveilled in real time but the data we produce is scoured by machine
learning algorithms, looking into our previous behaviors to find predictable patterns and unknown relationships. Our histories and relationships are evolving as we are training and being trained by algorithms that predict our choices, lubricating the mechanisms of the market.
What does this mean for the future of the contemporary city and the lives of its inhabitants? If we are monitoring more and more data points and developing models to find correlations between phenomena how does this affect the landscape of our cities? Particularly at a time when these technologies are pushing for further cultural homogeneity and the mapped connections can be weaponized to diminish dissent. As spatial designers we will develop a body of research that clearly articulates this new surveillance state, a state that is hidden in the recesses of our phones and digital assistants, our traffic cameras and facial recognition, and even in our continual recording of the earth’s surface via satellite imagery and local sensing. The body of research will focus on the landscape of the contemporary city, diving into the recent history of Berlin, Germany to understand how surveillance has played a role in the history and present cultural attitudes.
As mentioned, this research studio will be taught in conjunction with the Greater Berlin Seminar, a required course, taught by Professor Michael Lee. The seminar will provide a historical and theoretical background for the city of Berlin and examine how film has produced an image of a techno-cultural urbanism. In parallel to the seminar, the studio will develop a body of research that frames a series of contemporary case studies in surveillance techniques and methods, deploy image analysis to produce mappings of the city, and to then propose landscapes that are explored through singular views of a contemporary or future Berlin. The research aims to provide a critique of the proposition of the “smart” city through the lens of human experience and how nascent technologies are providing new experiential platforms while also ushering in regimes for the control of the citizens of the state.
The studio relies on a co-learning approach to the development of this body of research, review of the work, and dissemination of the final products. Co-learning hinges upon the concept that we are learning as a group, working together to develop an intellectual product that is the product of our collective knowledge. The studio pushes against the concept of the single author and we will work collaboratively, and remotely, to produce the research, analysis, and propositions that will shape our collective critique (or acknowledgment) of a surveillance laden, techno-cultural future.
Phase I: Initial Research The initial research phase will attempt to outline the major issues around surveillance within the built environment. The work will cover technologies, political mechanisms, commercial applications, consumer trends, data acquisition, as well as other areas identified by the research team.
Phase II: Analytical, Representing the City The analytical phase will introduce tools to explore the concept of surveillance via image analysis and mapping. As a research team we will develop proofs of concept as well as critiques of the tool-sets and methodologies.
Phase III: Narratives The research team will co-produce a series of narratives that illustrate the future of surveillance in the contemporary and future city. These narratives will be written and visualized using a real-time gaming engine (Unreal) and produced further via motion graphics software (After Effects).
Bibliography The course will collectively create a bibliography for the research in a shared Zotero Group. An initial primer is included below.
Gabrys, Jennifer. Program Earth. University of Minnesota Press, 2016.
Galloway, Alexander R., and Eugene Thacker. The Exploit: A Theory of Networks. Electronic Mediations, v. 21. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.
Greenfield, Adam. Against the Smart City. 1.3 edition. Do projects, 2013.
Mattern, Shannon. “A City Is Not a Computer.” Places Journal, February 7, 2017. https://doi.org/10.22269/170207.
Mitchell, William John. Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City. MIT Press, n.d.
Scott, James C. Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.