System-images

Abstract

System-Images capture the movements, behaviors, events and running commands of the city at any given moment; they are key software architectures to understand how machines and smart objects see and record today. Computers aren't the only ones communicating and backing up programs and operating systems to a hard disk or cloud. In today's cities, the objects that we would least suspect--parking meters, traffic lights, navigation systems, mobile phones, airplanes, alarm clocks, wireless routers, name tags, doors, virtual private networks (VPNs), steering wheels, game consoles, and even groceries-- take images of us, using hardware and software like sensors and behavioral algorithms, with human characteristics programmed into them. Whether the information logged is visual is beside the point; vital information in the form of visual cues, numbers, audio signals, colors, interaction time, computational identity and location are enough to coordinate an imprint of user and societal behavior. If collated, what kinds of narratives, philosophies and aesthetics would this data generate? System-Images provokes questions and fictions about our new spatial configuration and the nascent language it has birthed, hastened by technologies which do can everything that we can...and more.