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Visual Art

  • The last time I saw Crawford’s work at the MoMA it was maybe around 2021. It left me filled with anguish and a lot of contempt for industrial progression. Which, frankly I needed the perspective. Immensely thankful I live in a city where I can go visit the MoMA to experience Anatomy of an AI System in person.

    Calculating Empires is a little different in some respects, but also very much a similar research visualization. From the about page of calculatingempires.net:

    Calculating Empires is a large-scale research visualization exploring how technical and social structures co-evolved over five centuries. The aim is to view the contemporary period in a longer trajectory of ideas, devices, infrastructures, and systems of power. It traces technological patterns of colonialism, militarization, automation, and enclosure since 1500 to show how these forces still subjugate and how they might be unwound. By tracking these imperial pathways, Calculating Empires offers a means of seeing our technological present in a deeper historical context. And by investigating how past empires have calculated, we can see how they created the conditions of empire today.