SURVEILLANCE

05 SURVEILLANCE

Of control and (un)control In Climate Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes narrated a false history of political consent, citizens bargain liberties for security and stability against climate deprivation or any forms of outbreaks of conflict over the commodities. In reality, we see large armies and rapidly expanding surveillance states-state power of china now pulls criminals with facial recognition software and deploys domestic spy drones indistinguishable from birds.

Walter Benjamin’s discussion on the transforming nature in artwork in response to the conditions of technical reproducibility. He defined the significance of the original work of art in terms of its tradition, permanence and uniqueness which contribute to the constitution of its aura whereas the replica is characterized by its transportability and repeatability. Suffice to say, Benjamin anticipated the trajectory of technological production mode in the concept of the dissolution of the aura. Nowadays, works of art rely on and performed on digital platforms, inherently replicable across the network, in which people experience in everyday life of mass-produced type. The liberation of art can be observed for increasingly collective and individual responses from the film industry to the ever-expanding publication of the Internet, allowing the overwhelmingly reproduction and progressive expression of information from everyone. As a result, the modern media simulates the experience in mobilizing potential of images and culture which is free from its ritual roots

FIG.19 Sketches question about the surveillance city

TITLE: we are in the ever-expanding cartographic landscape

SMART CITY Data-collection technology has become ubiquitous in human society, transforming the shape of modern cities. Our action, decision aggregate data point, we are DATA,turned into nudges into certain outcomes

SMART CITY? SMART TO CONTROL YOU CITY?

Imagining a Drone-Proof City in the Age of Surveillance

In 1960s to 70s, radical architecture group respond accordingly to the social, technological and political impulse and developed projects that imagine the mobility, flexibility spaces which is free from logic of modernist capitalism. They look at telecommunication, machine as a medium to express the individual and collective value. As drones become increasingly common tools of war and surveillance on the battlefield and in our cities, it is the time to look at the role of architecture and the counter-reaction. The city is an enormous aggregation of and part of the history of defensive urban design, as an intensification of previous tendencies ever since the very beginning of civilization. In retrospect, the notion of the defensible space such as Haussmann's Paris transformation that paved boulevard to allow military movement and deter populace from construction barricade, to WWII period that Hitler transformed spaces into a monumental fortress, to the recent bollard-ization of American streets and fortification of financial building, banks, monuments as response to terrorism. The urban design strategy is to think about new way of space where logical enough for inhabitants to navigate but random enough to disrupt automated surveillance.

FIG.20 HK Anti-design panorama in response to surveillance

QR code attached to window to disturb drones' connection -roof enclosure to provide thermal control to undermine heat sensor+ lighting interference system. -Continuous monument to unite community and interrupt drone flight patterns