Tool for life: Gridscape
A dangerous shift is taking place. Data collection and surveillance technology have quietly crept into our society. With artificial vision and sensors, each and every person's physical and digital movements are tracked, moved and stored in seemingly invisible webs of lighting
high-speed cables and data centres. We are being trapped inside a sensing machine. In the land, city, architecture, workplace and home, each square meter is counted, sold and lobbied for. It's an endless optimization. To the machine, our world is an imitation of Excel sheets where rectangles have a numerical function and possibility to become a part of a new formula in the infinite matrix of rows and columns.
I call this the gridscape.
Gridscape
moving image
in-progress
IED
MA RCA
2020
Shortlisted: KooZA/rch nominee of MAB Student Awards 2021
Gridscape is a metaphor for our society and space, where everything is becoming increasingly more compartmentalized. Yet, at the same time, the gridscape is seamless. Without any disruptions, no stops and no limits. As if human progress doesn’t have an end. One can copy and paste each rectangle to replace the other without losing the structure. Gridscape has the perfect execution.
Add one and you will not notice a change in the matrix.
Gridscape is the hidden shadow of the rise of technology.
‘A house is a machine to be living in. Baths, sun, hot-water, cold-water, warmth at will, conservation of food, hygiene, beauty in the sense of good proportion. An armchair is a machine for sitting in and so on.’
‘The Engineer, inspired by the law of Economy and governed by mathematical calculation, puts us in accord with universal law. He achieves harmony.‘
Le Corbusier - Vers Une Architecture (Towards An Architecture)
‘The Engineer, inspired by the law of Economy and governed by mathematical calculation, puts us in accord with universal law. He achieves harmony.‘
Le Corbusier - Vers Une Architecture (Towards An Architecture)
‘You talk as if God had made the Machine,’ cried the other. ‘ I believe you pray to it when you are unhappy.
Men made it do not forget that.’
‘But humanity, in its desire for comfort, had overreached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.’
E. M. Forster - The Machine Stops
Men made it do not forget that.’
‘But humanity, in its desire for comfort, had overreached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.’
E. M. Forster - The Machine Stops