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.

Tool for life: Gridscape A dangerous shift is taking place. Data collection and surveillance technology are quietly creeping 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 for and can be 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 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, stops and limits. As if human progress doesn’t have an end. One can copy and replace each rectangle without losing the structure. The system has a seemingly perfect execution. Add one and you will not notice a change in the matrix. It is a hidden shadow in the rise of technology. Each square inside the grid is a representation of a square meter and once added value it will be counted for. It must have a positive value, it must balance the numbers below, it must be an investment of time, it must be a way forward. Everything organic fits into values - ecosystems, organic matter, animals, faces, living spaces, furniture, air, material - this can all be transformed into numbers. With this project, I am hoping to criticize and provoke dialogue within the new realms created by gridscape. I am questioning if the remote forces created for optimization are pushing all matter to be placed inside a rectangular matrix that is similar to an Excel sheet. Is the numb capitalist force applied to every aspect of new technology? Where or when do we stop? Is it a loop feeding itself? Finally, I want to remind the viewer that it is the human, who has invented the machine and this gridscape. ---- ‘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

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Liina Lember

Liina Lember

Liina Lember

Liina Lember

Liina Lember