THE NEMESIS MACHINE Part 3

Stanza

CENTRESPACE
Visual Research Centre
Dundee Contemporary Arts
152 Nethergate
Dundee
DD1 4DY

From Metropolis to Megalopolis to Ecumenopolis

The Nemesis Machine is a large installation (adapted to each place where it is displayed) that is a miniature city. The artwork represents the complexities of the real-time city as a shifting morphing and complex system. It visualises life in the metropolis on the basis of real-time data transmitted from a network of sensors. So the city of electronic components reflects in real-time what is happening. Small cameras show pictures of the visitors so that they become part of the city.

The work sits in the middle of concepts for smart cities The Internet of Things IoT and the new technologies that monitors the real-time environment. In appearance, the Nemesis Machine is like Big Brother parsed through the lens of the Internet of things. It gives visitors a bird’s eye view of a cybernetic cityscape, where skyscrapers are constructed of silicon and circuit boards.

A Mini, Mechanical Metropolis Runs On Real-Time Urban Data. The artwork captures the changes over time in the environment (city) and represents the changing life and complexity of space as an emergent artwork. The artwork explores new ways of thinking about life, emergence and interaction within public space. The project uses environmental monitoring technologies and security based technologies, to question audiences’ experiences of real-time events and create visualizations of life as it unfolds. The installation goes beyond simple single user interaction to monitor and survey in real time the whole city and entirely represent the complexities of the real-time city as a shifting morphing complex system.

The data and their interactions – that is, the events occurring in the environment that surrounds and envelops the installation – are translated into the force that brings the electronic city to life by causing movement and change – that is, new events and actions – to occur. In this way the city performs itself in real-time through its physical avatar or electronic double: The city performs itself through another city. Cause and effect become apparent in a discreet, intuitive manner when certain events that occur in the real city cause certain other events to occur in its completely different, but seamlessly incorporated, double. The avatar city is not only controlled by the real city in terms of its function and operation but also utterly dependent upon it for its existence.

The artwork monitors the behaviours, activities, and changing information, of the world around us using networked devices and electronically transmitted information across the internet. This includes observation from a distance by means of custom made sensors, networked cameras and computers. The artwork reforms this information and data creating what he calls parallel realities. The artwork lies within the themes of the urban landscape, surveillance culture, privacy and alienation in the city.
At the heart of Stanza’s work lies his interest in the urban environment, the networks of cameras and sensors to be found there, and the associated issue of privacy and alienation. He is particularly interested in the patterns we leave all over the place. In how we consciously or unconsciously influence each other, and also the degree to which technology may in future take over control of our own bodies and our presence in the city. Stanza presents the city as a control system and various art projects have been made using live real-time environmental data, surveillance and security data, news and real-time information systems.

Join us for the opening on 10th November at 6 pm