REFLECTING FRAGMENTS:
STS Studio Spring’19
The Smart City Project aims to gain actionable insight to improve the livability of the city by leveraging big data analytics capability.* As part of the Smart ATL project, North Avenue has been equipped with various sensors and surveillance cameras to monitor, record, and track every activity on the street. Smart City’s interest in big data became such an obsession that it turned into a fetish of watching every detail of daily life on North Avenue. In a Foucauldian sense, data fetishism enhances the invisible power of the state over the public.
Reflecting Fragments is a large scale interactive public installation that aims to increase the public’s awareness of the fact they are being watched, recorded, and eventually becoming a fragment of big data. The exterior mirror surfaces of the installation reflect a dynamic pattern of fragments of the daily life captured from its surrounding environment. The interior mirror surfaces of the extensions work as kaleidoscopes reproducing infinite reflections of faces looking into the installation. The [REC] sign on the mirror reflected on every fragment reminds people that they are being recorded by the surveillance cameras on the site.
Reflecting Fragments is a large scale interactive public installation that aims to increase the public’s awareness of the fact they are being watched, recorded, and eventually becoming a fragment of big data. The exterior mirror surfaces of the installation reflect a dynamic pattern of fragments of the daily life captured from its surrounding environment. The interior mirror surfaces of the extensions work as kaleidoscopes reproducing infinite reflections of faces looking into the installation. The [REC] sign on the mirror reflected on every fragment reminds people that they are being recorded by the surveillance cameras on the site.