Stanza – The Nemesis Machine at Diffusion 2019

The Nemesis Machine is a large installation representing the complexities of the real time city as an ever shifting and morphing system. It visualises life in the metropolis on the basis of real time data transmitted from a network of sensors, enabling the replica city of electronic components reflects in real time what is happening outside. In appearance, the Nemesis Machine is like Big Brother through the lens of the Internet of Things. It gives visitors a bird’s eye view of a cybernetic cityscape, a sonic and visually animated cluster of skyscrapers constructed of silicon and circuit boards.

Small cameras capture images of the city’s visitors so that they become part of the artwork. The installation goes beyond simple single user interaction, by monitoring and surveying behaviours, activities, and changing information in 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 the artist calls ‘parallel realities’.

Through The Nemesis Machine, Stanza is positing a new social space that exists in between the independent online networks where future cities will be merged in real time to create connected up data cities. The landscape will become an observable. The installation poses the question of who owns the data and speculates that virtual borders will create new systems of control.

Filmed and edited by Philip Jenkins