The Nemesis Machine – From Metropolis to Megalopolis to Ecumenopolis from Stanza on Vimeo.A miniature metropolis made from motherboards and computer chips chugs away in British artist Stanza's new data-driven installation, The Nemesis Machine. The installation's many lights, motors, and circuit board skyscrapers flash and whir according to realtime data about weather and personal activity, gathered from a network of hacked sensors spread throughout London. Cameras even transmit viewers onto tiny screens stationed throughout the mechanical data visualization, literally drawing each visitor fully into the installation.
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Thus, the urban model becomes the city's avatar, responding to its changing state like a video game character respinds to a player's controls. Explains Stanza, "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." Viewers at the Arentshuis Brugge Museum in Belgium see the mechanical performance, a physical glimpse into London's everyday life, from 175 miles away.While visually reminiscent of his previous Emergent Cityinstallation, The Nemesis Machine is designed to travel, drawing upon different cities to influence its transposition of London's data. "I’m re-contextualizing it to give it a wider meaning," he says. "I want to show that you can do something positive with this data. And as I say data is the medium of the age and I use this data to 'paint' with. From Big Brother to the Mother of Big Brother."Stanza's art has been shown all over the world throughout the last 30 years, from Tate Britain and the V&A Museum to the Venice, Sydney, and Sao Paolo biennials, spanning issues like surveillance, big data, urban planning, and social media. The Nemesis Machine will be on display at the Arentshuis Bruges Museum through May 10.Check out The Nemesis Machine in the video above and images below.
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