The new SITUATIONS cluster is called Seeing Machines and is exploring the way that technologies of seeing are increasingly devoid of human agency. Inspired by a blog written for Fotomuseum Winterthur by Trevor Paglen, seeing machines today comprise a vastly expanded field—everything from satellites, to drones, to automatic number plate recognition devices, to sophisticated screening software. 

They include the machines themselves, the data they capture as well as the “script” they support, the mode of ‘seeing’ they develop. Moving beyond an exclusive concern with drone surveillance, this cluster engages with the history of seeing machines, their more everyday uses, as well as strategies developed to subvert their control. Bearing in mind the unprecedented powers of algorithmic vision, does it make sense any more to speak about photography?

SITUATION #9
Ryoichi Kurokawa, Sirens, 2013

SITUATION #10
Auto Apocalypse, Dashcam Meteors, 2013

SITUATION #11
Trevor Paglen, from “Is Photography Over?,” 2014

SITUATION #12
Venera 13, Venus, 1982

SITUATION #13
Explorer VI, First Earth satellite view, 1959

SITUATION #14
Pigeon Photography, Adrien Michelʼs instruments of aerial reconnaissance, late 1930s

SITUATION #15
Kasia Klimpel, Grand Tour, 2015

SITUATION #16
Andrzej Steinbach, hier (here), 2013

SITUATION #17
The Drone Queen, Homeland, 2015

SITUATION #18
A Short Bibliography, further reading about “Seeing Machines”