Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power Since 1500

My name is Vladan Joler. I live in Serbia. I'm kind of some kind of like a professor at the university, in the department of new media, whatever new media means nowadays. But most of the time I think about myself as some kind of detective or investigator or some kind of counter cartographer of the frontiers and relations and power relations behind screens. So it's mostly investigating invisible layers of technology and power that are hidden behind. The screens, no? And since the topic of this conversation and event is around AI, it's kind of hard not to start with this map that Kate Crawford and I did in 2018. The name of the map was, and it still is, was like Anatomy of an AI System. I'm going to share my screen now. And welcome to the show. Welcome to my really crazy desktop in which I have a lot of like maps, pile one on top of each other. So I think let's start with this one. So this one, it's Anatomy of an AI System. And what I'm super like amazed by this one, it's like it's still kind of relevant. And unfortunately, it's going probably to be relevant for a long time because like this kind of deep materiality of technology that we use, it's not something that we can fix by any conference or any book or whatever.

So if we want to change this map, we will need to deep dive into some kind of like some kind of planetary scale problem. And this planetary scale problem, it's like inequality, extraction and so on. But in a way, I never intended to do these kind of things. My journey into this kind of invisible started with investigation of a single internet packet. And then after like 10 or now even more years, I still didn't finish this journey. So I really didn't know that I will end up in this kind of planetary scale problem. So it started with like following one single internet packet and then like trying to understand what is happening in this like a nanosecond of time. And then like, you know, like the second of this event and basically on some kind of threshold of like time and threshold of materiality. But then it's like step by step, we were saying, okay, like, okay, what this one single internet packet is going and then like reaching some place. Then we started to investigate this other place. Then step by step, we were like going deeper and deeper into the story. And then basically it starts with you as a human being, as the one who sits in front of this like monitor.

And then you just try to go further, further, further and try to understand how basically what's going on there. But what really keeps me for now so many years like doing that, it's that like every step you make, it is basically another methodology of investigation. So like, for example, you can take this object and squash this object. And then there is something inside. And then you can try to, to, to grain it and to put it in something else and to see like, you know, like how it's being made or whatever or, or, or dive into, you know, some kind of like murky scenes of, of like illegal blueprints trade that exists on some kind of Chinese websites or whatever. So it's like really, really exciting investigation. And I'm completely still turn on. Into that, you know, into trying to, to investigate. But as I said, like more, you go deeper, it's harder and harder. And then you need to learn like for some time, I was like really into doing these kind of drawings of like networks and how those networks are connected and interconnected and so on. But for me, even back then, it was, it was mostly like, okay, and now I have like this kind of like drawing that I have in front of my, you know, face in the screen.

But what is the meaning of this drawing? Like what kind of power or what kind of power, power relation I can read from, from this, you know? And this is when I said like, okay, I really don't have a capacity for all of these because every drawing it is basically another field in, in, in, in science or in whatever. And also, and I started mostly then to work with, because in the beginning I was like mostly into, into cyber phishing. I was into the forensics, legal investigations, investigative journalists. But more and more, I was like, okay, that I'm spending more and more time in, in like understanding what is the meaning of this. So that means like I should probably work more with the, with the philosophers, you know, or with some kind of critical media theory people or, or, or, you know, people who can like give me maybe some kind of, not answer how something is working, but more like what, what is the meaning of this? Why? You know, like what, what's, what's behind this? Like how I can critically read all of this. And this is the, also the reason how I started to work with, with Kate, for example, on this one.

And, and, and I'm still excited about this idea of, of like extended anatomies of, of devices or systems to understand that like what we have in, in our hands or in front of us, it's just like some kind of interface. Like, it isn't oppression, it's like property. Like, you know, but I have some kind of network so that I can understand like whoまで some technology had until then. But so far, I, I don't think as security tension, because it's the actual genですか, right? That2 but I think, but I think at some, you know, for me, that this is more, more, it's the way I think. And, and, and I, I think, my blaming systems has been I think often, when I guess like for me also isn't because I don't, I don't know, it's because, you know, I want to ıyoruz am I turn left and right you know so for example from the one router you can turn you can follow the internet packet but you can also jump into electricity and then basically if you go there then another form of complexity another form of power relation another form of of of like you know the layers and layers of different complexities are hidden there no but at the end if you go far far far far far at the end you will end up in some kind of earth you know and this is why i think this map became so kind of like uh interesting for for many people it's because it it connected this kind of uh uh technology and and and and and and because in the beginning i was like mostly this researching this kind of like relation between human beings and technology you know is it like privacy is it like this data extractivism and and and but then when when you go

until the end then you reach into the minds then you reach into elements then you'll reach into metals that you reach into and and and this is basically how this map exploded in this kind of like uh two sides you know and uh and uh and i'm still really uh so why for me it's like so have helpful you know in a sense they're like this kind of like journeys into into this kind of complexities and cartographies because you those kind of journeys and maps are allowing you to ask different questions that you will usually not do so for for me if we need to speak about ai i by having this experience of of exploring those like different dimensions and and like complexities i'm i may be able to ask some questions that people are not usually asking you know so for for me i don't know when we had this kind of discussion about ethics and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and Zumik diagram but the before myself was how do allow people to work with rotating back gli гар with me here and now even to talk about on how how anything's going that happened by learning a new discipline the physical society Ansic Ha Hut you that we are now today and not nannyiri too much more i'm going to little more than training data set, how exactly it will look like, you know, like who is going to decide now what is the balance we are searching for or what is like, you know. So in a way, I use this kind

of like maps to think about scale of problems, you know, like so on the question like AI, whatever, I'm like asking, okay, what is your zoom level of AI? Do we speak about like model? Do we speak about like data training data set? Or we are including planetary scale infrastructure of communication or planetary scale infrastructure of like extraction of data or planetary scale infrastructure of extraction of metals and earth and everything, you know. And, and, uh, and I think like, why, why I'm still excited about this one. It is basically that, that I really think that, that people who are, who are running those systems now, like this kind of like, uh, I don't know, AI, open AI or Google or, or, or whoever, you know, they are dealing with this zoom level, you know? And, and so what that means, that means, that, that, that they need to be the, the Kings or Queens of, of, of of, of, uh, supply chains now. So the reason why, why NVIDIA, it's so big now, it's because they ruled this part. You know, they need to rule also this part down with like extraction of data and try to find a way how to, to, to find like different ways of like extracting everything that exists Shout .

Darin ciento de milita, Edit head-to-TV though. PT LOlulule arguing œ någotimi cryptocurrencykie Det portrait på Considera ik een poss dolphin van Jan soaking等一下 näm goed, I know this partner is helping Stéphanie Lilming cm Ой Currently, I see, nowcaster's But this partner is helping us with everything ever written, everything ever said or whatever they do. And they also need to deep dive into that. So this is like, in a way, this is still a battlefield of an AI. And I think really the people who are into it, into this kind of domination, they see the world in this way. And then basically the thing is like, okay, because most of the time people are saying, okay, those maps are really dark and whatever. And what is the solution? And I'm into it. Really, you need to have a blueprint of a battlefield or blueprint of a factory. If you want to do a sabotage. You need to have a blueprint of a factory. Okay, maybe you don't need, you can go like just randomly and do something, but it's really helpful first to understand how factory look like, or how the battlefield for like creation of contemporary AI system look like.

So in a way, I found this like really useful. And then there is also this kind of thing. Like, if you, basically we need to find the way, and this is something when I was like, working with Matteo Pasquinelli on this NoScope. That was like, what was like really super, you know, interesting for me, it was just this kind of starting point that we had in like, let's try to understand the limits of AI. Let's try to understand like, what are the capacities, what are the aberrations, what are the errors, what are the limits? And I found this idea of thinking about limits of AI like really important, really super important. And I'm also thankful, Hito, for your work. For example, in this like video, how not to be seen, like this, this, this like beginning of like, what is bigger than a resolution, what is smaller than a resolution is not visible. And that really stayed with me for a long, long, long time. And really kind of, that's one of the logical plays I'm always using when I'm thinking about the limits of those systems. No. And then for example, like, why it's important to understand the limit, because like what is behind the limit, it is maybe possible place, a place of freedom.

It is if we understand what is not possible for them, what is behind the threshold, then we can start to think about this kind of ecologies that are behind the threshold, you know, and try to see. And it also means like, once we understand what is behind, he can also empower, or we can try to find a way how to not endanger those, those, those places or events behind the threshold of, of, of AI. And, and so after the, the, but, but there is something like, you know, there is something about this, like map aesthetics and, and, and, and, and, and basically there is some kind of a weird, the, uh, irony or post irony of all of this, uh, the time doing it's like, basically I'm using some kind of like a military technology, like maps as a military technologies of like, this is how the world looks like. This is how, you know, but, but I deeply inside of me, I know that it's not that, that all of this, it's some kind of fiction, you know? So for example, for me as a cartographer, I know that, that me together with Kate, for example, with this one or, or, or, or any other collaborations that I was doing, doing like every dot on, on this map, it's a fiction, you know, not a fiction.

It is decision, you know? So I'm, I'm here working in some kind of hyper biased place, you know, but representing this as a, as a map, as a, as a, some kind of like military technology, this is how we're doing it. This is why this is some kind of like a, uh, counter cartography, because it comes from the position of, of not from the position of power, but from the position of, uh, I dunno, the suppressed or something like this. And, and, and, and here, I really, really also like to play with this idea. Like I'm really big fan of this kind of, uh, Slovenian or, or Yugoslav, uh, conceptual scene from eighties and, and nice Slovenian coast and constant Liebach. And for example, when Liebach is like, you know, doing something that sounds like some kind of like music of fascism, it is like, uh, some kind of like critique of fascism itself. So in the same way, the way how use this map is, uh, in some way like critique of a map itself, because once you start to, to work with a map, you, you understand that, that it is all about classification.

So when you are drawing a map, you're all constantly, you're classifying something. And then basically I'm making a maps that are critiquing classification by doing classification. So it's kind of like a weird, it's a weird space now. And, and then, uh, I think now like almost four years ago, Kate and I, we started, uh, uh, this research that became some kind of really a rabbit hole of, uh, research of, of, of history. And it's called like calculating empire. So we were like working four years on, on this, like a mega map. Uh, it is some kind of like completist, uh, you know, game that will never be completed. And that is basically also always wrong, but, but in a way, like we, we deep dived into, into, into history of, of, of different systems and relations that, that basically constitute AI. And, and, uh, so basically if we speak about dimensions, this all the calculating empire, it's also structure, like first part of calculating empires is structure like this line, but it's another dimension of this line. It's, it's like 500 years of, of this one line. So I will now try to play this audio tour guide, because I don't think that I can explain so well without the help of, of this, uh, voice of Kate.

Okay, let's try. Calculating empires. It's a large scale research visualization, exploring how technical and social structures co-evolved over five centuries. The aim is to view the contemporary period in a longer trajectory of ideas, devices, infrastructures, and systems of power. The vertical axis represents time spanning from 1500 to the present moment. Across this expanse of history, the map examines how past empires calculated and how they created the conditions of empire today. The horizontal axis is organized into four central themes, communication, computation, classification, and control. Within these themes are dozens of domains from algorithms to architecture, bodies to borders. Navigation is flexible. You can read vertically to follow a single topic from 1500 to 2025, or horizontally to track different systems and events over a single time period. Alternatively, you can use the map to track the future. You can select a topic from the menu at the top of the screen and be taken directly to that part of the map. If we go from left to right, the journey begins here with the history of communication devices that humans have used over time. Then we turn to the interfaces needed for access, the programming languages behind them, and the communication infrastructures that support it all.

The map is a tool that allows you to navigate between different systems and structures. It's a tool that allows you to navigate between different systems and structures. It's a tool that allows you to navigate between different systems and structures. From submarine telegraph cables to satellites to the electromagnetic spectrum. From submarine telegraph cables to satellites to the electromagnetic spectrum. Then we see where the data flows from those communication systems collected and organized by museums, film and TV archives, and AI training datasets. That data is then used to train algorithms and models that have their own histories which are presented to the public. which are programmed and processed by human computers and crowd workers. It is all powered by energy-intensive computational hardware that is expanding exponentially in multiple directions, from hyperscale data centers to biological computing to quantum. The themes of control and classification begin with time as a concept that orders human actions and labor, to education as another structuring process, to the ideas of emotions and intelligence and the shaping of the human body itself. We see those practices of classification and control in biometrics and medical information through to the disciplinary systems of prisons and policing.

Borders and bureaucracy trace the movements of people and information, which brings us to the heart of the map, colonialism and the paths of empires over history, with their accompanying political and economic ideologies that drive production and energy extraction. Next, we see the strata of planetary classification, from the mineral layer of the lithosphere, all the way up to the astrosphere. Then we consider space in other ways, how mapping and architecture are themselves systems of control. The final sections consider the many layers of militarized power, from surveillance technologies to doctrines to centuries of military systems. Every reading is different, and you're invited, to draw your own connections. Hundreds of individual drawings and texts span centuries of conflict, enclosure and control. We suggest taking your time, a radical act in an era of speed and simplification. A close examination of these patterns over several centuries reveals the ascendance of certain ideas and technologies, and the power of the mind. The power of the mind is the concentration of power and wealth, and the colonization of land, infrastructure, and human life worlds. In this visual history, we see how the past is contained in the present, and how the future could be made otherwise.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, this is probably the most extreme cartographic project that I ever worked in. It is started as a COVID rabbit hole project, and I think there is some kind of vibe of a lot of time in it. And I also like think like this kind of like, I think that it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, where it is the radical, it is basically in time, in time that, that takes you as a, as a viewer to, to explore and to engage with. So in that sense, it reached some kind of like, and a possibility of complexity of someone diving into it now. But, but, and I remember when I, we were like first time showing it up, I really didn't know how people will react. You know, like I was thinking maybe they're going to throw up because it's just like too much. And it's like really like intensive when you are like surrounded by all this, but, but in a way it doesn't give this kind of like a feeling for me, like, and, and people are like really engaging in, in, in many different ways with it.

It was like really extreme experience also to, to spend literally four years inside of this, because like when you are doing it, you are inside of this space that you create and then your own classification system, your own logic, your own, it is some kind of like marathon of, of that covers like everything that you can think of. No. And so we basically wanted to cover why the structure is like communication, classification, and control because like it is this kind of backbone of the AI. No. So you need first to have some kind of like input data. So that's like communication data or like written books, sounds, whatever media you want, then you need to classify this. So this is why, why one quarter of the map it's about classification. Then you need to compute. And then when you're done, you can start to think about the, the, what's the best way to describe it. And then you, you have to also have like a ticket system, how to design, design, design for this, design for this. And then all result of this is becoming part of some kind of like a system of control.

And then we sub categorize different systems of controls, usual ones, you know, like borders, bureaucracy, policing prisons, but also like, of course, by the biometrics, time, And then in one moment, many things on this map were connected to each other. But at the end, everything was connected with everything. So we said, okay, let's leave this kind of… And this is what I like about this map. It's basically this kind of fuzziness of having maybe some kind of precise information, some kind of taxonomy or whatever, combined with, I don't know, some kind of more reflective or philosophical idea that is relating to that, but also in combination with some kind of fuzziness of conceptual illustration of these concepts and ideas. So all of this together, maybe in my mind, maybe create some kind of like… enough fuzziness and enough empty space for others to make their own connections. So it's not like encyclopedia in which everything is like hyper-defined and organized. But it's more some kind of like a semi-open space that gives you possibility to maybe engage in history in some other way. And this was also an attempt to bring some kind of… long durée of history, because it's not so long, basically.

It's 500 years. But usually when we are speaking about AI or when we are speaking about most of the technology, we are diving, oh my God, into 50 years, you know? Or in some kind of post-1950s happenings. But when you go deeper and try to understand, like, what are the deeper historical… patterns or events or ideas that are basically some kind of like a ground for this thing that happened within our technological revolution, then you are seeing these kind of repetitions and patterns. And I don't know, you see that some kind of core logic in a lot of cases is like born most of the time in like 1830s. And it was the same, but with another revolution, with another technology. So with another, you know, you understand that what we are seeing today, like, can also be comparable to what person in 1850s, when most of what we call new media or media is being born, you know, it was also the radical in the same time. But then you understand that kind of radical transformation in technology also is like covered here with the birth of biometrics, with the birth of eugenics, with the physical anthropology, with all of those like deep, deep, deep relation between like technology and power and how…

So for me, it was like really, really exciting to have experience of like this kind of deep dive into the history and this kind of top of the map, we are now like asked, are you going to update the map? Are you going to make more things up? And for me, like the most interesting things are down, up like last five years or whatever. It's just like one centimeter on this map and I don't care about it. But what is like, what is the root and where we should dive in? It's I don't know, it's here. It's like five years. It's like 500 years ago. And this is the same problem with anatomy that we had. Like if you ask, OK, how we can make AI more ethical? It's like, OK, I don't know, like zoom out and go into the full anatomy of this. And here it's also like zoom down or zoom out in the past. And you will understand that we need to fix things that are there for like 500 years. So that's the… That's my take into this. And also like so basically this is it is hard to navigate in this kind of online environment.

And but I think when you when you see this in like a real scale, I think it's really, really interesting, some kind of experience. And I think like I hope people will use this. I think it's very interesting to see that it's being used in many different ways. And for me, like this kind of like even if it's stuck in this kind of two dimensionality of the map, there is many, many different dimensions that you can then you can explore and that you can play with. And that you can another issue with this one or like issue the challenge. It's like we knew from the beginning that every kind of like, you know, when you are dealing with history, you are always wrong. You know, like and so this idea of entering into something with understanding that it's going to be wrong. It's also like it was super interesting experience for me. And it's also like we didn't want it to go into because it's not possible for us. We didn't want it to go. Yeah. We didn't want it to go into some kind of like another histories, another possible histories, decolonization of history, because we cannot do it from this.

And this is why we concentrated. OK, let's then go into different direction. Let's do the map about the power, about the system itself, about the empire, because this is what we can do. And by maybe like drawing the kind of history of empire. We will. Again, be able to understand, you know, like maybe where are the possible ways. But what we should try to fix and how we should try not to to get into the same sheet anymore. And then there is like always, you know, like we can even go in in the more more like a present time and think, OK, how we. How we manage, for example, to to screw up the Internet, you know, like and I think this is a very important thing. And I think this is like really a sad story because by default, by the by the protocol, by the architecture, it's a wonderful, beautiful architecture in which each point it's like sender and receiver. Everyone have the same possibility and so on. But we managed to to to turn this into something that is completely different. But then you when you go deeper into history, you understand it's repeating all the time.

So it's the same like, OK, oh, my God. Now we can record voice. And, you know, like it gives something it takes something from you. But what is happening really fast that you have some kind of parasitic system around it that transform this medium into some kind of territory to extract, to do, to monopolize, to to enclose. And it's all ending in the same place. No. So whatever we do, we will end up in the same place. If we don't go deeper and try to understand what is the core issue of it. And maybe this map will help. Maybe not. But in a way, I think this is like if we don't want to end up all the time in the same problem of of of like, you know, like not discovery, but like you find some new territory, you create a new territory and then it's being enclosed. And then then it's being extracted. Then. Then it's being transformed into something and ending up in the monopoly and someone making a lot of money off it. So. That that's kind of like the one of the many, many takes that the time excited about.

Of having experience of doing this map. I don't know how what other people will experience, but this is what's my one of my like reflections on it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, thanks a lot for this wonderful presentation. I have actually a lot of comments which starting from a angle, I guess, namely the purely formal angle. Can I just go ahead? Because I thought probably many people have already commented on, you know, the facticity, the importance of infrastructure, which you brilliantly highlight in all these projects. The necessity to see the whole problem or issue or industry at a planetary scale and to be able to zoom out, not only in space, but also in time. I think that's probably the angle most of the people have commented on already. Now, I have. Formal comments, which also maybe could lead to tackling some of the issues you mentioned or for you, irresolved questions. or for you irresolved questions from a different angle because you also said you keep being asked about you know what's the way out what can we do etc etc and you say you don't know i mean first of all we need to understand what we're dealing with understandably so i was reminded definitely of the isotype project of otto von norad which he already made in the 30s etc with his colleague marie reidermeister in england mostly after he was exiled from vienna where he was an expert in war economy and statistics and you know the isotype project right it is basically developing small pictograms in order to being able to visualize very complex social relations many of which also have to do with the question of logistics infrastructures and so on and so on and from there i i jumped to another kind of perspective um because for norad also developed another

proposition in his lifetime which was connected to the isotype problem which was called the noirad's boat ship proposition have you heard about it yeah it's very interesting so he said that you You know, we are embedded into this jumble of very complex social relation and everything is connected to everything. And we never will have the possibility of having a tabula rasa on which to simply, you know, ignore whatever exists and start anew. We need to figure out a different way. And he went back to this old Greek paradox story of Tiso's ship, which is asking, how do you reconstruct a ship while you're on the ship? You know, you have a plank and you fix the first plank and then you stand on the plank and start fixing the other ones, etc. So I think that, you know, if one goes deeper into this and actually Neurath himself had a similar experience because when he was exiled from, from Holland to Britain, he was the last one to jump on a small ship. You know, well, basically the German invasion was happening already. And he said he just jumped in. He had nothing, only his partner with him.

And he simply had to start anew. So that's basically the Otto Neurath ship parallel in a nutshell, so to speak. So I think if one starts thinking from that perspective. And I. I started, you know, thinking about the map purely formally, then maybe this also may help, you know, to leave behind this paralysis, which, of course, everyone has when faced with this huge amount of extremely valuable research. But we are all in this position of, wow, OK, what do we do next? Right. So maybe adopting the Neurath perspective could be extremely helpful for developing, you know, another. Project to build on what what you have been doing already. Yeah, I have a like 14 year old son. And so in the beginning, I was like completely like not in the last few years. So it's like, wow, oh, my God, what's going on? What what is this aesthetics? What is this like? I don't get it. It's too much, too much. And then. I start to. Kind of get it, you know, and I jump into it and try to embrace this kind of like absurdity and post post post meta level of of of whatever they're doing.

And I kind of accept it as a as a as a as a new punk. And and and there is some kind of like, you know, this kind of core core meta meta. All of those. Things and this map, it is core core. It is kind of like it's so complex. It's so like full of everything. It becomes a white noise that you can jump in your like that you can jump in and have a bath in inside of this kind of noise of of of information. Or if you want, you can jump in and try to change. And I agree. I completely agree with this kind of like a. Yeah, yeah. It's a beautiful like the same. In the same way, our body, it's never the same in the same way. Our our nothing. It's everything is constant move. And I agree that this. Maps are kind of going into this kind of like hardcore. Determinism of how everything is like, I don't know. Fix and. And I don't think so, because especially the last one, as you said, is right. It's not deterministic. It's. It's more or less. Maybe allegorical. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

And this is what I what is what this started to me with with the new extractivism and this kind of more entering into some kind of realms of of more of poetics, you know, that gives you a chance in in in contracts to to blueprint that is kind of like this is it. And this is how it works. It works. The introduction of this kind of like. Fuzzy spaces of poetics is basically giving possibility for you to. OK, now I can rethink and redo some of these things. And yeah, yeah, yeah. That's because you also said, you know, there is something beautiful about the Internet, the way it is constructed, you know, to be a blah, blah, blah, etc. So I don't know. It would be basically a map on which you can reorganize the pictograms in a different way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was I was thinking a lot to to to to come to to this. Some. Relation with with. Also with your work in this kind of like beyond threshold. And and I was thinking we were like there was one project that we never finished and it's all the time in my mind.

Like. It was about like trying to find the limit of like what Google is there any world that exists behind. The line of capture, you know, something that is not captured, you know, and then thinking of, OK, even if it exists, if we ever find it. It's just like thought experiments, like what we should do with it. Like how we can speak about it. Should we like. Like, you know, like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like keep it secret and keep it under the rock and like never, you know, like what is the ecology and what is like the what we should do with with those like. Linguistic or any spaces that exist behind the threshold. Actually, there were some, you know, or there there are key being some which are extremely fascinating as symptoms. Do you know the cursed tokens? It's really it's really funny. So in the early chat GPT versions, there were words. Or combinations of word like gold magic. That would cause GPT three at that time to completely freak out and say, I'm God, I'm a banana. Go away. Leave me alone. Don't ever mention that word again. Kind of thing.

There was. There was. That's it. And then you then because I was like, but I never. And this is something that I'm now like really obsessed with. And but but still I'm recovering from this calculator. Late thinking. I wasn't planning on thinking that. Because I was learning. About you know, just with huge economics. Not this example here. Right. Just god knows in and of itself, like, is that you to less than your kind of basic of Canary. Although, but this is actually along, you know,条 like. So my half of best example, why did we choose this. Well, uh, technology technology, squid and. how we can organize something around this kind of like behind the threshold of statistical capture, like anomalies, like syndicate of anomalies that are not being captured, you know, like something around. And what are the different strategies that are there? And then where I'm now like some kind of positively excited, it is that I'm seeing this in this kind of new aesthetics of Gen Z or that have that, they have that this kind of post irony, meta irony spaces are not classifiable in the same way that our language or our culture can be classified. It goes into this kind of like noise and then like, you know, what you can do with noise, what kind of noise, you know, But it is like, yeah, I'm super excited about it, like trying to switch this, like trying, okay, now if I'm able to define the limits of capture, the limits of system, you know, how to play with it, then that's super interesting, how to play with threshold, how to insert something there, how to, that I find like super, super exciting.

Yeah, maybe I can also jump in on this formal level from which, yeah, further ideas may spring. So at least the, this, your project calculating empires, you're suggesting it's a map, but I'm, I'm personally reading it as a table, which, and you explained it, yeah, you have a chronological axis that is, you know, you have a map that is, you know, you have a chronological axis that is, basically the rows, and then you have a topology that is the columns. So this sort of, if you read it as a table, then I had the feeling without like knowing in detail that all the spaces are very full, like there's no empty spaces or almost no empty spaces. And I felt like, okay, it would be interesting to explore what would happen if there would be more empty spaces. And, you know, I think that's, I think that's, I think that's, I think that's, I think that's, I think that's a really great example of this, this, and this table. At the moment, the fullness of it, the richness and the crowdedness, create a sort of a totalizing even feeling. There's kind of no hole through which I can poke through as a viewer or which I can in my own mind, fill, fill up. And then the another dimension of reading your work as a table would be The interesting quality of tables is that you can always add another column and with the new column you get a new empty space to be filled.

But there's a beautiful story how in early table making in the 18th century people just glued more paper to the existing tables and then began writing and filling in more details. Once you understand that it's a story, once you understand it's a non-linear, n-dimensional story, that it's just represented in the form of a… table or a map or whatever. So that's the medium. But in a way it is a story. And then there is always like once you define the category, once you… This is this violence of categories. Like for me, the most exciting part of the research related to this map was history of classification. And then you understand how this classification is always wrong. It's always like… It's coming from somewhere. Someone is cutting something in three pieces and saying this is like three pieces. The world has three of those and five of those. But once you're in position that you are the one who are creating this story, you understand that those categories are fictions. This is your machine to tell a story. Those are just fictions. They don't exist in reality. And then once you do it, then you start to be trapped in this kind of fear of emptiness.

Because you know that it's not quantification. When things are quantified, like tack, tack, tack, tack, tack, then the emptiness have a story because emptiness that say, okay, there is lack of this and before there was less, and now there is more. But because all of those things are not quantifiable in that way. It's like… It's you telling a story. And then like… It is really dangerous. Like once you leave the open something, then you are giving the idea that the things didn't exist there or like, I don't know, like it is really, really interesting. Yeah. I think you described the threshold yourself already. The threshold is noise, right? So it's not an empty space, so to speak, but noise. Yeah. So things move in and out of noise. And noise is the border, you know, the making something quantifiable or having a pattern emerge from, you know, the chaos of data or something like that. From the features of the latent space, let's put it like that. Yeah. For the table to react on the question of emptiness or so, the empty cell would kind of demonstrate or sign two things. One would be… We don't have any… We were not able to fill this place yet, but we are intending to.

Or we don't have access to this period and to the knowledge that might be there. Because the interesting thing is that the crossing of the column and the row, it suggests there must be a knowledge to be gained here in this space. Yeah. So, yeah. Just as a… I think Mahito had some more… Oh, yes. So also I was following a parallel trajectory once you mentioned the counter cartography of the NSK and Irvin and so on. Because I thought, okay, yes, this kind of over-identification paradigm has been described a lot. Mm-hmm. You basically repeat the same kind of stereotype, but in… Yeah. …recognition. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. almost you know just to make things clearer and I wondered what if I mean this is an open question because I by no means any sort of expert in these things what if one would shift that kind of imaginary of you know stereotype and caricature this kind of dialectics into a sort of aesthetical realm which is more like new tendencies you know design aesthetics because that was more like the paradigm of non-aligned modernism so to speak you know affirming the category but not aligning themselves with the category would this make any sense it's just an open question because then you move out of this dialectics of basically having to repeat the thing you criticize in a way and also I think this would be an interesting proposition perhaps because it also implies you know the idea of non-aligned universalism modernism you know the idea of non-aligned universalism modernism you know the idea of non-aligned universalism modernism modernism modernism modernism modernism implies an idea of universalism right which one could maybe repurpose also to to make these questions of scale visible that's so beautiful what I found also like also you know this is this

trap of of of categories and this is like what I'm all the time facing like it's a question every line every dot it's the same question of like choice and and statement you know every line it's a statement there and every dot it's a statement that is being chosen to be there and and and but then it's still there is something like uh you know if we speak about like this kind of new histories that that are going to be told by AI they are like quantum statistical forms of histories that operate within categories so we are going to go more toward that to some kind of like synthetic statistical version of history and then in that in that sense I was thinking like this madness that we did with this map it is completely like this kind of human it had this kind of really nice human touch of like okay now I'm going to engage with this I know it's not possible I know it's completely crazy and then you have even more crazy dimensions of these kind of illustrations and everything but it is us it's not possible I know it's not possible I know it's not possible I know it's not possible it is us and it's beautiful that is not perfectly you know aligned or or classified or that it's like even if that even if it's wrong it's okay like it is you have this kind of still beauty of a human madness no madness but at least like a attempt to to to see okay what this world is about you know this is like really honest question like what this computer is about what this behind this computer is about what this history is about like and and you know

that you cannot do it you know and that's that's like I found it something like really nice and human in it yeah and in this sense the table making or the is kind of the antithesis to machine learning techniques because what you're doing is with the categorization as you're building a sort of a sort of information model of the world from the beginning and then you begin to fill in data where as with AI we know it's the other way around that you start with the data and then you build a model from that so there's also this dialectic of yeah yeah yeah but depends in which yeah yeah yeah yeah but depends on on we we had like a different versions of AI as well you know like this this this one now that is popular it it is this kind of let's say generative one that is kind of inverse one of the the classification one but we still live in a world of uh uh run by classification systems classification AI that one is bad you know that that one is the one that is going to wait for us on the border during the job application not this like uh you be generative one now we are creating like words and images no no the classification ones are the the the I think they are both just the other side of the coin you know yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's really just the same from different angles this is this in when I was working on this the no scope with Matteo this is basically the you have a model and then from if we if you ping from one side it's classification one if you ping from other side it's a generative one but it's the same

sheet inside it's a generative one but it's the same sheet inside it's a generative one but it's a absolutely there's nothing inside maybe yeah but also I think it's I mean just to come back to this aspect of humanity you also mentioned at some point that patterns emerge from your map right I found this really interesting because then the the spectator becomes basically the one that is basically starting to extract patterns from your database in a way right so I yeah at the end I'm not so sure for me I see the pattern because I but yeah I I never know like how hermetic this space is and and is it like visible for others but but that's maybe great because like it's not maybe somebody else will see some other patterns and then then what is also super interesting it's like uh I think when people engage with with that kind of structure or whatever it is you know everyone engaged from its own entry point its own you know there is no one entry point into this so so I now I was observing on some exhibitions how like people you know and then people tend to go towards things that they understand that they have like you know prior knowledge and then maybe switch to some other part mixed with something else I think I think there is no one one reading like it's really happening most of the time this kind of patterns in the eye of the the and it's completely logical in the eye of the viewer no yeah I mean it would also be really interesting experiment to reorganize it somehow as a as a map on the floor right and people can go from one point to another by making decisions for example

in the kind of a choose your Adventure kind of style then you have this represented that people are able to make their own pathway basically through this thing and there are different entry points and different exit points and so on yeah well one of the main problems of physicality or or medium that that we were like operating with it's like you know really something it's like 25 meters away you know you cannot physically engage with with that connection so for example on the far end it's like psyops and and military but it is related with the first thing of 25 meters away that is like birth of photography or like whatever so it's like hard to physically uh engage and then think thinking sometimes about like you know how it can be if it's this is movable those layers and stuff and and but but for the moment this map it's so heavy in a sense of like it's really big it have like its own materiality that it's like no we need some time to to to to deal with this iteration in order to start to break it down and make some kind of new that's probably a new thing also completely new maybe you could go back a little bit um not sure not so much uh yet for myself but more in the service of the potential viewers of this video uh to explain a bit more on how you might do something about it in order to define uh there's another one I have no idea of the exact where this sort of Hogeron artists that more about the formal decisions that you made from a graphic design perspective like why did you decide for the specific colors the how the lines are organized you're i also see

that over the time of your work you're beginning to add more visual elements um what kind of sources uh have there been for you what were the decisions uh so for for me i think the great some kind of personal discovery it's it's this kind of like n dimensionality of information space and this is what i learned from you know we usually think about like i don't know like three dimensions of space and then one of time or whatever but when you are in in a data space there is like unlimited amount of dimensions now each row in a data set it's another dimension you know and then linking that with a with the visual representation in a sense of okay if you just have like two dots between two dots and one line and i can embed i don't know seven different dimensions you know like scale scale type of the line color of these and then i understood okay you can like embed into simple dot and line like whatever you want no and and then for me like color for example it's just another dimension i don't need it you know like and then i was always like there was also a practical way i was never happy in my life with with colors how it is like when they are printed or whatever so i kind of like okay let's forget about the color and then i just go do it okay i'm colors you know like just like let's do everything black and white but it also brings this kind of like aesthetics of military aesthetics of of this kind of masculine truths of military power like black and white you know so this is i'm playing basically with that but also i don't need colors

i don't need colors because i can embed whatever i want into two dots and one line no and and and then i'm like uh what i'm more and more enjoying it's this kind of playing with with with this kind of dimensions you know like trying to understand how i am going to to to play with it how i'm going to create the space how i'm going to create the language because basically when you are doing a map or like whatever i'm calling a map but you are basically defining some kind of language you know and then this language it's defining what is possible and what is not possible inside of that space so you said like okay i'm dealing with with with i don't know circles and triangles and whatever no so you you fix yourself the self inside of the language that you create and the categories that you create so it's some kind of like uh you know play with yourself in which you are the owner of the language the owner of the space and and and using this for to tell something like that and then you're like okay i'm going to do this and then you're going to do this and then you're going to do this and then you're going to do this and then you're going to do this kind of story but then i fell in love with this kind of because even in the beginning with this more like precise maps i always wanted to you know like i really like to go back in time and try to understand the story behind it and this is how i fell in love with this kind of aesthetics of you know like scientific magazines from i don't know when but also parallelly fell in love with uh because we were like doing a lot of

patent investigations and so i fell in love with this kind of patent aesthetics and then i was thinking how if i need to if i'm a phil if i'm philosopher i'm not no but if i'm philosopher but i also happen to be um patent drover how it will look like how i can present philosophical concept in form of patent aesthetics and so i fell in love with this kind of patent aesthetics and then i was patent and this is what what was for me like always like fun fun to do and then i was thinking okay how if i'm like some kind of like a threesome between like uh microsoft patent drover like the artist having a threesome with hieronymus bosch and some kind of philosopher would you like i don't know like the loose guttery like how it will look this combination together and basically result of this it's it's a it's kind of there in this video new extractivism and then from new extractivism we have now this calculating empire that is kind of mix of all of those things together into some kind of like big noise of history and uh i like that a lot i i um and then for example when i remember so so many times like when kate and i like so the process of creation of those like stories within those lines are like okay we throw the the information and like throw all the favorite books that are about it and then like this kind of things and then we think like okay how we can draw this is it that and the first question was is it a triangle no it's a square oh no it's a circle or it's like and and and it is but it's a triangle and it's a square and it's a circle and

it is beautiful way of of thinking for me you know like i think it's like it's wonderful it's a different way of thinking when you're doing this in inside of the map and inside of your own language that you created you you play you play with it in some way and it's a it's a wonderful process and it is i mean if you if you for example if you're writing an essay you know so it's kind of linear structure it goes like from place a to place b here it's more about like shapes the relations uh it's a yeah it's a beautiful i really enjoy i really enjoyed the mess and chaos that i made for myself inside of that you know like a visual language whatever it is i have one last comment um which is more related to the content maybe for once which is that i also thought to myself you know the idea of logistics and infrastructure and chains of supply is in a way connected to a moment which is very clearly related to 2018 pre-pandemic but also pre-multipolar authoritarianism world i guess i think that people or all these multi-polar authoritarians are busy reconstructing ideas in order to create a world from a world nets and Lastly i haven't used the term terminology to describe it but look at a d's it means a core core a module so droplets of sort of universal supreme eaten and it's aCam fixed The idea of dosing doesn't exist in reality this is a basic architecture which some of conspicuous sets ofват Государства Gloria Hurwitz who developed二万ани as what we know of you know that Ren Neden19村 wooden and inorteracă salon he olog Physci снимah China, in Russia, in other places, you know, also in the US, of course, have control over that chain

of supply, I suppose. Yeah, yeah, basically, that's the main turbulence that happened within the map from 2018 to today. Because back then, it was some kind of like, flow, frictionless flow. Yeah, quasi. But they were like, already experimenting even then, with different forms of like, supply chain wars, in a sense of like, I remember some example of like, China, Japan, block with the rare earths, whatever. And yeah, yeah, yeah. But you can also, you know, that map became a territory for war, war territory, you know, like, now, like, you have like, different battles, happening for different parts of that map in a way like in supply chain, you have like, I don't know, this kind of new regulations and tariffs and this, and then Europe have, I don't know, this kind of rare, some kind of, this is kind of like. Lyceum extraction. Yeah, yeah. And for example, we are in, this is this craziness of like, so for example, we have now this kind of big situation in serbia about the lithium and uh and and and it's completely crazy you know like from one point of view you can you can say like okay i understand it's like why european union wants this lithium no because it's part of exactly this um this idea to to break down global chains of supply to now demolish you know landscapes in serbia instead of landscapes in australia or god knows so basically you cannot really separate the rio tinto affair from all of what we are discussing and this reconciliation of inter-regional but then in this in the same time you have a situation yes it is in this big document that say like critical materials or critical whatever they call it and and and and now as a result of this like we have like this like

uh short short coming to serbia and like yeah making deal with this like guy vucic that is president here that is like a terrible you know neo-nazi slash corruption mafia guy you know like and and now he's like basically buying his future on that lithium and everyone in europe it's like doing this to to the fact that the elections are being stolen the the the the the like with all the isn't watching the dinner parties uh this is aside from what's really uh this is paid off for us then same further like right now what we have is that we drag here uh the big idea um is that a few of these are all singularities uh it's talking with uh um one same unsup sortie from bands if it's buしく a whole say something like one v peuvent accused notice tienen zure halud havukany fair yeah so we have uh having to have a partnership with the zealand anyway that's to say that squ notch national plan like that means we'll follow this same kind of like neighborhood Stones such as we have to tell our community that we don't want to have to struggle any kind of something But now within the opposition you have like two streams. One is this kind of neo-eco-nazis who are coming from the position of my land, my water, my da-da-da-da-da-da. And then you have this… It is weird. It is like the reality is absolutely broken.

And the green imperialists on the other side. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but exactly this kind of conflict is how the map will be re-articulated, no? Into basically smaller parts with interior battlefields and so on, I guess. There is one part that is not so visible in the map also, that's energy. And it's okay, it is a lot about materials, but it is not so explicit about energy. And this is like another completely crazy… aspect of the… Yeah. The same system.