▷▷▷ Read my new essay on the International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity: "Hyperreality and the New Aesthetic of Surveillance"
« Contemporary surveillance no longer resembles traditional covert observation; it is increasingly participatory, embedded in everyday platforms where people exchange privacy for connection, convenience and validation through digital devices and services. This essay offers a personal account of Hyperreality (2024), a site-specific art installation in the Wende Museum’s “Counter/Surveillance: Control, Privacy, Agency” exhibition, as an artistic observation on the emerging aesthetic and economy of surveillance. Hyperreality overlays museum windows with dozens of near-abstract paintings produced by a custom-built painting machine from an intimate digital archive. Drawing on Baudrillard’s hyperreality alongside accounts of algorithmic culture and surveillance capitalism, it argues that identity formation and the fulfilment of basic social needs are increasingly shaped by data-driven representations that can overshadow lived experience. The work offers a critical lens on how contemporary infrastructures convert personal and intimate experiences into monitored, monetizable signals, while shaping what we take to be “real.”
▷▷▷ Read on HCM or Download PDF
▷▷▷ Moon Bound blog post #17 in now online, featuring Fundamental Elements!
« At a time when space exploration is often framed in terms of technology, security, and survival, Fundamental Elements insists on the importance of humanism and imagination - on Earth, and far beyond it. »
The Moon Bound blog, by Dr. Barbara Brownie and Christopher Cokinos, unfolds behind-the-scenes stories of sending artworks to the Moon, and explorating why art belongs on the Moon.
▷▷▷ Read the Moon Bound blog post
