Date of Award

Spring 6-6-2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

Digital Media

First Advisor

Mark Cetilia

Second Advisor

Adela Goldbard

Third Advisor

Nora Khan

Abstract

This thesis elucidates artistic research on the programmed world and its brutal machines. It describes a practice that hones a deviant worldview while confronting ubiquity. Applying web scraping as an investigative tool and a filmmaking methodology, I work with archives of traffic images. The pictures, portraying the smart city through its scattered, self-surveilling eyes, offer a cinematic mirror of reality. I select, annotate, and edit sequences to expose agents of administrative violence. Rejecting a vision of progress that rests on exploitation, I aim to destabilize readings of surveillance and policing as beacons of safety. My work proposes models for seeing and knowing from below.

Comments

View exhibition online: Meghan Surges, False Beacons

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