Digital Commons Network^™

Knowledge From Below, Meghan Surges

Masters Theses

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 …