T4T LAB 2019 Texas A&M University. Invited Professor: Joris Putteneers.
Team: Anna Cook, Courtney Ward, Francisco Anaya, Benjamin Hergert, Luis Rubio
Ornament as Crime
This project speculates on a prison in the post-singularity
era. The prison is occupied by both humans and AI who have committed cyber
crimes, and is governed by a council from both species. As a prisoner is
admitted to this center, they are interviewed and assessed based on the
severity of their crimes and their initial degree of contrition. Once this
information has been obtained, they are sent to a specific chamber of the
prison and exposed to a customized VR simulation. This reflects Foucault’s assertion
within Discipline and Punish, in
which the prison begins to operate in the same typology of the factory or
school where one is subjected to the normalizing gaze.In creating this new
prison typology, we are reinterpreting Foucault’s anthropocentric basis to fit
the conditions of a post-singularity and post-anthropocentric society where the
effects reach both human and AI.
This new ontology of cyber crimes is resolved through the
progression within the prison from admittance to reintegration to society. This
process is expedited where information gained through big data is synthesized
into virtual reality in a post-human level of efficiency. A prisoner must pass
through a series of chambers and experience parts of the simulations taking
place in them before arriving at their own customized VR simulation. Because of
the nature of VR, the prisoner would feel as though they have been incarcerated
for a long period of time, when in reality, only a few hours have passed. This
is further discussed by Foucault's analysis that the current prison system has
begun to transfer from the punishment of the body into one that is centered on
the punishment of the mind and the intent to commit crime. In each simulation,
the prisoner is unaware that their environment is not real. The simulation
corresponds to the crime committed, as a way for the convict to realize the
severity of their actions. The punishment acts as rehabilitation in a new
application of neuroplasticity in which the minds of both humans and AI are
rewired to break the connections of criminal behavior and instead reinforce
“proper” avenues of thought. This is completed through the VR simulation where
PTSD is prevented by forcing the prisoners to confront these traumas.
This model is based in cities and can be implemented in
multiple locations throughout the world as needed. Each model will be tethered
to the city but floating above it, and thus acts as both a panopticon and a
reflection of crime rates within the city. The wires that tether the object act
as data collection structures and can grow and stretch as needed to better
absorb information from points throughout the city. The physicality of these
tethers is based on the psychological phenomenon known as the Hawthorne effect
in which individuals modify an aspect of their behavior in response to their
awareness of being observed. The algorithm acts not only as habitable space to
define each chamber, but also as a signal jammer to block unauthorized
communications from entering or leaving the center. Because of the algorithm’s
computational nature, its form fluctuates based on the density of prisoners
within.
The aesthetic agency is realized through an interpretation of
ornament through VR generation. This is articulated through the appearance of
sculpted surfaces organized into a hierarchy of elements read as a continuous
whole. This ornamental evolution follows a grotesque interpretation in which
fear and awe are intertwined through the asymmetrical expression of
over-exaggerated repetitive elements. In this manner, the influx of crime data
gathered from the city generates further ornamentation. This ornamentation
shifts past notions of baroque and rococo and begins to define its own style,
moving forward operating in the post-anthropocene. These concepts are
represented through the form of a narrative collage in which the progression
through the experience of the prison is displayed in a digital reinterpretation
of the collage. The collaged images become something else—a new form that is
neither representative of nor derivative of the original architecture that
seeks to further dilute reality.
The process of designing the prison is critical to the
understanding of its operation as we move past the epistemological and move
into the ontological. We have moved past the idea of “becoming digital” with
design operations being performed in the real world using analog methods,
concepts, and tools such as the mouse. Now we function completely digitally in
the VR simulation where we are pulling from digital information and generating
form through a post-process method of sculpting that operates outside of the
bounds of physical and human limitations. In this way, the prison is created
and exists within a new reality that doesn’t acknowledge its own existence as
being digital. This demonstrates the effectiveness of VR as a new methodology
for the generation of both form and concept, existing simultaneously.
This produces a program that blurs the lines between reality
and simulation through strategies of manipulation of time and space in an
effort to change societal perceptions of the purpose of prisons. This
progresses past Foucault’s analysis of the treatment of prisoners and the
effects of their separation from society by providing a solution in the form of
a post-heterotopic existence: an in-between space that acts as a way to not to
only alter an individual criminal, but as a way to repurpose the influence of
the prison on society.
