Brooke Smith

DarkMatter Optimizer_01: Patrol is an autonomous system that explores emergent behaviors and bias through physical movement and programmed mechanical elements. This project represents an initial contemplation of the contrast between how algorithmic systems are authored and how they are presented as dogmatic fact. The project aims to play into the austere, highlight the absurd, and refer to the human hand in algorithmic automation. The underlying programming and learning of this machine references heuristics central to geographic crime mapping and police surveillance algorithmic products. It strives to draw parallels between the absurdity of the aforementioned algorithm and its inherent capabilities rather than serve as an immediate, materialized data visualization of these systems. Not only is the surveillance and optimization of a strange substance futile, it posits the following questions in order to uncover the incomprehensibility of this human guided algorithmic machine: Why and for what purpose is this machine existing? Why do its material perimeters exist? Why this physicality? This work asks viewers to scrutinize not only the algorithms with which they interact daily but also those on the periphery of their experience.

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