Documentation in support of: Chapter 9 TWIFSY (The world is fine, save yourself)

Background

TWIFSY (The world is fine, save yourself) is a media art installation designed to stimulate thought about how urban life, which is increasingly mediated by opaque black boxes and artificial intelligence algorithms, may one day manifest in the future Smart City, where time and space have collapsed into a dystopian post-human virtual world. TWIFSY is concerned with the implications of the current sociotechnical paradigm of surveillance capitalism–the automatised monopolistic power and control over Big Data by Big Tech and the transformation of personal information, including human needs, mobility, beliefs, thoughts, and expressions into a capital commodity.

TWIFSY evolved as a thought experiment that speaks to the speculative cultures of science-fiction, futurism, literature, politics, and film. It offers citizens a space to free their imagination from the pragmatics and preoccupations of dayto-day reality. The work’s visual language stems from post-digital aesthetics of failure, where the detritus of digital technologies become raw material for a subcultural do-it-yourself approach typified by the maker and post-digital hacker movements.

Video documentation - the panels, the details inside the panels at proximity, and decoding the image-object using a mobile-phone

See 0:00–1:35 in the video file to view the external perspectives of the ambiguous image-object’s panels.

See 1:35-3:30 in the video file to view the simulations inside the image object at proximity. This imagery was recorded with a macro lens and a robotic motion control camera system.

See 3:30-5:20 which illustrates how the image object is decoded through variable viewer positions, distances, and using a camera device to reduce the pseudo-pixels to a perceptible resolution.

For best visual clarity, this video can be viewed at 2K or 4K resolution by changing settings using the cog icon. For best audio clarity, the use of headphones is recommended.

Twenty-four-panels arranged as a pseudo-media facade measuring 406cm x 208cm x 25cm

TWIFSY’s twenty-four 59cm h x 52cm w x 20cm d panels are modular, and their final form is flexible. It is currently configured as an internal architectural media façade measuring 4.09m h x 2.09m w x 23cm d. However, it can be re-configured and installed as a two-dimensional horizontal or vertical ‘screen’ array or as a 3D dimensional monolith.

Visual detail of the box panels from variable distances

As one moves toward TWIFSY, the illusory image object surface collapses into a pseudo-architectural space an abstracted hyperreality that reveals hundreds of tiny model pseudo-citizens–made from medical resin 3D printed from computer-generated models–each with different postures, gestures, clothing, and accessories appearing in numerous scenarios and situations.

Above: This image illustrates eight of the twenty-four panels viewed from three metres. Each panel measures 590mm H x 520mm W x 200mm D. In this arrangement, the image resolves well at greater distances and disappears at proximity

Above: This image illustrates the detail in Panel #15 at a proximity of eighty centimetres. As the viewer moves toward the image object, the illusory image disappears, and a simulated architectural space emerges to reveal hundreds of tiny model ‘citizens’, which, encapsulated in transparent enclosures, are arranged in numerous fictitious scenarios and situations.

Close-up imagery of some of the many details and ‘scenarios’ simulated within TWIFSY

On close physical inspection, TWIFSY’s intricate details relate to and mimic the networked effects of Big Tech’s panoptic schema of concealed servers. The arrangement of these figures and the tens of thousands of peripheral objects embedded within TWIFSY reveal many narratives that imply social, anti-social, voyeuristic, and narcissistic behaviours in fictitious private and public spaces, where imagery and data streams form a constant flow of advertising, entertainment, and user-generated commentary.

Pseudo-satellite imagery

TWIFSY’s development in relief was monitored with numerous cameras, including an overhead view, progressively revealing pseudo-satellite imagery from three metres (see below) which implies miniature built and virtual environments that can be explored at ground level as pseudo-street-views.

From this process, a new aesthetic emerged, which evokes what Berry (2015) describes as the post-digital ‘asterism’ of digital material culture resembling ‘aerial photography of landscapes and cities’ providing a ‘distant reading of society and everyday life’ as an organised collective of 'functionally linked individuals’ that provides a ‘sense of cohesion in a fragmentary digital experience’ (Berry 2015, 51).

Above: This image shows sixteen of the twenty-four finished panels illuminated with white light. Captured from a three-meter birds-eye view, they cover an area of 240cm x 208cm.

**Associated process imagery 2019-2023–TWIFSY under construction**

This image shows the media facade under construction with the originnal JPG image virtually overlayed onto an image of its north-facing wall. This composite image and the grid structures represented were used to pre-visualise the scale and dimensions of the image object.

This image shows one of the 1,176 acrylic micro-grid structures used to support the 7 x 8-pixel arrays that form the image-based layer of TWIFSY. The pseudo-pixel colours are encoded in relation to the electronic pixels of the over-enlarged JPG image. The 72mm x 82mm micro-grid was placed against the computer screen to map the virtual pixel colours extracted from the over-enlarged jpeg image to the colours of acrylic pseudo-pixels, each measuring 8mm x 8mm

This image shows the vector graphic design used to laser-cut the scaffolding structures supporting the image base layer for TWIFSY’s twenty-four panels and 65,856 pseudo pixels. The 520mm x 590mm form contains forty-nine rectangular bays that each support a 72mm x 82mm microgrid that, in turn, each supports 56 pseudo pixels. The microgrids are colour-encoded to temporally sequence a cutting protocol for the Trotec Speedy 400 laser cutter, which cuts each colour consecutively. Each colour is spatially separated from the next so the heat from the focussed laser beam is not concentrated in any area during the cutting sequence and is evenly distributed throughout the material to prevent warping.

This image shows the pseudo-pixels, which were washed, tested, and categorised according to each material's colour, translucency, and opacity when backlit. The pseudo-pixels were then assigned a code that roughly corresponds to the digital pixels of the remnant digital JPG used to determine their x-y coordinate position in the microgrids.

The base-layer of the panels are assembled onto a light panel that is used to globally illuminate 49 micro-grids. Each panel is independently programmable using DMX addressing.

Detail from Panel #15, backlit with white light. The panel base layer consist of 49 micro-grids and 2,744 acrylic pseudo-pixels. The objects in relief include acrylic platforms, optical acrylic rods, and 3D printed figures made from medical resin. The panel is held rigid and supported using stainless steel threaded rods.

A vector design for a fictitious urban assemblage – perhaps a city plaza where citizens might congregate.

A plaza takes form in both vertical and horizontal orientations simultaneously.

Multiple layers of coloured acrylic are stacked and slightly offset to create a three-dimensional anaglyph effect. The viewer also experiences an illusory sense of depth as they move past the image object due to the parallax effects of the layers’ separation.

Prototyping the human figures involved experimenting with numerous materials. The eerly tests used ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene), PLA (polylactic acid) and nylon. The final work used Biomed amber resin, which is used to make biocompatible prostheses. It was chosen for its optical qualities.

The first prototype for the media facade used recycled Apple I-Macs. The glitching screens were used to develop the aesthetics for a dystopic Smart City of the future and the world-building scenarios that emerged from their surfaces in relief.

Early exploration of the pseudo-architectural space that emerged from the screen surfaces reveals a sprawling and alienating matrix of detritus, emulating what Benjamin Bratton refers to as an ‘accidental megastructure’ of carbon and silicon-based molecules within a city of perplexing grids and ‘data archipelagos’ (Bratton 2015, 5-10).

This image shows the emergent details of Panel #12. The 72 x 82mm orange rectangular shape in the foreground forms one of the multiple layers recycled of backlit coloured acrylic. The 10mm figures arranged on the surface layer are early prototypes that were additively manufactured using a MakerBot 3D printer and recycled composite nylon.

Urban sprawl.

An experiment in arranging the panels vertically to emulate the construction of a skyscraper.

A SketchUp rendering of the twenty-four panel array that was in development.

This image shows the emergence of a post-digital pseudo-media facade, which emerged parallel to the development of the work on the studio floor. It is made from timber, acrylic, and stainless steel and a composition of acrylic offcuts left over from the fabrication of the pseudo-pixels and microgrid components.

This image shows the gradual transformation of the pseudo-media facade with additional layers of e-wasted iMac screen components that were superimposed over the wasted pseudo-pixel off-cuts as the iMacs were gradually cannibalised.

The final panels being hung on the wall frame in a 6x4 array – 4.09m h x 2.09m w x 23cm d.

Conceiving the post-digital image objects glitch aesthetic

A remnant JPG image was enlarged into a pixelated self-referential abstraction of itself. The otherwise monochromatic appearance of this digitised black and white analogue image was accentuated with ‘noise’, generally considered a defect. The approach of incorporating aesthetic failure extended to creating apparent image motion using the visual language of GIFs–highly compressed browser-based animated looping moving image file formats. Experimental GIFs were manually created from the JPG using Photoshop to create and animate new image frames from multiple image adjustment layers, including the colour, saturation, and noise artefacts. GIFs were also generated using automated open-source freeware glitch generators.

While these generative digital processes were not directly applied to the final image object, their formal and aesthetic principles helped conceptualise a creatively destructive visual language that now reflects the collapse of the virtual world of hyper-latent imagery back into the real world. In this case, borrowing from the automated glitch generators' purposeful ‘malfunction’ and reusing analogue material to fabricate TWIFSY, the hybrid process became ‘post-digital’ (Cascone 2000, 13-14; Krapp 2011, ix-xiv; Andrews 2013, 1).

Experimenting with light-based animation

The panels' colour and brightness are individually and remotely programmable using A DMX512 digital communication system networked with CAT6 Ethernet patch cables and a black box driver that serves Art-Net protocols driven by data using LED pixel-mapping software. This configuration and level of control allow the image layer to be illuminated as a singular, recognisable whole, as fragmented sections where the panels can be illuminated independently of each other, or as any intermittent combination where the image object’s unstable, ambiguous aesthetic would drift between abstract and figurative representations that imply many things–a post-internet image object that, as Archey and Peckham (2014) contend, are physical representations of the ‘consciousness’ of the production, dissemination, and reception of existence, particularly within networks relevant to mass surveillance, data aggregation and the radical dispersion of information (Archey and Peckham 2014, 2).

GIF Reference

Above: These reference GIFs were created manually using Photoshop and virtually using online glitch generators including Glitch Wizard, Glitchatron, Snorpey, PhotoMosh, and Decim8.

Testing individual panels

Above: These test images of the backlit acrylic panels, with variable configurations of acrylic pseudo-pixels and microgrids, were used in the early developmental phase to test and program the LED’s colour, brightness, and frequency. These were then mapped across the array of twenty-four panels to create the overall glitch aesthetic.

**Speculative designs for TWIFSY’s installation**

The work can be arranged in variable formats including square, long, and linear, or truncated rectangular wall-mounted shapes and horizontal formats. Arranged as a 3D dimensional monolithic prism that resembles urban high-rise structures, would provide a sculptural experience that shifts the viewer’s perception of its changing appearance as they circumnavigate it.

Above: A pre-visualisation for configuration as a monolith -2.4m h x 1.4m w x 1.4m.

A horizontal array offers a different perspective of the work and use of available space

Due to the variable spatial limitations of exhibition spaces, the scale of the work in its full twenty-four-panel pseudo-media facade configuration, and the pragmatics of logistics, these mock-ups offer flexibility for the presentation of the work in small spaces. The sixteen-panel horizontal configuration below mirrors the presentation format typical of the architectural concept models used by city planners to allow the viewer multiple overhead perspectives of the image-object’s implied ground plane.

Above: Pre-visualising a 16 panel horizontal table-top array. Approx 80cm high (variable) x 236cm wide x 208cm deep.

Alternative configurations for smaller venues as either wall-hung or free-standing objects

I dream…Speculative proposals for participatory artrmaking

TWIFSY can be used as a form of participatory placemaking for communion with citizens’ imagination to solicit a collective social dream for the future city. I dream… anticipates informal, inclusive, collaborative, imaginative, playful and speculative city-making, where citizens are invited to construct a bottom-up social dream for a preferred future.

Modular configurations of TWIFSY’s panels introduce the audience and set the scene for participation. The installation can be backgrounded by projections or video screen installations with looping macro imagery of TWIFSY’s internal details at the human scale to provide a gentle embodied experience of an imaginary city in motion. These visual components, enhanced with soundscapes remixed from the recordings made during the fabrication and documentation of the work, including audio of the laser cutters, motion control robots, and 3D printers overlaid with recordings of birds, people, traffic, and wind in the trees in the actual city imply future urban sonics and invoke the visitor’s imagination to consider how the future city might sound.

To facilitate direct engagement with participants and encourage world-building activities, a ludic Play Station invites visitors to assemble maquettes from TWIFSY’s surplus of prefabricated Lego-like pseudo-pixels, microgrids, and other Meccano-like acrylic structures, where they might also 3D print pseudo-citizens and experiment with luminance, colour, and mood on remotely controllable backlit panels. Finally, a participatory Dream Wall invites citizens to leave written notes, poems, questions, or protestations about other possibilities–their impressions, thoughts, ideas, or narratives for a speculative city.

Above: This plan view illustrates various artefacts that form a participatory design, including a Play Station glowing panels and 3D printers can each be operated by a participant using a small remote control with a colour and brightness wheel. The panels can be connected to a multi-plug board that runs on a standard wall outlet.

Above: Visitors are invited to respond to the prompt I dream of a … and leave a short text of their impressions, thoughts or ideas on the shared Dream Wall to become a collective narrative for the future city. Participants can write these texts onto removable stickers large enough for a single sentence or statement and placed on the Dream Wall.

Above: This visualisation illustrates the position of an alternative installation, where the panels form a central projection ‘tower’.

Above: This visualisation illustrates the scale of projected imagery from the central ‘tower’ relative to the scale of projected imagery and the overall subued mood that can be achieved in a blacked-oy space.

ISEA2024– Speculative installation in the Queen Street Mall (commissioned by the Brisbane City Council in April 2024)

ISEA2024 requested TWIFSY for exhibition in the pedestrianised Queen Street Mall in the Brisbane City central business district in June 2024. The Queen Street Mall is approximately 500 metres long, with six major shopping centres and more than 700 retailers over 40,000 square metres of space. The visualisations show TWIFSY’s panels distributed across three windows at the southwestern end of the mall. The nature of the existing retail space, which required a treatment for dressing the window cavities to enhance the installation, used a reflected mise-en-abyme approach to give the work greater depth in the shallow spaces.

Above: This mock-up image shows the panels arranged in two rows with mirrored walls, floors and ceilings designed to animate as the panels' colours and brightness shift.

These installations provide the opportunity for continued experimentation with civic hacking–an antidotal visual synecdoche to counter advertising that pollutes the visual amenities of the city’s retail centre, where something might otherwise be missing–in this case, speculation of a dysfunctional future world consumed by its habitual overconsumption.

Above: The work is set back from the window glass at approximately 50cm so that the viewer can register the tiny details inside the panels.

Above: This image shows the spacing of the panels over the three retail windows. The darker shading shows the position of the reflective black mirrors that face the viewer, and the grey shading represents the mirrored wall, ceiling, and floor surfaces.

Above: This image shows a section of the installation and the panel heights, depths, and distances relative to the glass window facades and the viewer.

Above: This elevation shows the structural timber framework designed to support the panels.

Above: This plan view shows the elongated nature of the inter-connected window spaces.