Printed map 24 x 3 meters

The world is undergoing profound changes due to the development of AI. For artists Vladan Joler and Kate Crawford, we are in a bewildering time of extraordinary change, requiring a map to help us see what these changes might mean and what profound political and social implications they might entail.

Calculating Empires is a visual manifesto that offers audiences a map to help situate and translate where we are in the midst of these new technological systems that are increasingly complex, interconnected, automated and opaque; and what is happening at a deeper level.

By examining the relationship of technology to power over five centuries, beginning in 1500, the artists make visible the extraordinary interrelationship of the ways in which empires have used technology to centralize power.

For Joler and Crawford, the main question is not what kind of worlds technology can build, but what kind of world we want to live in. It is not just a question of technology and ethics, but of humans, nature and how we deal with technology.

Winner of the European Union Prize S+T+ARTS for innovation in science and technology driven by the arts.

Artists: Vladan Joler, Kate Crawford

Work included in the exhibition Digital Machines: Technology, Industry, Society.

With the support of: