Machinic Vision: Machine intelligence as infrastructure
A 15-metre textile frieze of the infrastructure that machine intelligence runs on, made for ICIS 2026 in Lisbon. It follows a supply chain through five places: a port, a power station, the grid, industry and a data centre. Machines found the equipment in the photographs and cut it out, and phrases from IS journals, AI research and Hacker News are placed over them. A timeline of the ideas behind AI and information systems runs along the top.
Each of the pages below opens from a QR code on the frieze.
The frieze, zoomable
The whole 15-metre frieze at print resolution. Zoom in to read every phrase.
The frieze as a film
The camera travels the frieze from the prelude to the coda. 90 seconds.
Port in Busan
The first station. A three-minute film of the photographs and the parts the machines found in them.
Energy in Copenhagen
The second station, a three-minute film.
Grids in the northeast
The third station, a three-minute film.
Industry in Providence
The fourth station, a three-minute film.
Data centre in Needham
The fifth station, a three-minute film.
The crystal of agents
The coda: a film that circles the crystal and passes through it. 90 seconds.
Where the ideas came from
The timeline along the top of the frieze: 93 works from 1911 to 2026, with full citations.
How the frieze was made
The photographs, the models, the three collections of text, and the rules that placed everything.
Send a photograph
During the conference, visitors send their own photographs to the same machines.