Gustavo Ribeiro The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen, Denmark 383
architecture and urbanism – where little is hidden, most is surface, a celebration of
Paul Valéry’s formula: “Le plus profond, ces’t la peau”^1? Are we seeing the emergence of
architectures and urbanisms of exposure? What are the implications of such extended
visibility to architectural education?
This paper looks at the above questions through a series of devices primarily as
conceptualisations of cognitive operations that may evolve into teaching programmes.
These devices stand as exacerbations of cognitive practices and define particular
lines of investigation.
Device 1: Publicity/Control
A publicity/control device takes its point of departure on the ubiquity of information
technology gadgets and technological cooperation systems and the fact that they
bring about an expansion of a space of control.
In January 1999 the Danish tycoon Kurt Thorsen was accused of being behind
the forgery of documents which granted his company a bank credit worth 1,8 billion
Danish Crowns (approximately $300 million). Thorsen, however, denied any knowledge
of the forgery which made him and his company primary beneficiaries. Throughout
the one year and a half which the trial lasted, Thorsen insistently kept on denying
his involvement in the scam. But in June 2000, despite the absence of any “physi-
cal” evidence, he was sentenced to a six year prison term. The prosecution built a
case primarily on the basis of the inconsistencies between Kurt Thorsen’s account
of his moves and whereabouts during the period the documents were forged and the
data supplied by the network provider on the location of his mobile phone during
the same period. Each time Thorsen made or received a mobile call the location of
the particular tower which provided the connection was registered, in that way his
whereabouts could be recorded.
Patrick Di Justo reports in an article in Wired (December 2003) that the number
of surveillance cameras per square mile in Manhattan has gone from 129.4 in 1998
to 396.5 in 2003 to an estimated 1,214.9 in 2008. The figures for London are 80.6
(1998), 247.1 (2003) and 757.5 (2008). (Di Justo, 2003, p.62). Commenting on such
development, he writes the following: “Of the 9,000 surveillance cameras in Manhat-
tan, only 5 percent are operated by public agencies. The rest are privately run. It’s
mostly store-keepers, building managers, and Internet users – not governments – that
are watching you... The Carnegie Mellon Data Privacy Lab estimates that footage from
as many as 10,000 of the country’s [US] public-space cams ends on the Web, meaning
your mug could be viewed and stored by anyone, anywhere in the world.”
Di Justo further adds that in December 2003, it was estimated that there were
“roughly 30 million cell phone cameras and 25 million video-cams in the world...”
(Patrick Di Justo 2003 You’re Being Watched. Wired December 2003 p. 62)
As suggested above, through the emergence of decentralised forms of surveillance
and control, knowledge that at one point was local and that belonged in a closed
circuit (such as the pictures documenting the deployment of torture in Abu Ghurayb
prison) becomes public by being broadcast on the Internet.
An event may be either remembered or forgotten, maybe it involves witnesses,
and the identities of the protagonists are possibly known by one or several actors.