The Nemesis Machine: From Metropolis to Megalopolis to Ecumenopolis
Stanza (GB)
installation, 2015
“The Nemesis Machine” is a large installation that is a miniature city. The artwork represents the complexities of the real time city as a shifting morphing and complex system. It visualises life in the metropolis on the basis of real time data transmitted from a network of sensors. So, the city of electronic components reflect in real time what is happening. Small cameras show pictures of the visitors so that they become part of the city.
In appearance, “The Nemesis Machine” is like Big Brother parsed through the lens of the Internet of things. It gives visitors a bird’s eye view of a cybernetic cityscape, where skyscrapers are constructed of silicon and circuit boards.
Stanza (GB), an internationally recognised British artist, whose recurring themes throughout his career include the urban landscape, surveillance culture, privacy and alienation in the city. Stanza is interested in the patterns we leave behind as well real time networked events that can be re-imagined and sourced for information. He uses multiple new technologies to create distances between real time multi point perspectives that emphasize a new visual space. The purpose of this is to communicate feelings and emotions that we encounter daily which impact on our lives and which are outside our control. The results can be aesthetically beautiful maps of data or information such as personal interests, beliefs, and large scale installations representing weather, environmental, pollution and traffic data.
Stanza artworks since the mid 80. have focused on the participatory system of the “city” that frames questions within his work opening up conversations about the politics of space. He creates investigations about the construction of space, the environment, and landscapes you cannot see. Selected artwork monitor the behaviours, activities, and changing information, of the world around us often using networked devices and information across the internet. This can include observation by means of custom made sensors, networked cameras and computers. Stanza reforms this information and data creating what he calls parallel realities.
The artworks “The Emergent City” , “Sonicity”, “Urban Generation” reform data, working with the idea of bringing data from outside into the inside, and then present it back out again in open ended systems where the public is often engaged in or directly embedded in the artwork.
Stanza was one of the first to use internet art as a medium. Online projects by Stanza include his main Netart archive (www.stanza.co.uk/projects_netart.html) as well as www.soundcities.com (the global soundmap project). Other net art projects include www.genomixer.com (DNA system artworks), www.thecentralcity.co.uk (urban and city systems), www.amorphoscapes.co.uk (generative paintings) and www.soundtoys.net (online generative art portal).
Interactive and visually appealing, his style also maintains the substantive power through multi-faceted content.
His artworks have won numerous international art prizes and art awards including: Vidalife 6.0 First Prize (Spain), SeNef Grand Prix (Korea), Videobrasil First Prize (Brazil), Cynet Art First Prize (Germany), Share First Prize (Italy). Stanzas art has also been rewarded with a prestigious NESTA Dream Time Award, an Arts Humanities Creative Fellowship and a Clarks bursary. Numerous commissions include work for Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Watermans Art Centre, FACT, and the Open Data Institute.
His artworks have been exhibited with over one hundred exhibitions globally including: Venice Biennale, Victoria Albert Museum, Tate Britain, Mundo Urbano in Madrid, Bruges Museum, TSSK Norway, State Museum in Novosibirsk, Biennale of Sydney, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico, Plymouth Arts Centre, ICA London, Sao Paulo Biennale, De Markten in Brussels, Transport Museum in London, Ars Nova museum.
