Ground Resistance

Ground Resistance was a multi-channel audio and visual installation commissioned for the Milton Keynes International Festival 2016, made in collaboration with Georgina Voss. The installation explored the data collated by the MK:Smart smart city system developed by the Open University, and used this data to examine the temporal and spatial limits to claims of smart cities as ‘all-seeing and always-on’, and challenge the parallel ideologies in data visualisation.

A companion piece to this work was installed in the nearby National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park created an intimate watching station which uses low cost and mass-produced hardware alongside open-source software to examine how the people of the city can detect and monitor data embedded in radio signals to watch the logistical infrastructure which underpins smart city technologies.  The installation was presented in the gallery dedicated to the demonstration and examination of the Colossus supercomputer, which was kept operating every day.

This project was commissioned by the Open University for the Milton Keynes International Festival 2016.  Festival website: http://www.ifmiltonkeynes.org/festival-programme/2016/07/15/wesley-goatley-amp-georgina-voss-ground-resistance.html