Bureau Europa, Maastricht, 2019:
The Digital Dilemma – The Architecture of Trust exhibition examines the current climate of institutional distrust and technology’s role in this. For centuries, the idea of trust bridged the gap – defined by (hidden) power and knowledge structures – between the authorities of the church, the government, industry and ordinary citizens.
The influence of the traditional institutes of power, such as the government, banks, and insurers, is slowly shifting to private, corporate structures, such as Facebook and Amazon, and to the alluring and convenient infrastructure of the sharing economy epitomised by Uber and Airbnb. Have technological developments informed in this shift? Does the internet fulfil the promise of decentralised power? Or is control over the World Wide Web becoming hyper-centralised, and have we already accepted this as reality? Digital media, once a guarantor of individual self-realisation and emancipation, does indeed address society in an alternative way – but not as we intended nor in a way we can trust.
But what do we really know about the collection of our ‘Big Data’, internet trolling, crypto-currencies such as bitcoin, and the far-reaching presence and influence of algorithms and artificial intelligence? A paradoxical context has arisen in which it is difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction. To highlight this inability to differentiate, this exhibition is built around conspiracy theories. Conspiracy thinking has become commonplace and is no longer the preserve of groups on the peripheries of society.
Digital Dilemma combines art, design, and architecture projects that attempt to provide a nuanced picture of the questions surrounding the technological ecologies influencing and shaping our daily lives – from smart refrigerators to urban facial-recognition surveillance, from the influence of self-driving car to the geopolitical implications of the new 5G Silk Road.
