Big Data

Big Data is a project exploring how surveillance and algorithms shape life amid the pulsing heart of China, turning streetscapes, behaviours, and patterns into reflections of a society historically shaped by control.

Surveillance capitalism turns human experience into raw data, mapping life to feed predictive models capable of anticipating and shaping choices and perceptions. Unlike earlier forms of capitalism, built upon labour and production, this system runs on Big Data—thriving on constant observation and subtle nudges, where convenience blends with control and algorithmic authority quietly shapes society.

Beneath China’s futuristic allure, this historical paradox takes a state-driven form. Networked life and social interactions are tracked, analyzed, and leveraged to enforce compliance and normalize oversight. Safety feels like freedom. Convenience masks influence. Everyday life becomes the canvas, personal data the brush, painting a world where surveillance wields power and authority remains invisible yet absolute.

Over the past two years, I have travelled repeatedly to Shanghai and Suzhou—the pulsing heart of China—to seek images that examine the evolution of observation systems and digital governance, situating my practice as a way of questioning how freedom is perceived and mediated within the People’s Republic.

Drawing on Foucault’s idea that power is diffuse and embedded in everyday life, my work explores how contemporary digital infrastructures extend and intensify earlier forms of social control. Through diptychs, visual metaphors, archival fragments, and collages, all threaded with subtle references to unseen watchfulness, my goal is to show how monitoring and accelerating technologies influence daily life, turning public spaces, gestures, and routines into reflections of a society historically rooted in vigilance.