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The Art of Lying

Part 1 Project 2021
Mariam Ahmed
Arab Academy for Science, Technology & Maritime Transport - Smart Village Campus Cairo | Egypt
The Art of Lying is a speculative project intersecting with the fields of artificial intelligence and autonomous machines. The project explores the abandoned Duga Radar structure in Ukraine (operating between 1976 and 1989, and used as a warning missile detector during the cold war) and proposes a 10 year long spectacle, framing its history, evoking memories, and ultimately consuming the structure.

The proposed device, controlled by an autonomous AI system, acts as a mechanical parasite, a complex composition of motors, wires, pulleys, pistons, robotic arms and other parts, working efficiently and constantly, expanding, growing and learning. The more it consumes from the radar, the larger it becomes, building its own scaffold for support, then sliding and realigning itself to consume more. Its large metal surfaces slide onto each other, expanding and repositioning to create new and larger enclosures, where visitors can view beamed images and videos of soviet mechanisms used to control the masses, failed espionage attempts, scientific endeavors of cyber surveillance and brain manipulation.

Finally, when the radar structure is completely consumed, the device sits on the ground, with scraps of metal and screws scattered on the ground around it, victorious and silent. It had transformed from a device to a spectacle to an architectural artifact… and within this process of becoming, it dismantled fear as a construct of control and challenged existing power structures.

Mariam Ahmed

Tutor(s)


2021
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