the seeing machine as 440,918,749 points – the view from the Ingham County Youth Detention Center, Lansing, Michigan, created in collaboration with Dan Paz, subverts carceral surveillance technologies to create a haunted and ghostly document of the architectures of youth prisons, reflecting on the perpetuity of the school to prison pipeline, hidden in plain sight. Taking the form of a 3.6’ x 28.5’ high-resolution photographic print hung in an open circle, the work invites viewers to step inside and be surrounded by the image, a gesture both to Jeremy Bentham’s panoptical prison architecture and to the history of cycloramas–large-scale immersive paintings popularized in the 19th century, often celebrating scenes of colonial and imperial conquest, which could also be considered an early form of immersive VR. The gigapixel panoramic image, rendered using custom software, was created from data collected from a series of 3d color lidar scans taken around the perimeter of the Ingham County Youth Detention Center in Lansing, Michigan.

the seeing machine was first exhibited at (SCENE) Metrospace, Michigan State University in Lansing, MI as part of Dan Paz’s solo exhibition, hammer without a nail.

A second iteration of this project was first exhibited at Stove Works in Chattanooga, TN, as part of a group show entitled this exists inside this frame but it also exists inside this other frame organized by Alejandro Acierto.