Periodic Reporting for period 4 - FAMEC (Forensic Architecture: The Media Environments of Conflict)
Berichtszeitraum: 2021-05-01 bis 2022-04-30
This proposal, Forensic Architecture: The Media Environments of Conflict (FAMEC), was envisaged to build upon an ERC starting grant entitled Forensic Architecture: The Space of Law in War (FASLW, 2011-15). FASLW successfully established the practice of FA and tested its methodologies in a variety of landmark legal and human rights cases in courtrooms and tribunals around the world, including at the UN General Assembly. From that fertile ground, FAMEC embarked upon pioneering new research trajectories, engaging with emerging conditions of contemporary conflict and state violence identified during FASLW. Since the early 2010s, scenes of contemporary urban conflict have become dense media environments, however, this exponential increase of primary sources does not necessarily add more clarity, rather it can increase confusion, misinformation, and propaganda, becoming material for a second conflict about veracity and interpretation. These major shifts in how information about conflict and rights violations is disseminated and understood, brought about by the emergence of social media tools and environmental media technologies, demanded a new medium, and a new methodological toolbox, to recompose fragmentary pieces of evidentiary media – images and video from warzones, detention sites, protests, evictions – and to counter misinformation, denialism, and ‘fake news’ about the events captured in that media.
FAMEC posited architecture – particularly the emergent academic field of ‘forensic architecture’ – as precisely that medium and mode of analysis, a tool through which to connect the eruptive violence of single incidents with the slow violence of social and political conditions, and to present information, evidence, findings, and arguments in a convincing and accessible manner, across multiple forums, in pursuit of accountability for human rights violations and war crimes. Such a practice, a contemporary response to contemporary conditions, is of fundamental social importance: for any accountability structures or civil society networks to respond appropriately to war crimes, human rights violations, or deaths in custody, they must be informed of those violations, and persuaded of the veracity of reporting about them, in the modalities and language of a new information era. FAMEC has developed techniques to collect and compile image data, then locate, compose, and cross-reference them within a digital 3D reconstruction of the architectural environment in which the incident unfolded.
By engaging with ongoing human rights and environmental concerns through more than 60 published investigations and over 200 exhibitions, FAMEC has developed and disseminated core methodologies for investigative visual and spatial analysis, including the use of digital models, ‘game engine’ software, and custom-built interactive mapping software, for the organisation, verification, presentation and analysis of image and video data, as well as theoretical contributions to contemporary human rights work, particularly the development of the concept of ‘open verification’. Alongside our published videos and exhibitions, we have provided expert forensic reports for casework, organised and contributed to symposia and workshops around the world, published monographs and articles. Major exhibitions have been accompanied by seminars and public programmes. FA’s website is an extensive resource of investigative materials, testifying to the development of the FAMEC project, and an archive of our exhibitions and publications. Beginning within the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, we have supported the development of MA courses in forensic architecture at Goldsmiths, and at institutions around the world, while many of our casework-led engagements with activist networks have been exercises in multi-directional skill-sharing, in which the techniques and theoretical positions of FA meet the situated knowledge and experience of communities on the frontline of human rights struggles.
FAMEC posited architecture – particularly the emergent academic field of ‘forensic architecture’ – as precisely that medium and mode of analysis, a tool through which to connect the eruptive violence of single incidents with the slow violence of social and political conditions, and to present information, evidence, findings, and arguments in a convincing and accessible manner, across multiple forums, in pursuit of accountability for human rights violations and war crimes. Such a practice, a contemporary response to contemporary conditions, is of fundamental social importance: for any accountability structures or civil society networks to respond appropriately to war crimes, human rights violations, or deaths in custody, they must be informed of those violations, and persuaded of the veracity of reporting about them, in the modalities and language of a new information era. FAMEC has developed techniques to collect and compile image data, then locate, compose, and cross-reference them within a digital 3D reconstruction of the architectural environment in which the incident unfolded.
By engaging with ongoing human rights and environmental concerns through more than 60 published investigations and over 200 exhibitions, FAMEC has developed and disseminated core methodologies for investigative visual and spatial analysis, including the use of digital models, ‘game engine’ software, and custom-built interactive mapping software, for the organisation, verification, presentation and analysis of image and video data, as well as theoretical contributions to contemporary human rights work, particularly the development of the concept of ‘open verification’. Alongside our published videos and exhibitions, we have provided expert forensic reports for casework, organised and contributed to symposia and workshops around the world, published monographs and articles. Major exhibitions have been accompanied by seminars and public programmes. FA’s website is an extensive resource of investigative materials, testifying to the development of the FAMEC project, and an archive of our exhibitions and publications. Beginning within the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, we have supported the development of MA courses in forensic architecture at Goldsmiths, and at institutions around the world, while many of our casework-led engagements with activist networks have been exercises in multi-directional skill-sharing, in which the techniques and theoretical positions of FA meet the situated knowledge and experience of communities on the frontline of human rights struggles.
During the FAMEC project, FA has developed original and ground-breaking investigative techniques and deployed them in over 60 bold and impactful investigations, in partnership with communities affected by human rights violations and state violence, alongside leading media such as the New York Times, BBC, Washington Post, Der Spiegel, and the Guardian, as well as with activists, legal teams, and major international NGOs including Greenpeace, Amnesty, Bellingcat, and Human Rights Watch. Our findings have been presented or submitted to almost a dozen national and international courtrooms, including Germany, Israel, Greece, Turkey, and the European Court of Human Rights, while our director now sits on the technology advisory board of the International Criminal Court.
A full selection of our casework is best viewed on our website: www.forensic-architecture.org
A full selection of our casework is best viewed on our website: www.forensic-architecture.org
FA emerged amid the ‘open source’ revolution, which ushered in new eras and fields in human rights, journalism, and practice-based academic research. Within that revolution and its aftermath, FA continues to occupy a unique and interdisciplinary position at the theoretical and practical frontiers of human rights work. Our pioneering influence is evident in the adoption of our techniques by Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and the New York Times (NYT), through critical partnerships such as Black Friday and Saydnaya with Amnesty and Khan Sheikhoun with Human Rights Watch, and multiple award-winning partnerships with NYT. Many of these institutions have stated publicly that the development of their own ‘visual investigative’ techniques and teams has drawn on FA’s work, and the techniques developed within the FAMEC project.
As the field continues to take up techniques pioneered by FA with a pace and enthusiasm that exceeded our expectations, the FAMEC project has expanded beyond the methodological horizons envisaged in the original application. Across its duration, the FAMEC project has successfully prototyped AI-based object detection tools, pushed the capacities of digital modelling techniques and environmental remote sensing techniques, including the deployment of game engine software, introduced computer fluid dynamics simulations into human rights casework, pioneered the development of ‘open source archaeology’, and developed bespoke and robust cartographic mapping and data-aggregation software, which has been cited by UN agencies and submitted to international courtrooms. At the same time, we have developed innovative methods of interviewing survivors’ of trauma through collaborative reconstruction of scenes within digital environments – one of a number of ways integrating innovative technical research with a sensitivity to the ‘situated knowledge’ of survivors and victims of violence – and explored the possibilities of physical reconstruction of incidents of rights violations, including ‘audio experiments’, re-enactments, and use of ‘motion capture’ to bridge between physical and digital experimentation.
We have been widely recognised for our ground-breaking contributions to journalism, design, art, and culture, including nominations and awards by Ars Electronica, Peabody, Emmy, the Design Museum’s Design of the Year, the Gabriel Garcia Marquez Journalism Award, the European Cultural Foundation, and more. In 2018 FA was nominated for the Turner Prize, perhaps the contemporary art world’s most prestigious award.
As the field continues to take up techniques pioneered by FA with a pace and enthusiasm that exceeded our expectations, the FAMEC project has expanded beyond the methodological horizons envisaged in the original application. Across its duration, the FAMEC project has successfully prototyped AI-based object detection tools, pushed the capacities of digital modelling techniques and environmental remote sensing techniques, including the deployment of game engine software, introduced computer fluid dynamics simulations into human rights casework, pioneered the development of ‘open source archaeology’, and developed bespoke and robust cartographic mapping and data-aggregation software, which has been cited by UN agencies and submitted to international courtrooms. At the same time, we have developed innovative methods of interviewing survivors’ of trauma through collaborative reconstruction of scenes within digital environments – one of a number of ways integrating innovative technical research with a sensitivity to the ‘situated knowledge’ of survivors and victims of violence – and explored the possibilities of physical reconstruction of incidents of rights violations, including ‘audio experiments’, re-enactments, and use of ‘motion capture’ to bridge between physical and digital experimentation.
We have been widely recognised for our ground-breaking contributions to journalism, design, art, and culture, including nominations and awards by Ars Electronica, Peabody, Emmy, the Design Museum’s Design of the Year, the Gabriel Garcia Marquez Journalism Award, the European Cultural Foundation, and more. In 2018 FA was nominated for the Turner Prize, perhaps the contemporary art world’s most prestigious award.