Human body in mechanised and automated infrastructures

Abstract

Provocative headlines on current newspapers highlight a widespread anxiety about robots replacing humans in the workforce. The research sets out to explore this tension, by making a genealogy of the role of machines, and exploring the new typology of spaces created by automation. First, through the four stages of industrialization over the past two centuries, machines emancipated themselves from humans, becoming an automated system empty of human beings. In parallel, man has distanced himself and moved outside these chains. Contemporary contexts such as data centres, power plants, Human Exclusion zones in Chernobyl or fully automated warehouses are discussed throughout the thesis. Physically excluded from these places, Human is nonetheless indirectly a majority player; constantly producing data, and impulsively consuming products online. Moreover, through a dissection of an AI system, the structure’s complexity and its entanglements reveal a wide infrastructure and interconnected network. This push us to broaden our perspective and consider an Ecocentric worldview, inclusive to different species as well as abiotic actors. Devoid of life and having no organic property, nonetheless the machines influence and alter ecosystems.