100709_Midreview

Beat city is in a state of self-perpetuating corruption. It exists as a social construct predicated on the notion that actions can be predetermined and their outcomes will directly construct and manage the physical environment. Through a set of hierarchical policing strategies, a series of locally discreet scanners expose and track anomalies within the city. These anomalies might be thought to encompass a shadow network--defined as people who operate somewhere in between corruption and formal hierarchical control. The scanners alter the cityscape by leaving behind physical residue that becomes a territory for new modes of policing. While the residue is all that remains after a single policing event, it is through the propagation of these events that produces variation and validates that they contribute to part of a larger whole. To this end, Beat City is not about policing or scanning, but it is about the anomalies that give it life.