Big Other

Several buildings seem to have come to life with big googly eyes, recalling emoji. Thus personified, these architectures challenge the viewer and direct their gaze, while giving them the unsettling impression of being watched by a Big Brother-like presence. This ostensibly benign yet oppressive form evokes our ambiguous relationship with social networks in the era of surveillance capitalism. While entertaining content and endless emoji give such digital platforms a veneer of harmlessness, they capture our personal data to feed industries bent on controlling our behaviour.