Calculating Empires: Technology and Power Genealogy at Fondazione Prada

The exhibition 'Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power, 1500-2025' at Osservatorio Fondazione Prada in Milan explores the historical entanglement of science, technology, and political power from the 16th century to the present. Curated by artists and researchers Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler, the show features a monumental visual atlas spanning 24 meters of walls, with diagrams developed over four years. The lower floor presents 'Anatomy of an AI System,' a diagram mapping the extractive processes behind an Amazon Echo device, including material resources, human labor, and data. A dissected Echo, minerals, and Amazon patents are also displayed. Joler notes that 2023 marked generative AI's global cultural impact, altering online research, writing, and image creation while concentrating power and producing disinformation. Crawford emphasizes that these impacts are centuries in the making but hidden by industrial secrecy, colonialism, and lack of regulation. The upper floor's atlas, inspired by Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas, traces communication, classification, computation, and control across centuries of conflict and colonization. Each diagram addresses themes like communication devices, interfaces, data practices, surveillance, military systems, prisons, and colonial domination. The exhibition runs at Osservatorio Fondazione Prada, located atop the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan.