LEGACY AWARDS

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In the 21st century, human rights crimes are executed at inconceivable scale, orchestrated through state-of-the-art surveillance and algorithmic military power. States and corporations have in their arsenals drones, chemical gasses, computational surveillance, sensors, and disinformation, which are launched at targets, often in urban settings, remotely through complex computer interfaces and dizzying transnational networks. In these next-level true crimes, there is no obvious smoking gun. Conventional forensics cannot adequately find, collect, analyze, and present evidence to make a case against perpetrators. Where do prosecutors, human rights investigators, environmental justice groups, journalists, documentarians, and civil society organizations even begin?

For the last decade, a research agency called Forensic Architecture has directed a spectacular coordinated response, led by architect Eyal Weizman. They have written a new language of evidentiary techniques called “counter-forensics” to advance justice and expose state, military, police, and corporate crimes of magnitude on behalf of advocates and affected communities. A brilliant multidisciplinary collective of minds and makers, Forensic Architecture includes architects, computer scientists, artists, machine learning experts, media specialists, archeologists, filmmakers, and engineers who, together, develop coherent and legible ways to gather, analyze, understand, and synthesize the evidence from the scenes of these crimes.

Using sophisticated architectural techniques such as lidar, radar, photogrammetry, and advanced platform software, for each case they build an elaborate digital 3D model of the scene of the crime. The team then situates individual pieces of evidence “on stage” within frameworks such as open-source data, satellite data, surveillance footage, citizen video, audio, mobile phone meta-data, witness testimony, and 3D representations of physical objects and people. The pieces of data are placed in space and across time within the landscape. These models become more than mere representations of real world spaces, they then become devices for analysis. The models allow for the study of the relational dynamics between images, camera positions, timelines, buildings, infrastructure, actions, and incidents.

Moreover, Forensic Architecture has refined “investigational aesthetics” by poetically translating these investigations into artworks and media installations that resonate at multiple registers: from the courts and parliaments to museums, art galleries, web platforms, and the mainstream media.

Forensic Architecture’s first project in 2012 was an investigation into the killing of Bassem Abu Rahma in Bil’in for human rights lawyer and activist Michael Sfard, which was eventually presented to the Supreme Court of Israel. In 2012, their work exposed the Israeli use of airburst white phosphorus munitions in Gaza. Since then, they have conducted 76 distinct investigations in 45 countries (on land and in water), working with a multitude of diverse partners such as Amnesty International, UN Special Rapporteur on Counter Terrorism and Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, Médicins Sans Frontiers, The New York Times, BBC, Bellingcat, Citizen Lab, and many others.

Notably, their long-form investigations make large-scale systems of exploitation visible. Their ongoing Digital Violence multi-media web platform tracks the global use of malware Pegasus, created by the Israeli cyber-surveillance company NSO group. Their exhibition Cloud Stories pulled together eight of their investigations on chemical warfare to demonstrate the vast and pervasive impact and history of toxic airborne violence unleashed on humanity and vegetation.

For co-creating an entire new academic field and emergent media practice, using digital 3D modeling for human rights investigation and documentary, to speak truth to computational power on a planetary scale, Forensic Architecture wins an Institutional Peabody.

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Our worlds are composed of the stories we tell ourselves. In 1966, Joseph Weizenbaum saw the potential in the computers of his day to create a program for the purpose not of processing information or doing scientific calculations, but for the sole intention of making a relationship. A computer program with the goal of evoking our personal stories and through them creating an emotional connection. This program was ELIZA.

ELIZA took the form of what we now call a chatbot. She was presented as a “mock (Rogerian) Psychotherapist.” Participants would write to her and she would respond with relevant questions or statements that fueled further conversation. The perception of empathy from ELIZA was so strong that participants often requested privacy while talking to her.

It can be easy these days to mistake ELIZA for her descendants—natural language personal assistants like Siri or Alexa. While this software has advanced considerably in the course of the last 50 years, the change in focus to transactional interactions—language as interface—obscures the revolutionary personal narratives that ELIZA created. Writing about his creation for his academic peers in January 1966, Weizenbaum prefaced:

“It is said that to explain is to explain away. This maxim is nowhere so well fulfilled as in the area of computer programming. … For in those realms machines are made to behave in wondrous ways, often sufficient to dazzle even the most experienced observer. But once a particular program is unmasked, once its inner workings are explained in language sufficiently plain to induce understanding, its magic crumbles away; it stands revealed as a mere collection of procedures, each quite comprehensible.”

In the intervening half-century of advancement, as software has gotten more complex, it is in some ways easier to see the revolutionary nature of ELIZA. Even in their infancy, computer programs had already been vehicles of stories. ELIZA showed the world that a simple computer script could evoke not just one story, but be a vehicle for as many stories as there were people who interacted with her. She opened the door to software as a tool not just for business or science, but also for emotional interactions. For the foundational work of using software to create empathy, connections, and hold a mirror to each of our personal narratives, ELIZA wins a Peabody.

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It’s said that the inventor of the web’s original vision was for it to be “a collaborative medium, a place where we can all meet and read and write”—a single central vision. In 2000 the web was transitioning from sites originally built with static HTML pages, simple embedded styles, to interactive website features and the birth of the comment section, which marked a major point of evolution in the world of web development.

Enter Phil Yu. Like many people of color coming up in the 1980s and ‘90s, he had grown accustomed to not seeing himself in mass media. But unlike many, Yu also got angry, and then he found a way to channel it. Angry Asian Man was a blog built on html. The name is an ironic play on the model minority trope and asks: Why aren’t Asians allowed or expected to be angry? The greeting page features an action figure of Quick Kick, the bare-chested character in from G.I. Joe, who is angry as well.

The blog began as a way for Yu to express himself and work through how he felt about not seeing his community reflected in media, but found further purpose after successfully helping to mobilize against a clothing company that had released T-shirts featuring racist caricatures of Asian people. This changed the blog’s course and direction from criticism to also include calls to action, providing a look, via an Asian American lens, at everything from pop culture to politics to music to academia. As it became a destination for others seeking community, the blog again transformed into a type of short form conversation.

The speed in which today’s audience can call out media for stereotypical representations and/or erasure was built off of the work that Yu has been doing for the last 20 years. It doesn’t matter that the format was a blog—it’s about the content of that blog. Before social media was widespread, he helped to create the playbook for being in digital spaces. His blog has connected Asian Americans across the internet, so the stories themselves became interactive as readers formed communities, engaged, and took action.

He spoke up when others did not. He built community and allowed space for that community to be creative and innovative, to see themselves as creators and valued/respected audience members. He amplified the work of organizations covering Asian American issues so that they could find broader coalitions. With the message as important as the delivery and consumption medium, Phil continues to shine a light on Asian American issues beyond his blog and into podcasts and publishing. Mainstream media is listening now.

For upholding the original vision of what the web could be, encouraging and inspiring the next generation of creators and community, for being unapologetic about centering the Asian American experience and for staying angry, Phil Yu is awarded a Peabody.

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Nonny de la Peña has been at the forefront of emerging media throughout her career, earning accolades like “Godmother of VR.” Her insatiable curiosity and keen desire to provide innovative experiences to audiences in search of truth brought new techniques and technology to storytelling that are grounded in journalistic integrity.

She was an important contributor during a historic period of discovery in beyond-broadcast digital media. Innovators like her were critical to finding indigenous storytelling forms on the mobile computing devices and social platforms that started to dominate our lives. Her example catalyzed a generation of storytellers and innovators to invest their genius towards meaning-making in emerging media forms.

Her contributions to immersive journalism are numerous, with rippling effects. De la Peña brought important insights to the critiques that VR is too immersive for certain content by making compelling arguments for VR journalism, offering eye-opening examples, and providing best practices for designing embodied experiences of challenging events. Collaborations with leading news organizations set standards in transparency, accuracy, and sourcing for new media.

Her contributions to technology innovation are profound. Significant areas of her innovation include room-scale 5DoF immersion; data visualization; flat game-engine storytelling; techniques to bring flat media documentation into immersive space, stimulating technologists to make VR headsets mobile, higher quality, and less expensive; and a platform that democratizes the immersive power of volumetric VR.

Finally, her contributions to social and environmental justice are formidable. Her pieces help audiences become intimately aware of the nuances of news issues and events spanning critical subjects like abortion, LGBTQ+ youth, police brutality, conflict zones, solitary confinement, melting ice caps, the Black Lives Matter movement, and more. However, one of her most significant contributions was furthering equity and equality in the tech industry by shattering stereotypes and dismantling narratives that worked to validate its lack of diversity.

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