With the evolution of technology into powerful capabilities for documentation of our surroundings, it’s evident that any average citizen can become his or her own publisher. How did we capture evidence of police brutality in the past? How did muckrakers many years ago seek to bring attention to the atrocities that weren’t meant to become public knowledge? Currently, we have the ability to snap a picture or record a video — literally in the palms of our hands — and upload it to social media or content platforms for all the world to see and judge. I feel that this capability actually will not cease to exit, but rather grow more widely spread. What’s more is that we will have more and more to talk about, take pictures of, and record videos of. We have so much to complain about in the world around us now and we will only continue to garner complaints as our economic base will become less and less satisfactory, thus leading to an even less satisfactory superstructure.

You can see that all three iterations use technology as a means of displaying rotten infrastructure and architecture. Once clean, and beautiful, buildings and geographical features are now plagued with dinginess, rust and pollution. Each iteration uses popular means of technology (iphones and ipads) to capture these happenings. This is what human beings bearing witness to their surroundings really looks like. We become the sources for our own stories, as we “open the freezer” and see the decay for ourselves.

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This is a once beautiful city by the sea that has now succumbed to pollution, as shown by the grayscale used and the smoke cloud in the shape of a skull coming out of one of the buildings. The holder of the iphone is in the process of capturing the broken bridge over the dirty water and the destroyed buildings.

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This ipad shows a picture that was already taken of a decaying city. Rust is eating away at the clock tower and surrounding buildings, and the leaves of the trees are blackening. The broken teacup is also a reflection of a broken society.

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Finally, this scene, slightly more mellow than the other, shows the phone focusing on rusting traffic signs that used to dictate rules of the road that kept people safe. This reflects how ultimate safety will cease to exist. The sign on the road reads “This traffic light never turns green,” which is to show that everyone must take special caution because no one will ever be completely sure that they are in the right.