“Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power, 1500-2025” is an exhibition conceived by Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler charting the technological present by depicting how power and technology have been intertwined since 1500.

By merging research and design, science and art, Joler and Crawford create a new way to understand the current spectacles of artificial intelligence by asking how we got here — and consider where we might be going.

Calculating Empires is a codex of technology and power which shows how the empires of past centuries are echoed in the technology companies of today. This detailed visual narrative extends over 24 meters and took almost four years to create, illustrating forms of communication, classification, computation and control with thousands of individually crafted drawings and texts that span centuries of conflicts, enclosures, and colonizations.