The Critical Cartography of Technology and Power: Meet Visiting Professor Vladan Joler

John Cabot University is pleased to welcome Visiting Professor Vladan Joler, who is teaching Special Topics in Media Studies: Critical Cartography of Technology and Power during the Summer I 2025 session.

Professor Joler is a Serbian academic, researcher, and artist whose work blends data investigations, critical cartography, investigative journalism, critical design, and visual storytelling. By interrogating the entanglements between data, power, and representation, he explores the social and technical dimensions of algorithmic systems, digital labor, and invisible infrastructures. He is a professor in the New Media department at the Academy of Fine Arts at the University of Novi Sad in Serbia.

Joler’s work has been exhibited in over 100 international venues—including MoMA, the V&A, Ars Electronica, and the European Parliament—and is part of major museum collections. He has curated numerous events, lectured at institutions such as Oxford, Museo Reina Sofía, CCCB, and Transmediale, and received awards including Design of the Year (London Design Museum, 2019) and an Honorary Mention from the S+T+ARTS Prize.

Calculating Empires, Joler’s latest collaboration with Kate Crawford, premiered at Fondazione Prada in Milan in 2023 and has just been awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale 2025.

To mark Joler’s visiting professorship, JCU’s Department of Communication and Media Studies has organized the one-day workshop Critical Data Studies on June 5. The event, part of the Digital Delights and Disturbances series, will bring together scholars, researchers, and practitioners across disciplines to engage in a collective reflection on the politics and aesthetics of data. From health-tracking apps to biometric surveillance, from the abstraction inherent in AI training datasets to the infrastructural labor underpinning data production, this workshop will feature diverse perspectives and approaches that critically examine how data is extracted, shaped, and mobilized.

Berenice Cocciolillo, Director of Web Communications, recently interviewed Professor Joler.

How would you define critical cartography, and how did you become interested in it?
In my research and practice, I engage in investigations, mostly of the invisible layers of technology. Step by step, investigation by investigation, I have started to draw maps of technological systems, including planetary-scale systems and power systems—many different systems. Cartography traditionally comes from a position of power, from someone saying, “This is my empire, this is my company, and this is how it is going to look.” What I do is called critical cartography, or counter-cartography, because it comes from a different position, from someone outside the black box, trying to understand all of the invisible layers of structures, technology, and power relations. The end result of my investigation or thinking is usually a map, often a really big one, because the systems I’m exploring are extremely complex.

Tell us about Anatomy of an AI System, your widely acclaimed 2018 visual essay co-authored with Kate Crawford, mapping the hidden costs behind Amazon Echo.
Think about a typical interaction with Amazon Echo: “Alexa, turn on the light.” A brief command and response is the most common form of engagement with this voice-enabled AI device. The room lights up. But in that fleeting moment of interaction, a vast matrix of capacities is invoked: interlaced chains of resource extraction, hidden labor, and algorithmic processing across networks of mining, logistics, distribution, prediction, and optimization. The scale of this system is almost beyond human imagination; it comprises so many invisible layers, supply chains that include mines and factories from around the world.

Usually, when we engage with these devices, we just see a simple object, an interface to the larger planetary-scale structures behind it. I simply started to map all of this out.

Your latest work with Kate Crawford, Calculating Empires, recently won the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale 2025. Did you think your maps would eventually be recognized as art objects?
Absolutely not. It started with the investigation of something small, like the life and death of a single internet packet, a simple chunk of information being created. For example, when you type www.facebook.com, you create one internet packet that begins a planetary journey. I started to follow that journey, and step by step, I went deeper and deeper and began drawing those relationships, originally to explain how things work and to support policymaking. But then the maps became so big and complex that they began to take on the qualities of visual masterpieces. More and more, they are being treated as art objects and have started to be exhibited in museums and galleries.

My latest project, Calculating Empires, took four years to complete. It’s essentially an exploration of the historical relationship between systems of power and technology from the 1500s to the present day. It’s 24 meters long and three meters high. Interestingly, we won the Silver Lion for architecture, even though we’re not architects. But somehow this work speaks to a kind of genealogy of architectural systems of control, infrastructure, and communication.

Tell us about your course, Critical Cartography of Technology and Power.
In this course, I cover all the steps involved in investigating and visualizing different kinds of technological systems. As in my research, we begin by investigating simple technological events, then gradually move into larger and more complex systems. Some of the work is technical and even touches upon cyber forensics, while other aspects are more artistic or poetic. When you engage in mapping, you’re always working at the intersection of two worlds: the world of science and the world of art.

As someone with a deep interest in critically examining data, how are you investigating artificial intelligence?
Like previous major technological revolutions, such as the advent of the steam engine, artificial intelligence is going to bring about tectonic changes in how we work, learn, and communicate. My main concern, however, is how we can effectively investigate AI itself. What we currently receive from tech companies is merely an interface—what lies behind it remains largely unknown. When we interact with AI, we are essentially engaging with a black box, one that is protected and obscured by the companies that created it. Alarmingly, even those companies often don’t fully understand how these systems operate. This opacity is dangerous, given that AI systems are increasingly mediating our lives without transparency or accountability.

For several years, I’ve been involved in research aimed at uncovering what goes on inside these systems, especially the training datasets used to develop them. These datasets profoundly influence the outcomes AI systems produce. The problem is that most of these datasets are not transparent, and we often have no access to them. Even when access is granted, we’re confronted with immense complexity. Take visual AI systems, for example—their training datasets can consist of billions of images. As researchers, we face the daunting task of analyzing this massive volume of data: asking the right questions, identifying embedded biases, and understanding the social and cultural implications of what’s included and what’s left out.

Another major challenge is that those of us coming from critical media theory or independent research simply lack the time and resources to keep up. The field is advancing rapidly, and the companies developing these systems operate with enormous budgets, sometimes larger than entire space programs. This disparity puts independent researchers at a serious disadvantage. We’re venturing into a vast unknown, with limited tools and visibility, and the consequences on society, ethics, labor, education, and more remain largely unpredictable.

Tell us about the student protest in Serbia that you are engaged with.
In November 2024, a canopy collapsed outside the train station in Novi Sad, Serbia, killing 15 people. In the aftermath, grief turned into widespread anger, sparking student-led protests across the country. Demonstrators blamed systemic corruption for the tragedy and organized university blockades, strikes, and marches across the country. The tragedy has turned into a powerful revolution, with students demanding transparency and accountability in all aspects of Serbian society.

I am balancing my academic work with activism and have dedicated my recent award to the student protests.