Estudio de Sistemas (Systems Analysis). Jussi Parikka and Iris Long

Estudio de Sistemas (Systems Analysis) is a new program from Medialab that addresses the functioning of complex technological infrastructures and their material, social, and cultural effects from diverse perspectives. 
In this series of activities, we observe technology not so much as a device or infrastructure, but as a phenomenon of scale. Our goal is to learn about specific methods, practices, and experiences that shed light on processes that exceed human perception due to their speed, their level of abstraction, the time frames they span, or the technical opacity that surrounds them. 

Estudio de Sistemas is designed to be a precise and urgent learning opportunity outside of academia, thanks to firsthand accounts from relevant figures in contemporary art and research. 
In the first chapter of the series, we invite Finnish cultural historian of technology Jussi Parikka and Chinese curator and researcher Iris Long to investigate infrastructures that sense and understand at a planetary scale, as well as their less visible layers and the material and symbolic challenges they pose. 

Jussi Parikka revisits some key points from his recently translated book Operational Images (Imágenes operativas, Caja Negra, 2025) to discuss the transformation of visual culture in the age of data, artificial intelligence, and large-scale computational infrastructures. 
Parikka takes up the baton from Harun Farocki and wonders whether the notion of “operational image” should be understood more as an executive concept than as a specific type of image. What kind of adventures around images and visual culture—or rather, images and invisual culture—open up if we follow the trajectory of this concept? 

Iris Long presents her ongoing field research in southwest China, collected in the archive temporalstack.com, as well as in her recent and fascinating publication Under the Cloud (Serpentine, 2025). 
For Long, “the clou”, far from functioning solely as a metaphor or a set of hardware, actually emerges as a form of environmental drizzle that permeates the landscape and transforms the very idea of connectivity. Long has spent the last few years collaboratively observing large technological infrastructures such as data centers, scientific backbone networks, and radio telescopes. Through field research and artistic practice, Long explores the porous intervals between appearance and disappearance, proposing a vocabulary that allows us to perceive, articulate, and critically engage with the elusive presence of infrastructural megamachines.