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Investigative Aesthetics. Conflicts and Commons in the Politics of Truth
Today, artists are engaged in investigation. They probe corruption, state violence, environmental destruction and repressive technologies. At the same time, fields not usually associated with aesthetics make powerful use of it. Journalists and legal professionals pore over open source videos and satellite imagery to undertake visual investigations. This combination of diverse fields is what the authors call “investigative aesthetics”: mobilising sensibilities often associated with art, architecture and other such practices to find new ways of speaking truth to power.
This book draws on theories of knowledge, ecology and technology, evaluates the methods of citizen counter-forensics, micro-history and art, and examines radical practices such as those of Wikileaks, Bellingcat, and Forensic Architecture. Investigative Aesthetics takes place in the studio and the laboratory, the courtroom and the gallery, online and in the streets, as it strives towards the construction of a new 'common sensing'.
The book is an inspiring introduction to a new field that brings together investigation and aesthetics to change how we understand and confront power today.
This book draws on theories of knowledge, ecology and technology, evaluates the methods of citizen counter-forensics, micro-history and art, and examines radical practices such as those of Wikileaks, Bellingcat, and Forensic Architecture. Investigative Aesthetics takes place in the studio and the laboratory, the courtroom and the gallery, online and in the streets, as it strives towards the construction of a new 'common sensing'.
The book is an inspiring introduction to a new field that brings together investigation and aesthetics to change how we understand and confront power today.
272 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 24, 2021
36 people are currently reading
517 people want to read
About the author
Matthew Fuller
52 books13 followersMatthew Fuller is an author and Professor of Cultural Studies at the Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London. He is known for his writings in media theory, software studies, critical theory and cultural studies, and contemporary fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 2, 2021
Every now and then I find myself reading a book that seems to defy classification, not that classification should be important but we also know that having a sense of genre or discipline helps us make sense of how to approach our reading. In this case, the authors unsettle codes – Weizman, an architect, has done important work on the spatial practices of colonialism and runs a multi-media, IT-based forensic (as in, in the interests of law) research programme, while Fuller is a cultural studies academic. Verso, the publisher, have this book listed in their ‘Politics’ list, and there is plenty of discussion of our so-called ‘post-Truth’ world and fakery.
Yet, and this no doubt reflects my position as much as anything else, I read this a research methods/philosophy of research text, trying to unpack how the ways they present their discussion ties into how we find out stuff and how we know. That is, I kept coming across epistemological and ontological insights – in part I suspect because much of the big data and deep dive forensic material they discuss is not only outside my ways of work, but at least at the level of detail of practice, beyond me. But whichever way I recognised it as a text – as how to think about exploring and constructing knowledge (research) or how much of the discourse of the public sphere works, this is an exciting, important, ever-so-slightly-mind-bending book. It is also one that quite properly defies clean and clear classification.
At the heart of the book is the not particularly new argument that good research and investigation requires that we adopt multiple perspectives (or in their language is poly-perspectival). Although many have been making this case for a long time, it remains a contested position with disciplinary and theoretical dogmatism widespread despite the failure of most research to grasp the complexities of lived experience and despite the premise of disciplines that aspects of knowledge and experience can be sequestered from others.
While engaging with this longstanding philosophical debate, they develop sharp new insights and problematize one of the more fundamental aspects of investigations – and this is where part of the power of the book lies. This is the ‘aesthetic’ aspect of the argument. This is not ‘aesthetic’ in terms of beauty or any of the other usual ways the term is invoked, but in terms of aesthesis as the notion in aspects of ancient Greek philosophy to do with the senses. Here they argue that investigation is both a process of sensing – that is of feeling, registering and being affected, of engagement often beyond the ‘rational’ – and sense-making – that is, of making sense, explaining and, in some ways, making things rational. Drawing out this point debunks many of the myths of research and investigative practice.
This question of being affected then allows them to open up two further questions. The first they call hyper-aesthetics where experiences and affects may explored and elaborated. One of the cases they discuss here is a project Weizman’s agency did with people formerly detained in ‘dark detention’ sites during investigations of extraordinary rendition, where although most detainees were blindfolded or the space darkened, for instance, through careful reconstruction using sound and spatial clues they were able to map the layout of various sites and in some cases identify them. This focus on affect in research and investigation allows us to explore with much more nuance and subtlety.
Yet there are also times when circumstances becomes overwhelming – which Fuller and Wiezman label hyperaesthesia where experiential overload or collapse means that sensation stops making sense. Instances of this they discuss include cases where, for instance, in response damning news stories (chemical attacks by states on their citizens for instance) news outlets are flooded by those perpetrators with images that overwhelm the evidence on which the story is based. In this case, the excess of information weakens the affective power of the news story. They suggest that similar cases occur with large scale information leaks and information dumps, such that while, for instance, Wikileaks wholesale release of files was arguably necessary to get them into the public domain before states could act to prevent the information release, it also overwhelmed and undermined the power of a more judicious set of releases.
Alongside this notion of aesthetics – of sensing and sense-making – they also explore modes of and approaches to investigation, in part using the conventional distinctions that turn around the language of objectivism and subjectivism in inquiries, as well as positivist, post-positivist and post-humanist outlooks. This is to be expected in any discussion of research and investigation, but there is also a more subtle engagement with questions of politics and power where they explore the tensions between iterative and revelatory aspects of any research or investigation. This takes them into discussions of different sorts of causation – of minimal causation (that is, direct and demonstrable causes) and of field causation (that is, of social, cultural, environmental and other causal forces that are more difficult to demonstrate in individual cases). The reminder that both are forms of casuation is helpful in that it is a reminder of the importance of poly-perspectival approaches and the dangers of overstating causation in generalizable terms. (Much of this discussion of investigation also delves into the potential of machine investigation, but that’s another aspect that’s beyond me in detail.)
These various questions of the multiplicities of investigation – of sensing and sense-making, of poly-perspectival practice, of nuance and subtlety and the unevenness of minimal causation and field causality – leads them to two propositions. In the first they suggest that research/investigation both exposes and constructs investigative commons, bringing together “a combination of aesthetic, political and epistemic structures” (p 195) including shared understandings as well as sites of labour and of presenting evidence. This builds on a notion that research is a shared and collective process and calls for a high degree of openness, ecumenism even, in our investigations. Second, they remind us of the importance of different sites of research/inquiry – of the lab as a site of isolation and testing, and of the studio where elaboration and imagination hold sway – as all being necessary alongside the forum as a site for broadcasting of those inquiries and their outcomes.
And yet even all of this makes the book sound much less than it is as Fuller and Weizman bring their multiple sites of inquiry, their many methods and their interests in uncovering power and its techniques of obfuscation and hyperesthesia to bring these issues to life. For me, the book is welcome because reminds us of these aesthetic aspects of any investigation, of the affective elements of our work, of immersion and sensation and of the hunches and feelings for lines of inquiry they produce. But it is also a timely reminder of the power of aesthetics to seduce, of affect as a vital element of the ‘post-Truth’ world. When added to case made for an investigative commons this is all the more powerful.
So, while there was much in the big picture here that sat quite comfortably with things that have been part of the ways I have thought, done and taught research and investigative methods for many years, the discussion is invigorating, the emphasis on affect especially welcome along with notion of research as a process of becoming makes this a book that is great to think and to think with. I’m sure others more au fait with machine and big data inquiries will find much more. I suspect more than one of my research students will have this pushed their way sooner rather than later.
Yet, and this no doubt reflects my position as much as anything else, I read this a research methods/philosophy of research text, trying to unpack how the ways they present their discussion ties into how we find out stuff and how we know. That is, I kept coming across epistemological and ontological insights – in part I suspect because much of the big data and deep dive forensic material they discuss is not only outside my ways of work, but at least at the level of detail of practice, beyond me. But whichever way I recognised it as a text – as how to think about exploring and constructing knowledge (research) or how much of the discourse of the public sphere works, this is an exciting, important, ever-so-slightly-mind-bending book. It is also one that quite properly defies clean and clear classification.
At the heart of the book is the not particularly new argument that good research and investigation requires that we adopt multiple perspectives (or in their language is poly-perspectival). Although many have been making this case for a long time, it remains a contested position with disciplinary and theoretical dogmatism widespread despite the failure of most research to grasp the complexities of lived experience and despite the premise of disciplines that aspects of knowledge and experience can be sequestered from others.
While engaging with this longstanding philosophical debate, they develop sharp new insights and problematize one of the more fundamental aspects of investigations – and this is where part of the power of the book lies. This is the ‘aesthetic’ aspect of the argument. This is not ‘aesthetic’ in terms of beauty or any of the other usual ways the term is invoked, but in terms of aesthesis as the notion in aspects of ancient Greek philosophy to do with the senses. Here they argue that investigation is both a process of sensing – that is of feeling, registering and being affected, of engagement often beyond the ‘rational’ – and sense-making – that is, of making sense, explaining and, in some ways, making things rational. Drawing out this point debunks many of the myths of research and investigative practice.
This question of being affected then allows them to open up two further questions. The first they call hyper-aesthetics where experiences and affects may explored and elaborated. One of the cases they discuss here is a project Weizman’s agency did with people formerly detained in ‘dark detention’ sites during investigations of extraordinary rendition, where although most detainees were blindfolded or the space darkened, for instance, through careful reconstruction using sound and spatial clues they were able to map the layout of various sites and in some cases identify them. This focus on affect in research and investigation allows us to explore with much more nuance and subtlety.
Yet there are also times when circumstances becomes overwhelming – which Fuller and Wiezman label hyperaesthesia where experiential overload or collapse means that sensation stops making sense. Instances of this they discuss include cases where, for instance, in response damning news stories (chemical attacks by states on their citizens for instance) news outlets are flooded by those perpetrators with images that overwhelm the evidence on which the story is based. In this case, the excess of information weakens the affective power of the news story. They suggest that similar cases occur with large scale information leaks and information dumps, such that while, for instance, Wikileaks wholesale release of files was arguably necessary to get them into the public domain before states could act to prevent the information release, it also overwhelmed and undermined the power of a more judicious set of releases.
Alongside this notion of aesthetics – of sensing and sense-making – they also explore modes of and approaches to investigation, in part using the conventional distinctions that turn around the language of objectivism and subjectivism in inquiries, as well as positivist, post-positivist and post-humanist outlooks. This is to be expected in any discussion of research and investigation, but there is also a more subtle engagement with questions of politics and power where they explore the tensions between iterative and revelatory aspects of any research or investigation. This takes them into discussions of different sorts of causation – of minimal causation (that is, direct and demonstrable causes) and of field causation (that is, of social, cultural, environmental and other causal forces that are more difficult to demonstrate in individual cases). The reminder that both are forms of casuation is helpful in that it is a reminder of the importance of poly-perspectival approaches and the dangers of overstating causation in generalizable terms. (Much of this discussion of investigation also delves into the potential of machine investigation, but that’s another aspect that’s beyond me in detail.)
These various questions of the multiplicities of investigation – of sensing and sense-making, of poly-perspectival practice, of nuance and subtlety and the unevenness of minimal causation and field causality – leads them to two propositions. In the first they suggest that research/investigation both exposes and constructs investigative commons, bringing together “a combination of aesthetic, political and epistemic structures” (p 195) including shared understandings as well as sites of labour and of presenting evidence. This builds on a notion that research is a shared and collective process and calls for a high degree of openness, ecumenism even, in our investigations. Second, they remind us of the importance of different sites of research/inquiry – of the lab as a site of isolation and testing, and of the studio where elaboration and imagination hold sway – as all being necessary alongside the forum as a site for broadcasting of those inquiries and their outcomes.
And yet even all of this makes the book sound much less than it is as Fuller and Weizman bring their multiple sites of inquiry, their many methods and their interests in uncovering power and its techniques of obfuscation and hyperesthesia to bring these issues to life. For me, the book is welcome because reminds us of these aesthetic aspects of any investigation, of the affective elements of our work, of immersion and sensation and of the hunches and feelings for lines of inquiry they produce. But it is also a timely reminder of the power of aesthetics to seduce, of affect as a vital element of the ‘post-Truth’ world. When added to case made for an investigative commons this is all the more powerful.
So, while there was much in the big picture here that sat quite comfortably with things that have been part of the ways I have thought, done and taught research and investigative methods for many years, the discussion is invigorating, the emphasis on affect especially welcome along with notion of research as a process of becoming makes this a book that is great to think and to think with. I’m sure others more au fait with machine and big data inquiries will find much more. I suspect more than one of my research students will have this pushed their way sooner rather than later.
September 25, 2021
could’ve been an email
December 29, 2024
I initially picked this book up because of the great cover, with no prior knowledge of Forensic Architecture’s work. Through reading this book, I learned about their various projects. These range from meticulously recreating the Grenfell tower disaster to better understand it, to using machine learning to identify a type of tear gas canister across various conflicts. In Investigative Aesthetics, Fuller and Weizman propose an epistemology that transcends traditional ideas of knowledge and knowledge making to include human perception, machine learning, ecological sensing and beyond. In my opinion, the strongest analogy for this is an analogy in the book: a mode of thinking/investigation that considers the small and outreaching cause and effect to make a composite image - similar to the way a bird creates a nest.
While the ideas suggested in Forensic Architecture were interesting, I found the prose to be verbose. There are a lot of definitions within definitions, which at times muddled their point. In order to fully engage with the book, I found I had to annotate and highlight pretty regularly. This ended up being one of my favourite things about reading the book, because it pushed me to engage.
I felt there was variation between the chapters. The Secrets chapter was very interesting, as it encourages the reader to think of a lack of information (such as a redaction in a government document) to be knowledge in itself. Other sections, such as investigation, reiterated common ways of thinking about investigation. While still very interesting, they at times felt repetitive.
The at times difficult prose and writing left me feeling bogged down by the books content, and ready for a change of pace.
Overall, I found this book interesting and will try to apply its lessons when I engage with the world. However, I feel that its style at times hampered its content.
While the ideas suggested in Forensic Architecture were interesting, I found the prose to be verbose. There are a lot of definitions within definitions, which at times muddled their point. In order to fully engage with the book, I found I had to annotate and highlight pretty regularly. This ended up being one of my favourite things about reading the book, because it pushed me to engage.
I felt there was variation between the chapters. The Secrets chapter was very interesting, as it encourages the reader to think of a lack of information (such as a redaction in a government document) to be knowledge in itself. Other sections, such as investigation, reiterated common ways of thinking about investigation. While still very interesting, they at times felt repetitive.
The at times difficult prose and writing left me feeling bogged down by the books content, and ready for a change of pace.
Overall, I found this book interesting and will try to apply its lessons when I engage with the world. However, I feel that its style at times hampered its content.
December 1, 2022
Brilliant book. Investigative Aesthetics redefines aesthetics not as the domain of the beautiful and pretty, but of all that is sensed. Aesthetics, for Fuller and Weizman, is about making phenomena available to the senses: about sensing and making sense. In that sense (pun intended!), the opposite of aesthetics is anesthetics, the desensitization of the senses.
Within this widened definition of the word, aesthetics becomes the set of methods and practices that make certain phenomena -- in the case of Forensic Architecture, the object of interest is human rights abuses -- available to the senses, but also communicated in a way that enables us to make sense of them.
From ecosystemic investigation methods through social media, to use of machine learning to sift through thousands of online media to identify weapons and canisters, Forensic Architecture's methods are fascinating and demonstrate the sophisticated means through which human rights defenders can use aesthetics to keep public and private actors to account.
This book will be an interesting read for anyone working in human rights, investigation, philosophy or at the intersection of the arts and sciences.
Within this widened definition of the word, aesthetics becomes the set of methods and practices that make certain phenomena -- in the case of Forensic Architecture, the object of interest is human rights abuses -- available to the senses, but also communicated in a way that enables us to make sense of them.
From ecosystemic investigation methods through social media, to use of machine learning to sift through thousands of online media to identify weapons and canisters, Forensic Architecture's methods are fascinating and demonstrate the sophisticated means through which human rights defenders can use aesthetics to keep public and private actors to account.
This book will be an interesting read for anyone working in human rights, investigation, philosophy or at the intersection of the arts and sciences.
October 7, 2025
This book is an intellectual hostage situation disguised as theory, it flirts with fascinating ideas… only to bury them alive beneath prose so torturous it feels like punishment for even
caring. It is a pity that it was written like someone threw up a thesaurus and then re-used the “new-found” word about 3 times in the same paragraph.
I like to think I’m relatively well-versed in academic writing and genuinely curious about what this text explores, yet curiosity is no match for the non-sensical verbal avalanche that Fuller and Weizman let fall. Read this text once; confusing, read it twice; humbling, read it five times; masochistic… yet you might just start to make sense of it.
They make decent arguments and it questions relevant topics, but their ideas drown in jargon and syntactic deluge- these authors might want to study their belligerently unreadable writing as a new form of censorship for their next book- truth hidden not by structural power or politics, but by pretentious paragraphs.
caring. It is a pity that it was written like someone threw up a thesaurus and then re-used the “new-found” word about 3 times in the same paragraph.
I like to think I’m relatively well-versed in academic writing and genuinely curious about what this text explores, yet curiosity is no match for the non-sensical verbal avalanche that Fuller and Weizman let fall. Read this text once; confusing, read it twice; humbling, read it five times; masochistic… yet you might just start to make sense of it.
They make decent arguments and it questions relevant topics, but their ideas drown in jargon and syntactic deluge- these authors might want to study their belligerently unreadable writing as a new form of censorship for their next book- truth hidden not by structural power or politics, but by pretentious paragraphs.
November 9, 2021
A compelling case that is well thought out, meticulously crafted, but oddly less accessible than you’d expect this sort of a dissemination of group reworking of terms in current use would be. It definitely seems written academically and could use an additional editorial polish, as it could easily be truncated at a sentence-by-sentence level.
But I did come out agreeing fairly wholeheartedly with the reworking and definition of the terms and what kind of ‘work’ it implies to, and why the update is necessary when we are constantly operating and relating to both terms differently. With a huge emphasis on aesthetics. The investigation section felt like it was merely reiterating a lot of already common use applications. But it makes sense to further codify the term as pertaining, especially, to counter-investigations.
But I did come out agreeing fairly wholeheartedly with the reworking and definition of the terms and what kind of ‘work’ it implies to, and why the update is necessary when we are constantly operating and relating to both terms differently. With a huge emphasis on aesthetics. The investigation section felt like it was merely reiterating a lot of already common use applications. But it makes sense to further codify the term as pertaining, especially, to counter-investigations.
April 9, 2024
If I could give this book a 10 out of 5, I would. It is a must-read for those curious about an approach that blends investigation and aesthetics, which is not limited to human capacities to sense but encompasses every material object within the ecology of the Anthropocene. Although I have some reservations about the term Anthropocene and the assemblage approach itself, this book serves as an epistemic groundbreaker, uncovering the truth buried behind powerful propaganda and challenging our long-held beliefs as the ultimate truth.
In addition to captivating discussions on ecological sensings, sense-making, hyper-aesthetics, and hyper-aesthesia, the book also explores the significance (and manipulation) of minor details and radical investigative practices, among other concepts.
Difficulty level: 3.5/5
In addition to captivating discussions on ecological sensings, sense-making, hyper-aesthetics, and hyper-aesthesia, the book also explores the significance (and manipulation) of minor details and radical investigative practices, among other concepts.
Difficulty level: 3.5/5
February 15, 2022
what's generally true of any machine is garbage in garbage out and the garbage of part two makes a strong case for the necessity of part one's call for conscious aesthetic interventions against auto-aestheticism. being led down the garden path by bellingcat aside, do not waste your time reading this book's asinine little angel and cat fairy tale.
December 22, 2021
I found the 60 percent of this that I understood very interesting.
December 7, 2023
Couldn't completely follow but a lot of interesting concepts and references
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews