From Consensus to Diffraction On Generative Frictions in Mapping Computer Vision Technologies in the Field of Security

How does one map and visualise the complex arrangements of computer vision technologies used in the field of security in a collaborative setting where the research participants come from different scholarly traditions? This paper is an account of how we have attempted to tackle this question, and in the process of doing so, had to overcome challenges linked to the very meaning of collaboration. In a context in which epistemological and ontological differences appeared insurmountable, rather than searching for an illusory consensus, we decided to pluralize our visualisation practices. We thus mobilize maps, diagrams and snapshots not as illustrations but as the very nodes where frictions become tangible and generative of new directions. In our co-laboration we move from networks and maps to diagrams and 3D spaces yet still hold them together by reading across and through them, what we define as a “diffractive” approach.