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Comment by kqvamxurcagg | Hacker News Reader

This is incredible and I can only imagine how much time this took to create. Definitely also worth taking a look at their previous investigations at https://forensic-architecture.org/.

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Everything about reporting this way is amazing, it’s an aspiring goal for on watchers of what data can provide. As you watch this you know that grant money is working hard here. Much respect for such a talented team bringing in complex engineering for all to consume.

This raises the bar in so many ways, love it.

> you know that grant money is working hard here

Am I the only one who finds this a little disturbing?

I mean the thing is beautifully produced, no doubt, I don't want to take anything away from the skills of the people who made it.

But the slickness moves it somehow from "scrappy bunch who gathered all the open data & collaboratively figured stuff out" into a different category. More like "someone with very deep pockets wants to tell me a particular story". Like getting the sort of 10-page glossy brochure they use to sell manhattan penthouses, but it's from the local animal shelter... and there's nothing wrong with the kitten pictures, the photography is excellent, but you wonder a bit who paid all those professionals, and why.

If I’m not mistaken Forensic Architecture have a lot of connections to the art world (and architecture of course, it’s in the name of the project). Some of them teach at art schools (Goldsmiths etc.), they were nominated for the Turner Prize. I don’t know if it shows a shifting definition of what art is, but it’s interesting that this is the context that (in part) enables them to do their work. It also helps to explain the attention to visual presentation.

Thanks that's interesting. Although it also seems a slightly odd collision of worlds. I mean art is important, and can show us personal perspectives we might otherwise miss. (And maybe the super-slick presentation is something someone did for their own pleasure, not because some sponsor was willing to pay the day rate.)

But carefully weighing evidence and doubt isn't exactly the core idea of the art world. You will win few prizes by pointing out factual mistakes in others' work. (Not saying I know of any factual inaccuracies here, to be clear.)

Their archive of police brutality during the BLM protests this summer is presented in an interesting fashion:

https://blmprotests.forensic-architecture.org/

They also have a YouTube account:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEeyMdTjYEYESf_8HyiCRAg

That has some good videos on it, including one showing evidence of Russian military directly involved in the Ukraine invasion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OldnzVNE71E

This one is particularly relevant to goings on in the US recently:

https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/police-bruta...

Agreed - this is great and deeply fascinating to me.

How did I not know about this before! :)

Bye-bye to getting any work done for the rest of the day!

I'm exactly the same, what an incredible organisation. The use of computer vision, VFX, modelling and VR is inspiring.

The models they've created are in Blender (OSS) and Cinema 4D (not OSS) file formats.

Watching some of their video's, they seem to use Blender a lot. :)

There is also https://www.38north.org/ if you are interested in North Korea.

I agree that this is work of very high technical quality. I was slightly disturbed, though, that this didn't include any interview from people working there, though. I realize it's neither trivial nor cheap to organize, bit it did leave me a strange feeling that I have trouble putting into words. Is there an element of arrogance in assuming we can simply "science the shit out of this" (to quote a well-known Martian), comfortably removed from the faraway site of a human tragedy and without involving any of the affected people, and call it a day?

Kind of like marketeers only trusting analytics and never talking to a single customer, but with an element of western arrogance on top of it.

There's a wealth of great investigative work there. Really impressive stuff.

I’m just waiting to see what’s out there in like the NSA, which is able to do this automatically.

Have a drone take Lidar or whatever model of an area, feed the pictures in and some other data and the system produces videos like this.

This video was incredible!

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