This essay forms part of the Master's thesis Investigative Models: Towards the Definition of an Epistemic Framework of OSINT by Engy El Shenawy and Federico Zurani. The thesis investigates how Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) produces knowledge and asks whether its investigative methods can be understood through a rigorous epistemological framework rather than solely as technical or journalistic practices.
Drawing on philosophy of science, media theory, and forensic investigation, the authors examine how contemporary digital investigations generate, validate, and communicate evidence. Their central aim is to establish a conceptual model capable of evaluating the methodological reliability of OSINT, shifting attention from the interpretation of evidence to the epistemic conditions that make evidence possible.
This publication contains references to previous chapters of the thesis. For any inquiry, we recommend that readers contact the authors directly.
From Systemic Critique To
Micro-Epistemology. An Introduction To Experimental Systems and Rheinberger.
I. Reconfiguring the Evidencial ParadigmThe shift from Ginzburg’s evidential paradigm to Forensic Architecture ́s virtual investigations can be summarised as a shift from a system that finds traces and masterfully connects them to a system in which traces are translated into
a data space and used to create other findings.
In the previous chapter1, we have seen how in Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm (1979), Ginzburg described a mode of knowledge characterised by the reading of traces, the deciphering of small signs that allow an investigator to infer hidden causes. His key figures, such as the doctor, the connoisseur, and the detective, interpret the world through conjecture and analogy rather than deduction. This “conjectural paradigm” rests on indexical reasoning: the belief that every event leaves a material residue which, when properly read, can reveal the invisible2. The epistemological model is retrospective: the trace is a fragment of the past, awaiting decipherment by a skilled interpreter.
Yet as Joachim Harst notes, this conception must be revised for the digital era, where the evidential field has become algorithmic, networked, and dynamic3. Digital forensics no longer operates within closed, static archives, but within recursive arrangements of tools, data, and hypotheses: these knowledge systems can generate new information through iteration and recombination.
Here, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s theory of experimental systems provides the necessary epistemological bridge. For Rheinberger, scientific experimentation is not the confirmation of a prior hypothesis but rather the emergence of new objects of knowledge within evolving constellations of instruments, materials, and conceptual frameworks4. Knowledge, in this view, arises from the experimental system itself, through the recursive interplay between what is known and what becomes knowable.
It is not a coincidence that Harst explicitly draws on Rheinberger to describe the transformation of the evidential paradigm in Forensic Architecture’s work. He argues that the laboratory and the investigative model now coincide:
Digital investigations function as experimental systems in Rheinberger’s sense, configurations that generate new facts through iterative visualisation, testing, and reconfiguration5.
Although Harst does not fully develop this epistemological connection further, it is worth pursuing in greater detail.
Again, this epistemic shift is vividly evident in Forensic Architecture’s OSINT investigations. These are arrangements of individual pieces of evidence within a digital architectural model, also referred to as an image-data complex. In their reconstruction of the 2020 Beirut Port explosion, for example, hundreds of public videos were synchronised in time and mapped spatially to triangulate the source and sequence of the blasts. Each video, in isolation, was indeterminate, a partial witness. Only when aligned algorithmically within a digital model did these fragments acquire evidential force. What emerges here is not the discovery of a pre-existing fact, but the experimental production of a shared truth environment, one with a collective forum in which the evidential field itself is continuously tested and refined.
In this sense, how does OSINT embody both Ginzburg ́s and Rheinberger’s epistemologies? OSINT operates at the intersection of Ginzburg’s and Rheinberger’s epistemologies: it begins from traces and clues, but it also establishes an experimental setting in which those traces can be made knowable. The trace thus shifts from being a passive sign to being an active medium, something through which the “real” is experimentally constituted.
This convergence explains the distinctive nature of Forensic Architecture’s “production of evidence”6. Their investigations operate within open, collective experimental systems—epistemic assemblages that combine algorithmic tools, human witnesses, and aesthetic mediations. Each model, map, or animation is simultaneously a technical experiment, a public performance, and an ethical proposition. The production of truth they present is inseparable from its visualisation, and it is quite curious to see how Rheinberger sees in this a universal law of knowledge production, as we can see from the quote of Ernest Cassirer7 that opens his book Split and Splice8:
No matter whether we are concerned with the ideal or the real, the mathematical or the empirical, with nonsensuous or sensuous objects, the first question is always not what these are in their absolute nature or essence, but by what medium they are conveyed to us; through what instrumentality of knowledge the knowing of them is made possible and achieved.9
II. Applying an epistemological perspective: limits of the current Forensic Architecture frameworkIn Investigative Aesthetics, M. Fuller and E. Weizman present a new philosophy of investigation, in which human and non-human actors participate in a complex network that is both “sensing” (registers information) and “sense-making” (reads and contextualises the information). From this network of actors, which they define as an aesthetic system, new
representations of facts emerge. These new investigative systems welcome new entities, communities, frameworks or elements; while also unsettling Western-centred epistemologies and reconfiguring the relationship between power and the construction of truth through narrative. Against the idea of objective, universal representation of facts, a new investigative system should help challenge these overarching mainstream narratives and give space to the marginalised. From a more technical perspective, these systems could be described as situated and perspectival.
An interesting example in this direction is the case of the Death Alley10. Death Alley is the ominous name given to the portion of territory on the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, a heavily industrialised “petrochemical corridor” that is also the settlement of black communities, which suffer greatly from the pollution of the nearby industrial complexes. To help these communities fight back and protect themselves, Forensic Architecture mapped the burial sites of once-enslaved cotton field workers. These cemeteries are protected by state law and cannot be destroyed or owned by anyone other than the living descendants of these communities.
The case studies combined techniques of regressive cartography, scientific wind simulations and documentary interviews, among others. As a result, they documented the environmental harm caused by the industrial facilities, identified the locations of many burial sites, showed the unlawful expansion of these companies onto the burial sites, and collected direct testimony from the people living there. The communities of the Death Alley eventually gained media coverage that informed public opinion and provided legal leverage, which they mobilised against the expansion of the petrochemical facilities.
This case offers a good overview of how aesthetic systems work to generate knowledge and narrative; it shows how heterogeneous media and techniques come together to create a new type of system. In Weizman and Fuller’s account, an aesthetic system is not subject to a fixed limitation in terms of what it may comprise. Yet this apparent openness is implicitly mediated by the presence of trained experts, whose role helps structure andvalidate the system11.
While this framework has many methodological implications which could potentially enrich the field of visual investigations, it also has some limitations, especially when addressing the technical processes that lead to the generation of knowledge. In other words, the systemic critique implied by Weizman and Fuller justifies the creation of hybrid investigative systems, but does not provide any solution on how to evaluate their internal coherence and the reliability of these systems.
A better understanding of the problem can be achieved by looking at the distinction that Hanna makes between external and internal objectivity: the first representing “an entity, process, magnitude, construct which “existence and properties are independent of its representation”12 (the object is totally independent from subjective interferences), the latter, by contrast, is concerned with the processes or methods by means of which science investigates the world; so it might also appropriately be called “methodological objectivity”: he internal objectivity lies in the capability of a system to create a consistent and stable outcome.
Looking again at Weizman’s and Fuller’s theory, we can recognise a critique of external objectivity, as a non-subjective representation of facts and their weaponisation by actors in power, but we cannot find a framework where the methodology of an investigative system can be scrutinised. Without a framework for establishing the internal objectivity of an investigative system, the consistency of its methodology seems to rest solely on ethical grounds.
What happens then when more than one agency, with similar moral and ethical values, investigates the same incident and reaches very different conclusions? And how do we navigate this sea? How do we determine the standards by which the reliability of one body of work can be judged against another? Can we adapt and use a framing that would enhance our capacity to analyse OSINT case studies? We want to determine whether these case studies can be evaluated epistemically.
The problem of the internal consistency of an investigative system will be framed by evaluating its epistemic reliability: an evaluation that focuses on the relations among technological tools, methods, practices, and the knowledge-generation process at stake within it.
In this text, the theoretical framing we will use to analyse methodologies is borrowed from Hans Jörg Rheinberger’s theory of experimental systems in biology.
Experimental systems are discrete, basic units at the core of scientific research that can generate unexpected nuances. What characterises them is their technical and technological nature, in which various stabilised processes/techniques are adopted in pursuit of open-ended outcomes. The goal of such systems is to generate a technical definition (an enumeration of technical processes) of their object of inquiry, which Rheinberger calls the epistemic thing.
For Rheinberger, experimentation in modern science is concerned first with the creation of systems capable of generating novelty; only subsequently do such systems become stabilised as methodologies that can be adopted within new experimental settings. The advantage of this framework is double, on one hand it justifies the type grafting at stake in aesthetic systems, on the other it provides a lens to analyse systems singularly.
III. From a systemic perspective to a situated one: the advantages
of micro-epistemology
In the previous chapter13, we introduced the need to address Forensic Architecture’s practice from a different angle because of the limitations of its current theoretical framework. As we mentioned, Fuller ́s and Weizman’s framework fails to address how their systems work methodologically, implying that what validates them is the expertise of trained experts and their moral-ethical values.
The theoretical framework presented by Fuller and Weizman is inscribed in Science and Technology Studies (STS), post-Latour and Kuhn. STS is a critical field of study grounded in a sociological matrix; it pursues a critique of science and technologies as systems embedded in society and, therefore, in its economic, racial, and gender inequalities. Traditionally, STS looks at the general system: how scientific fields relate to politics and society, and how inequalities manifest within it. Moreover, it pushes for a less Western-centric discourse in science.
STS has provided conceptual tools and analytical frameworks that Forensic Architecture and OSINT practices more broadly have drawn upon to expose structures of oppression and support marginalised communities. In doing so, it has helped illuminate the relationship between hegemonic representations of fact, the mobilisation of scientific authority, and processes of discrimination. Although STS has been fundamental in framing some of the most relevant OSINT practices -for example, Counter-Forensic - as we already mentioned, it does not offer much help if applied to specific cases in which OSINT operates, and this can become extremely problematic in a field that displays a vast array of heterogeneous investigative practices.
The Rheinbergerian framework proposed here operates on a different conceptual ground: what Gaston Bachelard, within the philosophy of science, called micro-epistemology. Micro-epistemology does not understand the history of science as a linear progression. Instead, it attends to themoments in which particular experimental systems and theories emerge. Its scope of analysis is therefore narrower, concentrating on one system at a time. Although Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shift already broke with the idea of linear scientific progress, in both STS and philosophy of science it still situated its focus at a macroscopic level. With Bachelard, the scale changes completely, causing broader social and systemic dimensions to fall into the background.
By leaving out the macro aspects of science, it is possible to focus on the structure of experimental processes, which are, according to Rheinberger, at the core of scientific advancement since the XX century. For a microepistemologist, aesthetic systems, as experimental ones, could be better understood if analysed in their “uniqueness” and in the unpredictable hybridisations between these systems.
Micro-epistemology means concentrating on a particular scientific
momentum and tracing the technological and methodological arrangements that allow scientific novelty to emerge.
For us, looking at aesthetic systems from this perspective entails looking at the development of specific frameworks, the ways in which they become stabilised procedures, and what type of knowledge generation processes they imply.
How can we truly speak of blockchain-native aesthetics?
For a moment, the promise of a new cultural formation derived from a distinctive visual and symbolic vocabulary native to blockchain technologies, cryptographic economies and digital subjectivities seemed possible and desirable. But can we truly speak of blockchain-native aesthetics? Can such aesthetics be meaningfully integrated into the history of art, media theory, or social formation? We propose the term "web3 aesthetics” to interrogate and articulate a theory of art that would operate specifically on NFT markets and link it to the current discussions on digital art.We understand aesthetics not as “decoration,” nor as that which is simply “beautiful,” but as the systematic production and critical analysis of sensation, value, and cultural consensus, as well as the study of the mediums that constitute the narratives and discourses attached to our understanding of the world.
Don’t blame me,
it’s the Universe’s Fault
To begin with, within François Laruelle’s Universe Black, Philosophy is framed as operating under the authority of Light, which assigns position. All that Light can interact with is White. The Real, or the Universe, is Black, meaning Light does not and cannot interact with it: the Universe Black is without position, it is “the opacity that renders the Real invisible.” The Earth and Man, too, are Black. The difference between Black, Black and Black, can only be discerned through their relative (pre)position, Man is on Earth which is in the Universe, Black-on-Black-in-Black. As such, Light participates in producing observable differences that either may or may not have any bearing on the Real, may or may not reflect any structuration at the level of the Real.”
- For any inquiry, we recommend that readers contact the authors directly.
- Carlo Ginzburg, “Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm,” in Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 101–103.
- Joachim Harst, “Virtual Investigations: Transformationen des Indizienparadigmas zwischen Sherlock Holmes und Forensic Architecture,” in Medienkomparatistik 4 (2023): 6–10.
- Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Toward a History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing Proteins
in the Test Tube (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997). - Joachim Harst, “Virtuelle Investigationen: Transformationen des Indizienparadigmas zwischen Sherlock Holmes und Forensic Architecture,” in Medienkomparatistik 4 (2023): 41.
- Eyal Weizman, Forensic Architecture: Violence at the Threshold of Detectability (New York: Zone Books, 2019), 64.
- Ernst Cassirer, Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 3, Phenomenology of Knowledge, trans. Ralph Manheim (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953).
- Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Split and Splice: A Phenomenology of Experimentation (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2023).
- Cassirer, Ernst. The Problem of Knowledge: Philosophy, Science, and History since Hegel. Tradotto da William H. Woglom e Charles W. Hendel. New Hain which human and non-human actors participate in a complex network that is both “sensing” ven: Yale University Press, 1950.
- We are referring to the case study Environmental Racism in the death alley, by Forensic Architecture, 28 June 2021. Link
- Taking from Lorraine Daston & Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, 2007). This type of system operates through what they call "trained judgment" where expertise and interpretive skill are considered the epistemic virtues of this epistemic regime. In other words, a trained judgment regime guarantees the objectivity of these methods.
- Joseph F. Hanna, "The Scope and Limits of Scientwofold: on the one hand, it justifies the type grafting at stake in aesthetic systems; on the other, it provides a lens to analyse systems individuallytific Objectivity," Philosophy of Science 71, no. 3 (2004): 340.
- For any inquiry, we recommend that readers contact the authors directly.