Where conceptual art once treated the image as a site of meaning, inquiry now shifts to the infrastructures that make perception possible. Color overlays are not decoration, they are instructions, revealing systems otherwise invisible: signaling protocols, mapping conventions, behavioral logics.

From Weegee’s crime scenes to Debord’s dérives, Zorn’s rule-based improvisation, and Nabuurs&VanDoorn’s performative mapping, there is a continuous fascination with the city as a site of unpredictability, improvisation, and layered narratives. In all these works, “grasping” the city in its entirety is impossible; the point is to navigate, respond, and engage with what emerges—turning maps, images, and scores into living, evolving experiences.

Mapping the City Through Affective Data: Nabuurs&VanDoorn transform urban experience into color-coded, perceptual maps that reveal hidden social, cultural, and emotional dynamics, connecting Dutch artistic traditions to contemporary city life.