Digital Decoys: An Architectural Index of Deceptions

By Constance Vale and The Factory of Smoke & Mirrors

Digital Decoys examines the social and political implications of the decoys that have emerged in the age of imaging and the new opportunities they create for architects to challenge existing hierarchies and systems of power through agency, expressions of identity, and collaborative resistance within digital platforms.

Contemporary representations are the products of a wide range of tools and
techniques, engaged in ever more complex mediational exchanges, and have
markedly different qualities than their antecedents. That is, architecture's
mediations today are decoys of past modes of representation.

Digital decoys exist as dualities of data and picture, image and object,
architects' working space and immersive worlds. These composites of image
and object are not neutral vehicles and understanding and controlling their
forces is a crucial task for architects today. Decoys are inherently political
enterprises that can mask and carry into built form ecological, economic,
social, and political violence embedded in digital media and culture.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1638400466
• ISBN13: 9781638400462
• Release Date: June 2026
• Publisher: Actar
• Length: 280 Pages