Solaris is the fictional archive of a state surveillance program designed to identify civilians at risk of heatstroke on the beaches of Salvador, Brazil.

Originally presented as a public health tool, Solaris repurposed obsolete maritime sensors, combining facial recognition with live thermography processed on remote servers. It mostly tracked beachgoers and informal vendors, using social vulnerability as a risk proxy.

Blinded by intense solar radiation, its hardware often failed to read human heat within the thermal landscape, exposing the ghosts of a tropical panopticon where informational entropy, machine surveillance, and climate crisis converge.

In Solaris, neither sensors nor servers withstood the heat.

Bodies in the sand did.

Learn more here