Technical Binocularity

TBD

In 2025, a research team proposed the presence of large-scale subsurface structures beneath the Giza pyramids. The proposed structure is described as a system of six vertically oriented helical voids—reportedly extending to depths of nearly 2,000 feet. The team, led by Filippo Biondi and Corrado Malanga, based its claims on Doppler-based tomography derived from satellite data. [1] These claims rely on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), which operates through electromagnetic signals transmitted from satellites in low Earth orbit and records subtle variations in surface response. Rather than directly imaging underground space, the researchers interpret micro-vibrational data through Doppler tomography, computationally reconstructing hypothetical internal geometries. These interpretations have led to speculative suggestions that an “underground city” may lie beneath the pyramids, concealed for over 4,500 years. However, while similar sensing approaches have been applied in contexts such as volcanic monitoring, their translation to complex, heterogeneous stone structures remain highly uncertain. As a result, these claims have been widely questioned and lack validation within established archaeological and geophysical scholarship. [2]

Similarly, previously unknown internal space within the Great Pyramid of Giza has been more rigorously confirmed through advanced technical sensing. [3] A hidden corridor located above the northern entrance was verified by a research team through a combination of non-destructive testing (NDT) techniques, including ground-penetrating radar (GPR), ultrasonic testing (UST), and electrical resistivity tomography (ERT). These methods were used alongside earlier muon imaging and were ultimately corroborated through direct endoscopic observation, providing converging lines of empirical evidence. Unlike the speculative interpretations derived from SAR-based modeling, this discovery is grounded in reproducible measurement and cross-validated sensing technologies.

Both cases surrounding the Giza pyramids can be understood as a dispute over the role of the technical sensorium in the production of spatial knowledge. Regardless of whether the subsurface structures are empirically verified or remain speculative, the spatial information perceived through these technologies has already begun to create a fissure within human perception. This raises a fundamental question: To what extent can technological mediation be trusted in the production of spatial knowledge?

A similar epistemological shift can be traced back to the invention of the telescope, before the emergence of contemporary technical sensorium. In the work of Galileo Galilei, the telescope first revealed phenomena that the human eye could not perceive directly. [4] It was not simply an auxiliary device that extended vision, but an instrument that challenged the limits of the human sensorium itself. More fundamentally, the telescope did not simply enhance vision; it reconstituted the sensorium. By translating distant and indistinct phenomena into measurable and observable data, it destabilized the traditional relationship between vision and touch, which classical epistemology had relied upon. What could be seen was no longer what could be directly experienced, but what could be reconstructed through an optical apparatus and interpreted within a theoretical framework.

This transformation was further articulated in the optical theories of Johannes Kepler, where vision began to be understood as a process mediated by instruments and images rather than a direct apprehension of truth. [5] As Svetlana Alpers suggests in The Art of Describing, perception is always entangled with its own conditions of representation, where sensory knowledge is inseparable from forms of visual deception. [6]

Returning to the present, the controversy surrounding the unverified “underground city” beneath the pyramids exemplifies this condition. The technical sensorium attempts to translate data into forms legible to human perception, yet at the same time introduces the risk of misinterpretation. A dilemma thus emerges: technology expands the limits of perception while simultaneously producing uncertainties that challenge the stability of spatial knowledge. In this sense, space is no longer something that exists solely within human binocular vision perception, but also something that is constructed through data in media—what may be understood as technical binocularity.

As a result, an important question is raised: What is architecture after mediation? Or, in other words, should we understand that the misunderstood or generated space produced by the technical sensorium has already formed a new kind of space—one that can be perceived by the human sensorium as another reality after mediation? From this perspective, the relationship between physical space and space in media has been critically reversed. We may need to reconsider the predominant authority of physical reality and instead confront a new technical sensorium that enables us to “see” a different world. We are now perceiving space through an “unreliable telescope”—one that has been extended into cellphones, computers, and the internet.

What exists in physical space seems less important today. As suggested by the proposal of the research team led by Filippo Biondi, excavation beneath the Giza pyramids would be required to verify the claims of underground cities. Yet the absence of such verification reveals a paradoxical situation: physical space may no longer serve as the primary epistemic ground of validation. Instead, we increasingly perceive space through media—not as it is, but as it is constructed for us to see.

1. Filippo Biondi and Corrado Malanga, “Synthetic Aperture Radar Doppler Tomography Reveals Details of Undiscovered High-Resolution Internal Structure of the Great Pyramid of Giza”, arXiv preprint, 2022.

2. “Claims regarding deep subsurface structures beneath the Giza pyramids, including reported depths of approximately 600 meters, are based on secondary interpretations and media reports rather than peer-reviewed archaeological evidence”, see AFP Fact Check, “No Evidence of Vast Underground City beneath Egypt’s Pyramids”, 2025.

3. T. Schumacher et al., “Confirmation of the ScanPyramids North Face Corridor in the Great Pyramid of Giza Using Multi-Modal Image Fusion from Three Non-Destructive Testing Techniques”, Scientific Reports 15 (2025): 9275.

4. Galileo Galilei, Sidereus Nuncius, or The Sidereal Messenger, trans. Albert Van Helden (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989 [1610]).

5. Johannes Kepler, Optics: Paralipomena to Witelo and Optical Part of Astronomy, trans. William H. Donahue (Santa Fe, NM: Green Lion Press, 2000 [1604]).

6. Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).