This essay accompanies the CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE project, an artistic research and production residency by Jamie Allen and David Gauthier that took place as part of the lead-up to the transmediale 2014 festival, afterglow, hosted both by transmediale and the Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik (ZKU), Berlin. The project spanned the autumn of 2013, and received the gracious support of the Canada Council of the Arts and the Danish Arts Council.