An art project launched four years ago illustrated how scraps of DNA found in public could be turned into eerily lifelike composite sketches and three-dimensional models — now the police appear to be taking that technology in new (and potentially disturbing) direction.

Heather Dewey-Hagborg collected strands of hair, discarded cigarettes, chewing gum and other found materials and worked them into hauntingly realistic masks as part of Stranger Visions in 2012. But her resulting sculptures were at best approximate — DNA can only tell you so much about what a person looks like. Such limitations are not stopping law enforcement agencies, however, from pushing the limits of the technology.

Companies like Parabon NanoLabs that specialize in DNA phenotyping, however, are working with the Department of Defense and other agencies to use similar approaches. Their Snapshot technology references databases that pair genetic information with physical traits. Agencies can thus send in DNA and get back a genetic profile or even a composite sketch.

Used as a means of eliminating suspects from the pool or identifying remains, this technology could be fine. However, since it can’t tell weight, age and other features (even race can be ambiguous), it is also possible that such renderings would mislead investigators — or worse: influence trials in the wrong direction. Photo-realistic images and models have a way of skewing the perceptions of the observer — once seen they are hard to unsee.

“Ancestry becomes a sort of short-cut term for race,” Dewey-Hagborg worries. “When it’s a person reading their own genealogical information, they’re going to look at that in light of what they know about their own personal history. But when it gets into the hands of the police, that all gets thrown out the window, because there is no self-knowing subject there.” Advocates of the technology point out that these is not how they intend it to be used — but still, in comparing it to data gathered from eyewitness accounts or surveillance cameras, they risk going in that direction anyway.

More from the artist about Stranger Visions: she “creates portrait sculptures from analyses of genetic material collected in public places. Working with the traces strangers unwittingly leave behind, Dewey-Hagborg calls attention to the developing technology of forensic DNA phenotyping and the potential for a culture of biological surveillance. Designed as an exploratory project based on emerging science, the forecast of Stranger Visions has proved prescient.”

In the early 2000s, the city of Glasgow, Scotland, changed over to blue street lighting in an effort to improve the appearance of the city, but areas with the newly blue lights saw an unexpected and disproportionate decrease in crime.

No one could say for sure whether there was a causal correlation, but half a world away another city followed suit – Nara, Japan, experimentally began turning their street lamps blue. They also saw a decrease in crime.

In  the years that followed, similar deployments were tested, including the addition of over 150 blue lights to an expressway near Tokyo, aimed at reducing accidents.

The Keihin Electric Express Railway Co. even changed the color of eight lights on the ends of platforms at Gumyoji Station in Yokohama, Japan, to curb track-jumping suicides. A subsequent report showed that in the years following, the station saw no suicide attempts (after previously being the site of multiple suicides per year).

There are a number of theories about why the blue light could be causing a decrease in criminal behavior.

Some argue the association of blue with police presence, except: Japanese police use mostly red lights.

Another theory posits that blue light has a calming effect, feeling more pleasant than orange or red. Indeed, studies have shown that blue lights (associated with calm waters and open skies) can reduce stress responses in fish and be used to treat SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) in humans.

Of course, it is also possible that the new colored lights are simply different and unfamiliar enough to cause people to feel awkward engaging in illicit or dangerous behavior where they are present. And if that is the case, changing all the public lights in the world to blue might be at best temporary fix, working until people get used to the new blue lighting. Experts have warned not to read too much into the effect, regardless, since the causal mechanism or connection has not yet been definitively determined.

Take a break and enter the world of urban villains, who see and seek out hidden opportunities in built environments, forever on the lookout for architectural workarounds and infrastructural escape routes.

In his latest book, A Burglar’s Guide to the City, architecture expert Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG explores everyday spaces through the lens of criminals and criminologists, unearthing uncanny stories at the intersection of buildings and crime.

His research led the author down elevator shafts, into panic rooms and through buried vaults; the resulting tales are a combination of true-crime pieces and architectural philosophy, equal parts entertaining and educational.

From the perspective of perpetrators, consider the strange case of Jeffrey Manchester, AKA Roofman, a burglar responsible for dozens of break-ins and hold-ups, primarily at fast-food joints. His signature strategy was to drop down into establishments from above, catching workers and managers unawares. This approach worked precisely because of an architectural flaw in the system: nearly identical structures used by chains make each theft quite like the last, so each incursion doubled as a practice round for the next.

In another architectural twist, when he was finally captured, Roofman’s secret lair turned out to be a customized void between a Toys”R”Us store and an adjacent abandoned Circuit City. He outfitted his abode with working plumbing and electricity, using baby monitors from the Toys”R”Us to monitor employee activity.

From the other side of the law, enforcement officials and criminal investigators have likewise fascinating tales to tell, including the UK police practice of creating “capture rooms.” The cops reverse-engineer ideal targets for breaking and entering, then fill a selected vacant house with tempting electronics and other expensive merchandise, then use it to capture thieves breaking an entering on tape.

Points of entry (doors and windows) as well as the goods strewn throughout the fake homes (such as TVs and video cameras). These are sprayed with a special tracer chemical, helping police confirm with clear physical evidence that suspects were on the premises. Once caught, the would-be burglars are shown videos of their exploits, much like stars on some twisted reality television show.

And these are just two teaser examples; the book is filled with many more, with subjects ranging from urban guerrilla warfare strategies to the work of theory-minded architects like Bernard Tschumi.

The real magic of Manaugh’s work is in the subtle way it reshapes the reader’s understanding of the built world, causing you to look at architecture with a criminal mindset. Suddenly, trap doors, abandoned shafts, sewer systems, escape ladders, and other oft-overlooked features take on new meaning. The true stories that serve as foils for this exploration are also fully engaging in their own right, real tales genuinely stranger than (and often the basis for) fictional crime dramas.

Readers who enjoy this book will also want to pick up a copy of BLDGBLOG: The Book, a collection of fascinating “architectural conjecture, urban speculation and landscape futures,” a great compilation of stories that expand on Manaugh’s past articles. 

A former haven for Nazi war criminals, child molesters and their sympathizers, Villa Baviera is now a bizarrely whitewashed German-themed tourist attraction tucked into Chile’s Andean foothills. Established in 1961, the cult compound formerly known as Colonia Dignidad (Dignity Colony) hosted infamous concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele, known as the ‘Angel of Death,’ and served as a special torture center and illegal arms cache. Now you can drink beer and watch people stomp around in lederhosen as if none of those terrible things ever happened.

The insensitive nature of the transition of the 54-square-mile compound’s use is just the beginning, considering that an investigation in the ‘90s found evidence of decades of child abuse, torture and mysterious disappearances. Founder Paul Schäfer, a fugitive wanted in Germany for pedophilia, served as the authoritarian leader of 300 residents. Children were separated from their parents and siblings, all media from the outside world was banned, and sex was forbidden without Schäfer’s approval.

In the ‘70s, dictator Augusto Pinochet made use of the compound to detain political dissidents. Schäfer was finally apprehended in 1997 and died in prison in 2010, and though 20 colony elders were convicted of aiding him in his abuses, the roughly 120 remaining residents were allowed to keep the property and do what they wanted with it, which was to turn it into a money-maker. Rather than making it a memorial to the Holocaust or the crimes that were carried out on the compound, they decided everybody would rather feign collective amnesia.

The result is a 21-room hotel, swimming pool, playgrounds, wedding tents and restaurants along with all the German food and beer you can consume. A guard tower once used to spot escapees still looks out over the property, and the perimeter is still edged with barbed wire fencing, but hey, those hot tubs will help you relax away the memories of the atrocities committed there, right?

Catch more on the history of this twisted tourist attraction at Bloomberg and in the upcoming Hollywood film ‘Colonia’, starring Emma Watson.

Murdered gangsters, car crashes and four-alarm fires are nearly forgotten in the peaceful present day, but this photo series reminds us that the past is not so far away. Photographer Marc A. Hermann, a historian with the New York Press Photographers Association, lays old New York City crime scene photos on top of their present-day locations for dramatic juxtapositions of time period and mood.

Warning: these are real crime scene photos, and aren’t for the faint of heart. The very recently deceased are seen cradled in the arms of their loved ones, or sprawled out on the floor. The top photo depicts a distraught woman who climbed onto the ledge of her building; the second shows the Church of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary aflame.

The demise of gangsters Salvatore ‘Sammy’ Santoro and Frankie Yale can be seen after a shooting and a car crash, respectively. A woman hides her face in mourning of her sister in front of the ruins of a car. Firefighters battle a blaze at the Elkins Paper & Twine Co. that claimed the lives of six people.

In each photograph, the black-and-white historical image contrasts sharply with the modernized full-color setting. Tourists stroll past the scenes of some of the city’s most tragic disasters, completely unaware. The message seems to be that life goes on, but the ghostly imprints of those incidents remain. See the full series at New York Daily News.