Walk down almost any hotel corridor, subway or train station and all underground walkway in Japan, and you’ll notice them: small, round, cherry-red domes protruding from the walls, glowing with a soft, slightly ominous light.

Known formally as kasai hōchiki hyōjitō (火災報知器表示灯) – fire alarm position indicator lights – they look less like standard safety lights than a single retro-futuristic mechanical eye.

Their job is simple: marking the location of manual call points and firefighting equipment.

Visually, to me, they carry an intense, HAL 9000-esque association. It is impossible to walk past one without feeling the faint, uneasy sense that Hal  himself is quietly looking at you, waiting for to say: ”Dave, I can’t do that” or, ”I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.”