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Symposium:
- ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art
- More presentations from ISEA2011:
Session Title:
- The Art of Software Cities
Presentation Title:
- Untitled
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
Chair Persons: Christian Ulrik Andersen & Søren Pold
Presenters: Saul Albert, Seda Gürses & Cretien van CampenThe purpose of the panel is to investigate the aesthetic and cultural implications of a situation where new interfaces appear in public urban space (networked, mobile, ubiquitous, etc.). The urban media theorist Scott McQuire argues that with this development, ‘the media event’ is in the process of returning to the public urban domain. The main question is in what way? Does digital media merely provide new forms and new public spectacles in the city, or does it also propagate public activity? If so, what kinds of activity? In the panel we propose to see this development of public interfaces as an introduction of not just media but also software into the city. Today’s media cities are software cities. A distinct characteristic is that the representations of media do not just imply new aesthetic forms and representations but are always connected to underlying computational processes that change the complex life forms of the city. With a focus on new forms of creative production panelists will present their take on how relations between public and private realms are affected and how alternative uses and relations around public interfaces appear in software cities. The following statements operate as points of departure:
- Whilst experimentation and developments in the culture of free software reflects emergent and self-organizing public actions, how can we extend free software principles into software cities?
- Does the concept of a ‘software city’ offer a way of further examining the cultural regeneration agenda and public art?
- What is the interrelationship between software and surveillance in software cities?
- Does the software city provide new understandings of the relationship between creative production and the economy?
- How does the possible dissolution of the public and private spheres relate to bio politics and contemporary forms of power?
The panel emerges from ongoing research around interface criticism at Digital Aesthetics Research Center and Center for Digital Urban Living, Aarhus University, Denmark.