[Image Left: Anthony Townsend] “[I]t should be clear that telepathy is historically linked to numerous other tele-phenomena: it is part of the establishment of tele-culture in general. It is necessarily related to other nineteenth-century forms of communication from a distance through new and often invisible channels, including the railway, telegraphy, photography, the telephone and the gramophone. It is this part of a culture which is still in the process of being articulated, and in this respect perhaps the question “Do you believe in telepathy?” need not be regarded as categorically or essentially distinguishable from questions such as “Do you believe in the telephone?” or “Do you believe in television?” Continue reading

SURVIVALL, ‘Sur-viv-all’, is a word which reflects the 3 languages used during the project, which formed part of Andre Lemos’ sabbatical research at University of Alberta - English, French and Portuguese. The joint interest of the artists was to reflect on the relationship between the virtual territories of cyberspace, abstract representations of our worlds and the material conditions of life. In this case, the videos collected along the way show not only suburbia in winter snow but the blanket of private wifi signals, both closed and open which were detected at the beginning and end of each ‘letter’. Continue reading

[Image: Operation Urban Terrain (OUT): 2004-6 by Anne Marie Schleiner] “Due to its marginal existence in relation to the oppressive reality of work, play is often regarded as fictitious. But the work of the Situationists is precisely the preparation of ludic possibilities to come.” Guy Debord (Contribution to Situationist Definition of Play, Internationale Situationniste #1, June 1958)

In recent years, commentators on game culture and ludology have undertaken the task of analyzing and structuring play. Such work has been strongly influenced by the Dutch researcher Johan Huizinga’s 1938 study of play, Homo Ludens and Roger Callois’s later structuralist elaborations of Huizinga’s research. Continue reading

DRAIN - CALL FOR ENTRIES: In 1955, Guy Debord described psychogeography as “the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.” Debord’s psychogeographical map The Naked City (1957) challenged traditional ideas of mapping relating to scale, location, and fixity, and drew on the work of urban social geographer Paul-Henri Chombart de Lauwe’s concept of the city as a conglomeration of distinct quarters, each with its own special function, class divisions, and “physiognomy,” which linked the idea of the urban plan to the body. An important strategy of the pyschogeographical was the dérive, “a technique of transient passage through varied ambiences”. Continue reading

We are pleased to announce the release of Liminalities 4.1, a special expanded-length issue on the theme of The City, guest-edited by Daniel Makagon of DePaul University. This issue includes critical essays, ethnographies, videos, and performance texts. Table of Contents:

I Love Livin’ in the City by Daniel Makagon :: Places and Stages: Narrating and Performing the City in Milan, Italy by Cristina Moretti :: Finders Keepers: Performing the Street, the Gallery and the Spaces In-between by Luke Dickens :: Making Sense of the City: Place, Space, and Rhetoric in Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square by erin daina mcclellan :: Continue reading

Call For Artists: Contemporary Flânerie: Reconfiguring Cities :: Deadline: March 31, 2008.

In Modernity, the Flaneur, while strolling around his streets, participated in the depiction of the changing city, playing a simultaneously active and detached role. The Flaneur and his city maintained a symbiotic relationship, where one helped (re) define the other. In view of current trends in globalization, immigration and technology (i.e., Web 2.0), one’s positioning to one location is more fluid than ever before. Continue reading

Hidden Histories :: Launch: March 14, 2008; 11:00 am - open ended :: The walk begins in and around the proposed ‘Cultural Quarter’ on Above Bar Street and the Civic Centre complex. You can experience the walk 24 hours a day, 7 days a week through any FM radio receiver or mobile phone with radio capacity. Route maps and radio units can be hired from Southampton’s Tourist Information Centre from March 17. A limited number of or radios will be available for borrowing. Please bring a portable radio or an FM enabled mobile phone.

The Solent Centre for Architecture + Design, in partnership with London based media art innovators Hive Networks and artist Armin Medosch, have been working with Southampton City Council’s Oral History Unit on Hidden Histories, a unique project that turns the city itself into a giant outdoor gallery. Continue reading

I’ve finally managed to find the time to read Mike Crang and Stephen Graham’s recent paper, Sentient Cities: Ambient intelligence and the politics of urban space — and it’s really good!

As I’ve said many times, Graham’s work on networked urbanism is superb, and Crang’s work on space, culture and ethnography is also exemplary. Compared to American accounts that draw on cybernetics and systems-thinking in architecture and urban planning (think Bill Mitchell, Malcolm McCullough, etc.) I find the British cultural geography approach (following Nigel Thrift, Rob Kitchin and Martin Dodge) far better attuned to the variety and complexity of everyday lived experience, and the connections between place and identity (i.e. power) over time. Continue reading

Dislocate 08: International Festival for Art, Technology and Locality :: September 2008 :: Yokohama, Japan :: Call for Proposals - Deadline: April 14, 2008.

Dislocate questions our notions of place and location in the face of perpetual motion through multifaceted environments. The velocity of this passage is accelerated through new technologies, but as a result how does this impact upon our encounter with place and our attempt to communicate this to elsewhere? Through an exhibition, symposium and workshop series Dislocate will examine this encounter and communication, taking a journey through surrounding spaces and exploring our transient connections. Continue reading

Glisse Continue reading