Panel Statement

Panel: Beyond Locative: Media Arts after the Spatial Turn

As our cities are be­com­ing dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal hy­brids, ob­servers have sketched techno-dystopian sce­nar­ios in which urban tech­nolo­gies would in­duce ‘fric­tion­less’ con­sump­tion, quasi-mil­i­tary con­trol, and so­cial cap­su­lar­iza­tion of city life. Si­mul­ta­ne­ously, artis­tic in­ter­ven­tions seek to re­claim the urban en­vi­ron­ment through vi­su­al­iza­tions, nar­ra­tives and by spurring chance en­coun­ters, me­di­ated through these same tech­nolo­gies. Still one can­not es­cape the sense that these dif­fer­ent views and prac­tices share an ide­al­ized mythol­ogy of urban life. How can thinkers and mak­ers come up with af­fir­ma­tive per­spec­tives on the po­ten­tial of lo­ca­tion-based urban tech­nolo­gies, in­stead of de­part­ing from an op­po­si­tional re­flex that longs back to an urban par­adise lost?

• Michiel de Lange (1976) is a part-time Lec­turer in New Media Stud­ies, De­part­ment of Media and Cul­ture Stud­ies, Utrecht Uni­ver­sity (NL); co-founder of The Mo­bile City, a plat­form for the study of new media and ur­ban­ism; and ad­vi­sor e-cul­ture at the Me­di­a­fonds. In 2010 Michiel fin­ished his PhD at the Eras­mus Uni­ver­sity of Rot­ter­dam (Department of Phi­los­o­phy), with a dis­ser­ta­tion called Mov­ing Cir­cles, mo­bile media and play­ful iden­ti­ties (2010).