MOBILE PUBLICS

Conference Themes

USM08: Mobile Publics explores a range of new pressures and possibilities that are generated as city life is transformed by digital technology. Large screen precincts offer dynamic examples of emergent relations between media, architecture and urban space, between art and everyday life, between local and global cultures. As nodes in expanded digital networks, large urban screens point towards the reconstruction of the ‘local’ as an open rather than a bounded territory. They not only display diverse streams of digital content, but they form responsive and interactive surfaces which highlight a new role for art in contemporary culture. As the forum for the public display of user-generated content, large urban screens ask us to rethink our definition of the ‘public sphere’. Through the production of experimental interfaces, these public screens have the potential—as yet largely untapped— for the active construction of different, heterogeneous ‘publics’. Large urban screens herald new modes of transnational cultural exchange, and the possibility of a ‘global public sphere’ which remains embedded in particular spaces and connected to local concerns.

The conference will involve a range of keynote presentations as well as panel discussions addressing the following themes:

1. Art, Technology and Public Space
This session focuses on contemporary projects and developments using interactive art in public space. It is increasingly clear that the dissemination of contemporary visual culture is no longer confined to traditional art institutions. Aesthetic content exists simultaneously across diverse sites and is increasingly migrating to the streets. This involves the capacity for alternative forms of visual culture and interactive art works deployed in public space to generate and sustain new and diverse publics. Many contemporary artists no longer see screens simply as surfaces that capture attention by means of visual and narrative content, but as sites for the production of new forms of public relationships, a new public sphere mediating physical and electronic space. How can public art play a critical role in the context of publicity-soaked cultures? What forms of interactivity will contribute to a genuine revitalization of public space? By exploring the dynamic relationship between artists, architects, urban planners and theorists in re-thinking urban space, we aim to reveal a rich inventory of cultural practices that can transform social relationships in public space.

2. Urban Screens and Public Space Broadcasting: A New Public Sphere?
This session will address current and future directions in the interconnected media infrastructure of urban space: large screens, networked information kiosks, mobile media, wireless networks, etc. One of the features distinguishing new media platforms from older forms is their distinctive spatial disposition. Radio and television were largely consumed at home. Large urban screens are now frequently embedded in streets and city squares while personal mobile devices such as phones and mp3 players are routinely used while traversing public space. While these developments are contributing to novel spatialisation of the social life of contemporary cities, they do not happen by magic. This panel will examine critical issues affecting the roll-out and uptake of new media platforms including the formation of standards, protocols for sharing content and connecting technology, and models of policy and funding.

3. Strategies for Urban Regeneration
On the one hand, large urban screens are highly specific and local. They are material infrastructures erected on particular sites, and have to be articulated with existing urban infrastructure. They have to cater for the needs, desires and patterns of mobility of specific urban populations. Their development is often the result of particular strategic alignments between different sectors such as city councils, arts institutions, hardware and software producers, businesses and content providers. On the other hand, the proliferation of large screens in cities all around the world testifies to the increasing globalization of cities and culture. It exemplifies the emergence of standardized technological infrastructures which are often associated with anxieties about ‘loss of place’. How can these tensions be productively negotiated? What is an appropriate model for a ‘rich’ public space in contemporary cities? What sort of partnerships between institutions contribute to the formation of ‘creative cities’? What role can large screen precincts and media density play in urban development or regeneration projects?

4. Cross-Cultural Public Networks
How might different publics be actively constructed in the present, at a moment when both the social space of the city and the cultural boundaries of the nation-state have become more complex, porous and uncertain? How might large urban screen installations embedded in specific urban precincts contribute to rethinking the relation between local places and global culture? What models of collaboration might enable a shift beyond competition between individual cities battling to become ‘cultural hubs’?  How might the aspirations of civil society be extended to a global scale?