Remaking the Urban
This article appears in theOxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aestheticsedited by John Richardson, Claudia Gorbman, and Carol Vernallis. This chapter explores the creation of an urban sonic aesthetic through a critical analysis of Apple iPod use. Based on original ethnographic material, it chapter explores the differing audiovisual ways in which urban space is mediated through communication technologies like the Apple iPod. It divides the experience of urban space into Fordist aesthetics and hyper-post-Fordist aesthetics and strategies and situates these aesthetic “moments” within a critical analysis informed by the work of a range of urban and critical theorists. In doing so, the chapter re-evaluates the meaning of an everyday audiovisual aesthetic that challenges accepted explanations of urban aesthetic experience, such as flânerie and the cosmopolitan subject that is located in the works of Auge, Benjamin, Sennett, Simmel, and others.