scholarly journals Massive media: theories and practices of large-scale projections and public data visualizations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Robert Colangelo
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Data Visualization ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Information Architecture ◽  
Digital Information ◽  
Moving Image ◽  
Public Data

This dissertation describes, historicizes, theorizes, and deploys “massive media,” an emerging subset of technical assemblages that include large outdoor projections, programmable architectural façades, and urban screens. Massive media are massive in their size and subsequent visibility, but are also an agglomeration of media in their expressive screen and cinema-like qualities and their associated audio, interactive, and network capabilities. This dissertation finds that massive media enable and necessitate the development of new practices of expanded cinema, public data visualization, and new media art and curation that blend the logics of urban space, monumentality, and the public sphere with the aesthetics and affordances of digital information and the moving image to support a more participatory public culture in which we identify and engage with collective presence, memory, and action through information, architecture, and the moving image. Through historical research, case studies, conversations with cultural producers, participant observation, and creation-as-research projects, large-scale public projections are shown to represent a new monumentality that can be better understood and evaluated using analytical tools from cinema studies, namely superimposition, montage, and apparatus/dispositif. Low-resolution LED façades, while sharing some of the functional and theoretical characteristics of projection, are shown to uniquely support an emerging practice of public data visualization and represent a more consistent embodiment of a hybrid and relational public sphere through a tighter coupling of information, architecture, and context. Programmable architectural façades, more than projections, embody the development of supermodernism in architecture where data-rich public spaces of identity, congregation, and contestation seek and find appropriate and consistent outlets in highly visible spatial assemblages of architecture and media. Finally, a curatorial approach to massive media is crucial in order to create suitable spaces and opportunities for the development of massive media as a legitimate art form. This requires the sustained provision of technical support and coordination as well as an ongoing negotiation with corporate, institutional, and civic owners and operators. While massive media exists primarily as a highly commercialized phenomenon, it can also be pressed into service, through coordinated curatorial and artistic efforts, to critique or co-opt commercialization, and to re-envision the role of urban media environments in shaping collective identity, historical consciousness, and public display culture.

scholarly journals Massive media: theories and practices of large-scale projections and public data visualizations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Robert Colangelo
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Data Visualization ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Information Architecture ◽  
Digital Information ◽  
Moving Image ◽  
Public Data

This dissertation describes, historicizes, theorizes, and deploys “massive media,” an emerging subset of technical assemblages that include large outdoor projections, programmable architectural façades, and urban screens. Massive media are massive in their size and subsequent visibility, but are also an agglomeration of media in their expressive screen and cinema-like qualities and their associated audio, interactive, and network capabilities. This dissertation finds that massive media enable and necessitate the development of new practices of expanded cinema, public data visualization, and new media art and curation that blend the logics of urban space, monumentality, and the public sphere with the aesthetics and affordances of digital information and the moving image to support a more participatory public culture in which we identify and engage with collective presence, memory, and action through information, architecture, and the moving image. Through historical research, case studies, conversations with cultural producers, participant observation, and creation-as-research projects, large-scale public projections are shown to represent a new monumentality that can be better understood and evaluated using analytical tools from cinema studies, namely superimposition, montage, and apparatus/dispositif. Low-resolution LED façades, while sharing some of the functional and theoretical characteristics of projection, are shown to uniquely support an emerging practice of public data visualization and represent a more consistent embodiment of a hybrid and relational public sphere through a tighter coupling of information, architecture, and context. Programmable architectural façades, more than projections, embody the development of supermodernism in architecture where data-rich public spaces of identity, congregation, and contestation seek and find appropriate and consistent outlets in highly visible spatial assemblages of architecture and media. Finally, a curatorial approach to massive media is crucial in order to create suitable spaces and opportunities for the development of massive media as a legitimate art form. This requires the sustained provision of technical support and coordination as well as an ongoing negotiation with corporate, institutional, and civic owners and operators. While massive media exists primarily as a highly commercialized phenomenon, it can also be pressed into service, through coordinated curatorial and artistic efforts, to critique or co-opt commercialization, and to re-envision the role of urban media environments in shaping collective identity, historical consciousness, and public display culture.

Introducing Massive Media

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dave Colangelo
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Digital Information ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
The Public ◽  
Empire State Building ◽  
The Social ◽  
Surrounding Space ◽  
The Public Sphere

This chapter introduces the concept of massive media, a term used to describe the emergence of large-scale public projections, urban screens, and led façades such as the illuminated tip of the Empire State Building. These technologies and the social and technical processes of image circulation and engagement that surround them essentially transform buildings into screens. This chapter also introduces theoretical concepts surrounding space, media, cinema, monumentality, and architecture in order to provide a framework for the analysis of the emergence of the building as screen. These concepts are key axes upon which the ongoing transformations of the public sphere revolve. Subsequent chapters are introduced in which massive media is probed, in case studies and creation-as-research projects, for its ability to enable new critical and creative practices of expanded cinema, public data visualisation, and installation art and curation that blend the logics of urban space, monumentality, and the public sphere with the aesthetics and affordances of digital information and the moving image.

Sociability on Location Based Mobile Games: An Ethnographic Research on Pokémon Go and Ingress in Istanbul

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-120
Author(s):  
Cemile Tokgöz ◽  
Burak Polat
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Digital Information ◽  
Mobile Games ◽  
Pokémon Go

Abstract Physical space has become intertwined with digital information with the escalatory development of information and communication technologies such as ubiquitous computing, mobile and wearable devices, GPS technology, wireless networks, smart city applications and augmented reality. The relationship between urban space and location-based technology has transformed everyday life practices; and one of these life practices is playing game. Location based mobile games (LBMGs) are being played on streets and provide interaction with urban environments. Mobile devices become the interface between the player and urban space, and players experience the urban through the game narrative. Nowadays, the most popular LBMGs are Ingress and Pokémon Go. Although the both games were created by the same company and configured on the same map, they arouse different effects. LBMGs have a great potential to shape gaming experiences thus researching different effects of Ingress and Pokémon Go hold an academic importance. The difference between these two games can only be revealed by participating in game communities and conducting a qualitative research. Because of that, this study is built on an ethnographic research about Ingress and Pokémon Go; and the results of the research revealed the importance of sociability. In this study, firstly, LBMGs are defined and the influences of these games on everyday life are discussed. Secondly, the differences and similarities are examined between Ingress and Pokémon Go according to the analysis obtained from participant observation and in-depth interviews. Finally, the importance of sociability is emphasized and foresights are provided in the light of research results to contribute to the game studies.

Collective Identity in the Virtual Islamic Public Sphere

2010 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 229-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammed el-Nawawy ◽  
Sahar Khamis
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Collective Identity

Sex in the City that Peter Built: The Demimonde and Sociability in Mid-Eighteenth Century St. Petersburg

Slavic Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 907-930
Author(s):  
Igor Fedyukin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Associational Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The City

This article uses the materials of the Drezdensha affair, a large-scale investigation of “indecency” in St. Petersburg in 1750, to explore unofficial sociability among the Imperial elite, and to map out the institutional, social, and economic dimensions of the post-Petrine “sexual underworld.” Sociability and, ultimately, the public sphere in eighteenth century Russia are usually associated with loftier practices, with joining the ranks of the reading public, reflecting on the public good, and generally, becoming more civil and polite. Yet, it is the privately-run, commercially-oriented, and sexually-charged “parties” at the focus of this article that arguably served as a “training ground” for developing the habits of sociability. The world of these “parties” provides a missing link between the debauchery and carousing of Peter I's era and the more polite formats of associational life in the late eighteenth century, as well as the historical context for reflections on morality, sexual licentiousness, foppery, and the excesses of “westernization.”

Seeing Justice

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Angela Bock
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
The Way

Seeing Justice examines the way criminal justice in the United States is presented in visual media by focusing on the grounded practices of visual journalists in relationship with law enforcement. The book extends the concept of embodied gatekeeping, the corporeal and discursive practices connected to controlling visual media production and the complex ways social actors struggle over the construction of visual messages. Based on research that includes participant observation, extended interviews, and critical discourse analysis, the book provides a detailed examination of the way these practices shape media constructions and the way digitization is altering the relationships between media, citizens, and the criminal justice system. The project looks at contemporary cases that made the headlines through a theoretical lens based on the work of Michel Foucault, Walter Fisher, Stuart Hall, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Nick Couldry, and Roland Barthes. Its cases reveal the way powerful interests are able to shape representations of justice in ways that serve their purposes, occasionally at the expense of marginalized groups. Based on cases ranging from the last US public hanging to the proliferation of “Karen-shaming” videos, this monograph offers three observations. First, visual journalism’s physicality increases its reliance on those in power, making it easy for officials in the criminal justice system to shape its image. Second, image indexicality, even while it is subject to narrative negation, remains an essential affordance in the public sphere. Finally, participation in this visual public sphere must be considered as an essential human capability if not a human right.

What determines a boundary for navigating a complex street network: evidence from London taxi drivers

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Eva-Maria Griesbauer ◽  
Ed Manley ◽  
Daniel McNamee ◽  
Jeremy Morley ◽  
Hugo Spiers
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Route Planning ◽  
Taxi Drivers ◽  
Street Networks ◽  
Planning Models ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Efficient Planning ◽  
Regent's Park ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract Spatial boundaries play an important role in defining spaces, structuring memory and supporting planning during navigation. Recent models of hierarchical route planning use boundaries to plan efficiently first across regions and then within regions. However, it remains unclear which structures (e.g. parks, rivers, major streets, etc.) will form salient boundaries in real-world cities. This study tested licensed London taxi drivers, who are unique in their ability to navigate London flexibly without physical navigation aids. They were asked to indicate streets they considered as boundaries for London districts or dividing areas. It was found that agreement on boundary streets varied considerably, from some boundaries providing almost no consensus to some boundaries consistently noted as boundaries. Examining the properties of the streets revealed that a key factor in the consistent boundaries was the near rectilinear nature of the designated region (e.g. Mayfair and Soho) and the distinctiveness of parks (e.g. Regent's Park). Surprisingly, the River Thames was not consistently considered as a boundary. These findings provide insight into types of environmental features that lead to the perception of explicit boundaries in large-scale urban space. Because route planning models assume that boundaries are used to segregate the space for efficient planning, these results help make predictions of the likely planning demands of different routes in such complex large-scale street networks. Such predictions could be used to highlight information used for navigation guidance applications to enable more efficient hierarchical planning and learning of large-scale environments.

scholarly journals Disorder or Reorder? The Spatial Production of State-Level New Areas in China

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 3628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liang Zhuang ◽  
Chao Ye
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Regional Distribution ◽  
State Level ◽  
Growth Spurt ◽  
Rapid Urbanization ◽  
New Town ◽  
Spatial Production ◽  
Expansion Pattern ◽  
Reform And Opening Up

With rapid urbanization in the world, new town construction has become prosperous. In particular, new emerging towns in China are unique because of the most significant movement of “building cities”. Over four decades of reform and opening-up, this movement has brought about a special development model known as State-level New Area (SLNA) which, like a new town, is causing a growth spurt in national and regional economic development. By applying the critical theory of production of space, this paper gives an overall analysis. SLNAs generate a new expansion pattern of urban space in the regionalization process dominated by governments. To reveal the spatiotemporal evolution logic of SLNA, the framework identifies the main characteristics contributing to spatial production: both bottom-up and top-down project on construction; a sharp and unordered trend of increment in time scale; an unbalanced regional distribution in the sequential order of “Eastern–Western–Northeastern–Central” among regions; complex spatial overlaying with different development zones and administrative divisions; and large-scale spatial expanding. This paper finds that the ongoing growth of SLNAs is a rapid process of spatial production with more contradictions, which is especially marked by tension between disorder and reorder. We hope to provide theoretical reference and practical guidance for the sustainable urbanization and orderly regional development of SLNAs.

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