Information Technologies and Urban Activism
The trends in information technology increase individualization and flexibility of lifestyles changing the way we use urban centres
Torsten Blume
images from www.blinkenlights.de
For some years now in Germany a whole series of offices or groups have sprung up in which architects or town planners have entered into more or less loose associations with graphic artists and other designers, in order to carry out projects that lie outside the scope of conventional architecture and town planning. Often the very names emphasize their unusual nature: AA_Architects Anonymous, osa (Office for subversive Architecture), Team 444, Raumlabor (“Space Lab”), SNAG (Super New Action Group), Peanutz architekten, complizen, rude_architecture, Studio Urban Catalyst, etc. They take part in art competitions, open their offices for use as exhibition halls, occupy various places with temporary actions or installations, publish periodicals and in general do a lot of things that are very reminiscent of action, performance or media art. Still, they continue to insist that their cultural origins are in architecture and town planning and they refuse to abandon their claim that these actions have something to do with architecture.
The protagonists of the new “extended architecture” intervene without claiming to possess the one true solution to a certain problem. They generally demand and promote the consideration of several options, more communication, more transparency and more participation
The spaces offered by the city are seen in “open” terms as a structured product of social, political, economic and media processes. Open spaces, whether public or private, are thus fields of activity that come to life as a result of actions, fields in which countless spatial patterns – material and immaterial – overlap. Electronic media have added a lot of colour and sound to the world we live in. They have filled it with activities by means of which a permanent presence can be given to what is absent. We hardly notice any more that we are constantly surrounded by technologically transmitted sounds and images. Music in lifts, supermarkets and restaurants is taken for granted. If we think of the electronic billboards and screens, radio, television, cinema, glossy magazines and newspapers, the ability to reach anyone at any time by mobile phone, etc., we realize that the world portrayed by technical media has become larger and denser. Urban spaces are increasingly acquiring elements of mobility, the transitions between enclosed spaces and images are in flux. Monitors, screens and video displays open up corridors of time, monitoring systems record the movements of passers-by, urban images are reproduced in the media, and millions of mobile phones link up public places with private affairs.
images from www.blinkenlights.de
At the same time countless new forms of participation as well as of free, independent and direct communication are made possible by electronic networks. The art of moving through urban space must be re-examined as both a physical and a media activity. Boundaries, space allocations and representations are part of a constant media performance. They present a radical challenge to the “domesticity” of architecture.
The individual is constantly faced with the task of interpreting spatial layers of movement, without being able to determine clearly where one begins or another ends. The search for new architectural figures has to proceed in the constant awareness of the shifting nature of spatial relationships, which are “vireal”, i.e. both physical (“real”) and media-determined (“virtual”).
If architecture fails to re-examine itself in this context, it restricts its own field of action and reduces itself to the design of individual projects, to the smooth administration of space, and to being a commercial service.
The argument is that the use of information and communication technologies, especially in a localized and fragmented way, permits the development of new positions aimed at creating an urban culture composed of many voices and dense layers that are not always controllable and sometimes even conflicting. Above all networked technologies have the power to break through social, economic and spatial barriers. They give rise to new architectural figures by allowing special, if unplanned encounters and alliances.
As regards to computers and their networks, it’s no longer a question of inventing radically new devices, instruments or machines. This may have been how the avant-gardes of the 1920s, the Fluxus artists of the post-war period, the pioneers of action art and videos or the early network artists saw their task. Nowadays, if we want to generate something that differs significantly from the routine productions of the commercial media, we tend to look for unusual combinations of existing materials and means of expression to generate dramaturgies of difference.
images from www.blinkenlights.de
The “new media” offer many new possibilities of promoting processes and networks in the public sphere. They may help to build up local media and interactions in the tradition of neighbourhood newspapers or local radio. Digital information technologies and media systems in general can often, despite or because of their largely immaterial character, produce strong spatial effects. Son et lumière installations invest facades and locations with a media aura. Empty premises or plots of land can be conceptually upgraded by temporarily putting them to some other use than their original one. The Chaos Computer Club used a light installation to play on the facade of a house on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz square. By means of a simple software package put together on the Internet it was possible to generate animations for the facade or play table tennis on it with a mobile phone (www.blinkenlights.de).
Wherever an “official” culture is absent, new appropriation rituals are invented. The Berlin Table Tennis Guerrilla maintains that in principle all surfaces used for light displays help to make people feel good. They see themselves as an open association which seeks a new public place every week to play table tennis. One can find out where they are playing at any given time by e-mail. In many cities there are initiatives that use WLAN technology to facilitate, for a small fee (or free of charge), wireless access to the Internet in public places.
In most media art projects in urban locations the focus is on the community-forming, consensual and communicative aspect. Internet platforms can become participatory forums for different perceptions and interpretations of a city, so that places which people no longer register consciously are rediscovered in a new guise. With a view to possible scenarios such places can be discussed in a different light. The Internet portal anderes dresden (a different Dresden) is such a project. It is one thing to point to the potential of empty and anonymous places in an abstract and academic fashion, quite another to have to deal with them in practical and concrete terms.
The protagonists of the new “extended architecture” intervene without claiming to possess the one true solution to a certain problem. They generally demand and promote the consideration of several options, more communication, more transparency and more participation. They say, for example, like Liz Diller (from Diller + Scofidio Architects): “Our interests revolve around architecture, but we see it as a very broad discipline, as a method of cultural research. We want to rethink spatial conventions and make subtle changes to them. Sometimes this leads to performances or installations. Or to digital art and books. Of course we also design buildings.”
