La ville analogique : repenser l’urbanité à l’ère numérique

“L’avènement de l’univers numérique a mis à mal notre rapport à la ville tangible, que nous avons désertée au profit d’une hyperconnectivité qui n’est pas sans conséquences sur l’espace public en tant que lieu de sociabilité. Et l’arrivée annoncée d’un soi-disant «métavers» ne fera qu’amplifier ce phénomène. La dépersonnalisation des relations interpersonnelles et le transfert des décisions humaines à des machines menacent, à terme, la part d’humanité qui nous relie les un·e·s aux autres. Loin d’y voir une fatalité, l’auteur défend l’idée selon laquelle la migration quasi intégrale de notre vie collective vers l’internet serait au contraire une invitation à réinvestir la ville en chair et en os afin de faire contrepoids à nos existences de plus en plus désincarnées. S’inspirant de la technologie analogique, il convoque les formes urbaines du passé pour imaginer la ville de demain, en évitant le piège de la nostalgie.”

Liquid uncertainty, chaos and complexity: the gig economy and the open source movement

The gig economy has become a hot topic. The term itself derives from the world of entertainment, particularly live music, where performers striving for recognition hope to get a few ‘gigs’ – i.e. short-term and sporadic opportunities for paid employment, with the understanding that such engagements are limited and without any future obligation on either party – employer or employee. This seemingly gives both parties significant autonomy, albeit not in equal measure. I show how key aspects of Zygmunt Bauman’s work prepare us for an understanding and appreciation of the gig economy, and other more extensive ramifications; particularly those exemplified in the success of the Open Source model, and its potential – or not – to provide the basis for new institutional forms appropriate and acceptable for our current context.

Applying Chaos Theory to Artistic and Cultural Practice

What is the mathematical metaphor that dominates us in the post-modern age? How will the math of today affect our cultural future? I propose that the Science of Complexity, also known as Chaos Theory, provides many concepts which help to give insight into the context and direction of contemporary culture, as well as providing new technologies, methodologies, and metaphors for the production of valid work and theory. What tools can it provide us, both practically and intellectually? Perhaps we should first ask what it is that we look would look for in such a paradigm.

Self-similarity

Julia set animated by traversing the cardioid of the Mandelbrot set, projected on the 1/c-plane

The Attention Merchands in conversation

The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

"Who exactly are the attention merchants? As an industry, they are relativelynew. Their lineage can be traced to the nineteenth century, when in New YorkCity the first newspapers fully dependent on advertising were created; and Paris,where a dazzling new kind of commercial art first seized the eyes of the person inthe street. But the full potential of the business model by which attention isconverted into revenue would not be fully understood until the early twentiethcentury, when the power of mass attention was discovered not by any commercialentity but by British war propagandists. The disastrous consequences ofpropaganda in two world wars would taint the subsequent use of such methods bygovernment, at least in the West. Industry, however, took note of what captiveattention could accomplish, and since that time has treated it as a preciousresource, paying ever larger premiums for it."

The Shallows

"(...) McLuhan understood that whenever a new medium comes along, people naturally get caught up in the information—the “content”—it carries. They care about the news in the newspaper, the music on the radio, the shows on the TV, the words spoken by the person on the far end of the phone line. The technology of the medium, however astonishing it may be, disappears behind whatever flows through it—facts, entertainment, instruction, conversation. When people start debating (as they always do) whether the medium’s effects are good or bad, it’s the content they wrestle over. Enthusiasts celebrate it; skeptics decry it.(...)"