[iDC] Interactive City: irrelevant mobile entertainment?

[Brad Borevitz]

i quite agree with kanarinka. my experience of isea was similarly
disappointing. 

i would want to add to her impression of techno-spectacular play devoid of
serious or political content, a critique of the conferences "architecture,"
structure, and style: there was a definitive air of corperatist aesthetics
on display in the main exhibition and symposium hall ... gratuitous
televisuals, power-points-a-plenty, office furnishings, branded everything,
overpriced concessions, overpriced separately ticketed events, product
placements, product demos ... the exhibition looked like a trade show and
functioned like one as well - with artist/promoters present with their wares
and making a pitch to jaded passersby, stuffing their tote bags with
take-aways and business cards and flyers and brochures ... infotainment,
techno-phantastic, technophilic ... crap

remember, that the O1 part of the show was dreamed up by SJ chamber of
commerce (or the like) as a SJ promotional biennial ... putting a high
culture gleam on silicon valley's usual corporate production ...

saskia sassen's keynote was one of the only things i saw which focused
attention meaningfully on political perspectives on technology. the changes
in social/political/economic formations she outlined are frightening. but
their relationship to the technosphere is complicated. clearly not all the
changes are technologically determined, nor can they be addressed
technologically(e.g. changes in citizenship and democracy). and those that
are (finance) seem so far away from what most artists are concerning
themselves with, we risk irrelevance, or worse, distraction.

brad borevitz

On 8/14/06 9:03 AM, "idc-request at bbs.thing.net" <idc-request at bbs.thing.net>
wrote:

> is psychogeography/locative media work simply R&D
> for a new generation of entertainment spectacle? Or, what are we
> actually trying to do with these ideas of "play" in urban space? Who
> gets to play? And what about the interactive cities in Iraq and
> Lebanon and elsewhere? Why didn't we address war, security,
> militarization and terrorism as aspects of the contemporary
> interactive city? For me, running around making the city into a
> sandbox, a playground or a playing field feels increasingly
> irrelevant and irresponsible.