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Authors: |
Duarte, Fábio. | |
Title: |
Emerging places from cyberterritories | |
Keywords: |
Cyberterritories - urban fluxes - city - informational fluxes - critical art projects | |
| click here to download the full paper | ||
Abstract: |
Cyberspace is an informational
network constructed by telecommunication and computer technologies, which make possible
most of our contemporary references and actions. But we won't live in cyberspaces. Never.
Space is established by the existence of fluxes and objects, creating the basis for all
relationships among agents, actions and objects. Place is a determined position in space
and time from where every other element - stable or in movement, perennial or ephemeral -
acquires significance. Territory is a portion of space defined by its management limits;
so, from biology to geopolitics, the idea of territory is linked to the idea of domain.
When we think about cyberspace, the notion of territory must be linked with the idea of
informational management. Contemporary cities are being transformed by the informational
fluxes. These transformations are concrete, they reshape the city beyond its digital
territories. Most of urban planners cannot deal with these active informational changes
using their traditional intellectual and representational tools. Most of info-artists
cannot deal with these changes using an abstraction which loses any power when encounters
the concrete city. Cyberterritories are exactly on the smooth limits of urban and
informational space. Krzysztof Wodiczko's Alien Staff project deals with refugees, people
in transit through the globe, living beyond geopolitical barriers. They live in an
uncertain global space but also in concrete (sometimes unfriendly) and specific urban
environments. Video, memorabilia, personal stories recorded in different languages, and
contacts between locals and aliens, mediated by these technological tools, create an
extremely personal interface which announces the power and fragility of the contemporary
global/local reality. Knowbotic Research's IO_dencies project is a dynamic digital environment, based on the Internet and magnetic fields, constructed by urban informations inputs - texts, images, videos, sounds. Working on Tokyo and now on São Paulo, with local architects, after multidisciplinary discussions, they have constructed a potent metaphor tool to think contemporary urban fluxes. Based on these projects, on which I have participated, I will discuss the critical interval of the informational and geographical territories, the cyberterritories, that build contemporary urban environments. |
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| Duarte, Fábio. fduarte@usp.br Fábio
DUARTE, architect (University of São Paulo - USP), is preparing his PhD at School of
Communications and Arts, USP, about Deterritorialization and contemporary nomadism, with a
Fapesp scholarship. He is author of the books Global and local in contemporary world,
Moderna, São Paulo, 1998; and Architecture and Information Technology: from industrial to
digital revolution, AnnaBlume + Fapesp, São Paulo, 1999, result of his Master thesis
concluded at the Multimedia Department, Unicamp. He is an invited researcher at the Centre
of Planning and Regional Development (CRAD) of University Laval, Québec, Canada (from
August 1998 to March 1999). During this period he has also worked with the Group of Media
Art Research (GRAM) of University of Québec in Montréal (UQAM). He has worked with
Emanuel Pimenta, Lisbon, Portugal; and V2_Organisatie, Rotterdam, where he was involved in
Krzysztof Wodiczko's Alien Staff project. Since its beginning, he is one the editors of
the Knowbotic Research project |
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