Thursday, April 25, 2019
The experience of the contemporary city is interwoven with various forms of digitization, some more perceptible than others—ranging from those generated by apps like Uber, Yelp!, or the Guadalajara municipal tourism office, to the extraction of big data from our movements by telecommunications companies, and the network of public and private video surveillance. These mediations organize the city to function as a productive assembly, primarily for economic value. I propose we examine some forms of digital writing that have operated on the city in recent years—3D mapping and multimedia projections—as well as strategies of resistance to these forms of entertainment and regulation of experience, as explored by various artists and collectives, from Krzysztof Wodiczko and Astrovandalistas to sitio*TAXI.
Alberto López Cuenca is a research professor in the Master’s program in Aesthetics and Art at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla and holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. His work focuses on three recurring themes: the intersection of artistic practices and new technologies; new forms of creative labor in post-Fordism; and the articulation between urban geography and cultural policy. His contributions have appeared in international publications such as Afterall, ARTnews, Culture Machine, Parse, Curare, and Revista de Occidente. His latest book, published by the Centro de Cultura Digital in Mexico, is titled Los comunes digitales. Nuevas ecologías del trabajo artístico. He has been a visiting professor at Columbia University in New York and Goldsmiths, University of London, and a lecturer at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He is currently a member of the National System of Researchers, Level 1.
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