IN THE MIDDLES OF URBAN SPACE. The case of Critical City Upload more

In the Middles of Urban Space Media & the City ECREA Workshop, 10 Feb. 2012, Università Cattolica, Milan IN THE MIDDLES OF URBAN SPACE: THE CASE OF CRITICAL CITY Federica Timeto, Università di Urbino Carlo Bo Media do not coincide with technological objects. Rather, they comprehend experiences, representations, forms of relation, identity concepts and forms of social organization which exceed the technological object per se. According to Raymond Williams (1974), we cannot isolate a technology from its context, nor can we abstractly consider the causes of media changes. Williams explicitly counterposes his claim to Marshall McLuhan’s position, which he considers as formalist and deterministic: according to Williams, McLuhan doesn’t ever really consider media as social practices, but as “physical events in an abstract sensorium”, whose effects are the same for everyone, in the same time and space, without any consideration of the power relations which regulate their use and contents. Whereas the core of McLuhan’s thought is usually associated with the definition of medium as message, the core of Williams’ thought could be summarized in the formula "the content is the context." What if we inverted the order of terms and superimposed the two formulas, so that the medium itself is seen as context, and abandoned the still modern dichotomy form/content? In this perspective, media would be the environments - a term which McLuhan himself uses beneath the more popular term "galaxy" introducing The Gutenberg Galaxy (1965) - where social forms emerge, an immersive common ground working even before some experiences and practices take place. The communicative “nature” of media, then, is not a complex of technological objects that influence a preexisting society (or a society following them as an effect), but rather consists of the couplings and sociotechnical dynamics that emerge through communication and media practices. Thus, media are the environments where society and technology eventually co-emerge. When talking about the circulation of information, it is usually taken for granted that information moves through space, but the opposite, i.e. that spatiality is constituted by information, is rarely 1 In the Middles of Urban Space Media & the City ECREA Workshop, 10 Feb. 2012, Università Cattolica, Milan considered. Elaborating on the concept of the total field awareness of contemporary media offered by Marshall McLuhan to move beyond the transmissive model of information, I propose to look at media of communication as middles, rather than as means, i.e. as mediating environments that perform connections and generate complex social relations among hybrid sociotechnical agents. Considering the “middling” aspect of media underlines their locative quality. Today, media of communication, whether it relies on locative devices or not, work as locative media that address us and can be addressed in turn, enhancing a condition of social and spatial addressability. In an essay entitled Addressing Media, J.W. T. Mitchell writes that “If media are middles, they are ever-elastic middles that expand to include what look at first like their outer boundaries. The medium does not lie between sender and receiver; it includes and constitutes them” (2008, p.4). Mitchell’s aim is to show how media should be addressed rather than simply understood, in order to, on the one hand, let the double communicative and spatial meaning of the term "addressing" emerge, on the other underlining the reciprocity of media as environments and of society as a complex system. Today I want to specifically focus on the idea of addressability that he, among other things, elaborates in this essay. According to Mitchell, media should rather be addressed than understood, as McLuhan would put it, “as if they were environments where images live, or personas and avatars that address us and can be addressed in turn” (p. 3, italics mine). Mitchell intends to expand McLuhan's idea of media, and at the same time criticize Williams' dereification of media, which leads the latter to ignore the materiality of media in favour of social practice as the only locus where actions become meaningful. As a matter of fact, if social practices are mediated, this doesn't mean that they are media yet. The paradox of media, for Mitchell, lies in the connection, or we could say in the hybridization, of material aspects and social practices. Media are both the objects and the operations, both a “medium through which messages are transmitted, and a medium in which forms and images appear” (p. 8): in sum, they are both the complex of (human and non human) 2 In the Middles of Urban Space Media & the City ECREA Workshop, 10 Feb. 2012, Università Cattolica, Milan technologies and the habitat where they take and make place (p. 9). Even if, properly speaking, media do not have a specific address, they nonetheless address us, and in so doing they also acquire their spatio-temporal location (it must be once again noted that, in English, "to address" means both actions). Thus, for Mitchell addressing media not only means encountering and challenging, but also locating them, and at the same time situating the analysis of media, which has to confront “its middling, muddling location in the midst of media" (p. 18). Sociology can deal with media of communication as tools, or means, that is as intermediaries transporting information, or as middles, that is as mediating environments that perform relations which in turn create complex social connections [I am referring, here, to the distinction between the notion of intermediary and that of mediator proposed by Bruno Latour, 2005. Shifting the focus of attention from media as intermediaries to media as mediators means taking into consideration the way the forces of change take place and combine in a contingent and heterogeneous way rather than the causes determining social change]. Following Mitchell, we see that media act as mediators in their addressing us and being addressed by us. Addressable media show that space cannot preexist its relations, but that contexts are continuously re-contextualized through them. Media perform new connections as active interfaces that mediate the sociospatial. This aspect is particularly relevant in locative media practices today: we can thus define locative media practices as those practices characterized by a participated relationality linking humans and machines through a diffuse addressability, in which the concepts of corporeality, materiality and location are performatively redefined. The performativity of locative media practices at the same time appears as an embodied experience of the body/mind ensemble in a media environment which is more and more immersive and localized, and as the mapping of a material/informational spatiality which is itself performative. Such a mobilization of the “where” at the same time intensifies and redefines location a-whereness (Thrift) rather than erase it, contrary to how it might appear. Actually, considering space and mobility together has a double consequence. On the one hand mobility, be it material or not, cannot 3 In the Middles of Urban Space Media & the City ECREA Workshop, 10 Feb. 2012, Università Cattolica, Milan be seen as a passage from one point to another in space, but as the possibility of producing and consuming information in movement. On the other hand, the “where”, mobilized by information, disengages spatiality from a purely dimensional perspective, linking it to the practices of the everyday. This underlines a reciprocal co-emergence of codes and sociospatial formations, pointing to the performativity of both. As the space of a distributed materiality (The Internet of Things) and distributed information (Ubiquitous Computing), such a space continuously happens, relating subjects, objects and places in everyday practices. In order to see how, today I want to share with you my preliminary thoughts on the game Critical City Upload. This case study is part of my doctoral thesis in Sociologia della comunicazione e scienze dello spettacolo at the University of Urbino, in which I focus on locative media and location based social networks (LBSNs), in order to investigate the sociospatial relations taking place in so-called mediaspaces or codespaces (Couldry, & McCarthy, 2004; Kitchin & Dodge, 2011). In particular, I consider CCU as an example of how media can be locative even when they do not strictly rely either on a digital infrastructure or on mobile devices [see Gordon & de Souza e Silva, 2011; in this regard, I would also suggest a very interesting article just published online in the latest issue of e-flux, An Internet of Things by Keller Easterling, 2012, where the author discusses the fact that space can be read informationally independently from digital platforms.] More specifically, I am interested in studying how space traversed and mapped through locative media practices is both the theater and the product of distributed agency. Given that my research question asks what the implications of this renewed location awareness of media are, the CCU case specifically allows me to verify three of my six operative hypotheses, that is 1) How and to what extent locative media and applications work as middles for social actors in a condition of reciprocal addressability? 2) can we speak of a new emerging “participative 4 In the Middles of Urban Space Media & the City ECREA Workshop, 10 Feb. 2012, Università Cattolica, Milan urbanism” (Paulos, Honicky and Hooker, 2009) related to the diffusion of locative media? 3) how are locality and location performed through locative media, once proximity is considered not only a physical, “immediate” issue but also an informational (either digital or not) one? In the words of its developers, CCU is a non-profit “collective game of urban transformation,” which also works as a social network. Conceived in Italy and launched as a desktop application in 2008, CCU (whose second season started in November 2011) aims to alter the perception and experience of public space and to offer prototypes for real interventions. Although, strictly speaking, CCU does not presuppose the use of mobile devices, the game can be said to be locative for several reasons. The positions of participants and their performances are geolocalized; the game comprises a set of instructions divided in different levels, which can be performed going “outside” and documented by means of texts, pictures and videos, implying different forms of mobility and mobile tools; finally, there are “nodes,” defined as “special places where strange things happen,” which are existing zones with public access where the accomplishment of a mission is more convenient, being associated with a higher score (attributed by the CCU staff). Every performance must be exactly geotagged according to the rules of CCU (which means that, when the missions are on the move, the most significant place where they happen must be indicated). When at least 3 missions in an area of 50 mt² take place, the staff verifies that the instructions are correctly followed and successfully performed (that is, accomplishing the rules of the game) and validates the node. Special nodes can also be inaugurated even if less than 3 missions have been accomplished there [These usually are places where private or public organizations pursuing activities oriented towards the improvement of the local reality work]. A node is composed of a geographical name (of the city) plus the geographical coordinates, an identification number, and a significant name or address further specifying its location. Each node is also given a bonus score, Gold (100 points), Silver (50 points), Bronze (25 points), which means that from the moment a node is published on the home page of CCU, every mission performed in that node gets that extra bonus points. Missions can be 5 In the Middles of Urban Space Media & the City ECREA Workshop, 10 Feb. 2012, Università Cattolica, Milan accomplished individually, in groups and also with the help of self-offering “collaborators,” an aspect which reinforces the practices of microcoordination and sociospatial networking in the mediated urban environment. For all these reasons, CCU foregrounds most of the aspects of the addressability of contemporary media of communication, offering an interesting example of the performativity of sociospatial networks in the middles of information and communication. In my research, I am adopting an ethnographic approach which includes participatory observation in order to study the genesis, characteristics and practices (comprehending both the "performances" of the chosen "instructions" and the online conversations commenting them, when available) of the CCU nodes, which are 51 so far. However, for reasons of time, today I am only able to talk about one node, which is currently the first as it has the largest number of players involved, because I believe that it very well exemplifies the sociospatial dynamics at work in this urban game. Since I am only at the beginning of my analysis, I do not have any conclusions yet, but I want to share my initial observations with you. The node I talk about is Trento 02 Piazza Fiera, a silver node that counts 25 players for 10 accomplished missions up until now (all of them belong to the previous season of the game). Andate e Moltiplicatevi realized by Logan is the first mission accomplished in the node: the instructions require that three flyers talking about CCU are attached at three different bus stops. It is from this mission, a very simple one apparently, that the community around the node originates. Actually, one player, The Small, affirms many times that he started playing after seeing these flyers; significantly, he also accomplishes a mission in this node, entitled A nuova vita that, while requiring that something broken or needing some adjustment in the street is fixed by the player, in this case also relates to the origin of the node. In fact, The Small decides to reinstall the flyers of the first mission realized by Logan, which aren’t in the original position anymore (this rather than replacing his own ones created according to the same instructions). In so doing, he recreates the original piece of spatial information, while adding a further layer to it, one comprising the story of his entry into 6 In the Middles of Urban Space Media & the City ECREA Workshop, 10 Feb. 2012, Università Cattolica, Milan the game as well as of his friendship with Logan [let us note that the mission is accomplished according to minimal logic very similar to that of geocaching]. Additionally, if we look at the definition of “participatory urbanism” by Paulus et al., this mission can be said to generate “individual and collective needs based dialogue tools around the desired usage of urban […] spaces.” Actually, the relational potential of a place like the bus stop, where many people usually stand together alone waiting for the bus, is suddenly put forth by a very simple communicative action relying on a basic tool, a printed piece of paper. And, as we’ll see, this is the same dynamic of many other missions accomplished here, particularly those realized in group and with the involvement of local people, like Ampie strette e Le forme dell’aforisma. If the scholarship about OSNs generally underlines how social network users tend to reinforce existing offline relations, we can conversely notice how in locative social networks like CCU we also have the opposite tendency, that is social relations that are initiated online are cultivated in the physical context of the game performances over time. This by the way confirms the permeability and continuity of the two dimensions, as well as highlights the hybridity of (net) locality, in which “co-presence is not mutually opposed to networked interaction” (Gordon & de Souza e Silva, 2011, p. 87). Since the missions in this node relate to each other, they are like chapters of a single narration linking the online and the offline environment by means of texts (both descriptions and conversations) and images. People living in the same city get to know each other through the game, meeting in a common space represented by the node which is an actual geographical location as well as a space of material and symbolic performativity. As Gordon & De Souza e Silva (2011) put it so well, it is the circulation of communication that creates the awareness of an existing community as well as the concrete possibility of connecting at a local level. Performances do not simply express some specific aspects of the node, rather they disseminate information creating communicative links that relate people who already know each other with unknown people. If we 7 In the Middles of Urban Space Media & the City ECREA Workshop, 10 Feb. 2012, Università Cattolica, Milan follow the story of the node players, we can also interestingly note that some of them also play in other nodes or even contribute to their creation not necessarily in the same geographical area, occasionally also bringing their playmates with them (this is for example the case of Logan, who is from Rovereto but goes to Rome where his friend Frida helps him create the Roma Colosseo node). Another interesting aspect is that the conversations developing in the CCU social network and in the related FB page not only present or comment on the performances effected, they are also a space to meet and plan the next ones. Thus, CCU works as a middle composed of more or less intense nodes whose augmented spatiality recreates a dimension of information and communication each time preceding but also exceeding the territorial locations, bringing together different forms of physical and digital proximity. Whereas the core group of players for each node remains more or less the same during the different missions (confirming that the creation of a node is a collaborative and not an individual effort), there are some missions, like Ampie strette (significantly retrieved in this second edition by The Small) or Le forme dell’aforisma, that involve local unknown people (or even people “made local” for the occasion, like in Le forme, where players who come from out of town for the mission are significantly “baptized” to properly take part in the performance). Ampie strette, for example, conceived as a ludic flash mob, requires that at least 30 unknown people are hugged on the street. The mission is accomplished during the Italian Carnevale, a moment when the transgression of the everyday routine is usually more accepted, by a group of ten players, and it is interesting to observe both the description and the comments following the publication of the mission online. In fact, starting from the choice of the moment of the year to perform the instruction, all the players’ words underline the pleasure and fun of involving other people in a free and essentially relational activity such as hugging. Even if most of them note the initial difficulty of the performance (touching someone you don’t know, but also doing it in a territory considered “cold” in the national imaginary), they underline the emotional involvement and the satisfaction for its final success, 8 In the Middles of Urban Space Media & the City ECREA Workshop, 10 Feb. 2012, Università Cattolica, Milan privileging the importance of the action as such over its documentation. I consider this an example of how location is, to borrow Mitchell’s words, a “middling and muddling” environment rather than being a static background, so that sometimes it becomes very difficult to separate media forms from media contexts, documentations from performances. To conclude, let me share with you one last observation regarding the game logic of CCU, which I only indirectly focused on today: the ephemeral and often minimal aspect of many of the missions of CCU, at least those accomplished in the examined node, underlines the participatory logic of CCU also beyond the content of the single missions. As again Gordon and de Souza e Silva note, the locative game brings people to explore locations, but it is “the resulting social encounters that enhance location awareness” in the end (p. 68). References: Couldry, N., & McCarthy, A. (2004). Introduction. In N. Couldry & A. McCarthy (ed.), Mediaspace: Place, Scale and Culture in a Media Age. London, New York: Routledge, pp. 1-18. Easterling, K. (2012). An Internet of Things. e-flux, 31(1). Retrieved from http://www.eflux.com/journal/an-internet-of-things/ Gordon, E., & de Souza e Silva, A. (2011). Net Locality. Why Location Matters in a Networked World. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Kitchin, R., & Dodge, M. (2011). Code/Space. Software and Everyday Life. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social. An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. New York: Oxford University Press. McLuhan, M. (1965). The Gutenberg Galaxy. The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Mitchell, J. W. T. (2008). Addressing Media. Mediatropes. Retrieved from http://www.mediatropes.com/index.php/Mediatropes/article/viewArticle/1771 Paulos, E., Honicky, R., & Hooker, B. (2009). Citizen Science: Enabling Participatory Urbanism”, in M. Foth (ed.), Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: The Practice and Promise of the Real-Time City. New York, London: IGI Global, p. 414-437. Thrift, N. (2008). Non-Representational Theory. Space/ Politics/ Affect. London and New York: Routledge. Williams, R. (1974). Television, Technology and Cultural Form, London: Collins. 9