The erasing of borders has redefined the nature of the city that no longer exists with a geographic centre due to the developments in transportation and communications technology that has increased mobility and urban sprawl. There no longer exists a ceremonial gate to the city, nor ritual processions. Virillo states that airports have become the new gates to the city, “the place of necessary regulation of exchange and communication”. The city no longer occupies a geographical centre or defined ground. Boundaries of the city have become an osmotic membrane, lacking of any windows or doors, marked with ruptures and infinite openings.
Virillo argues that this phenomena, due to the increased importance of the computer and communication technologies on social proceedings and exchanges, more than ever before, has upset the social structure of the city such that increased mobility of capital and people leaves the structure of the city on the edge of being obsolete or irrelevent. Its structure becomes less a solid physically demarcated geographic entity and more the loose framework/platform for an increasingly ephemeral existence.
This has affected the practice of architecture that is subject to ‘tectonic drifts’ and confusion of position such that the notion of distance has all but been erased or frozen on the computer screen.
Over exposure is evident in the erasing of the gap between near and far, micro and macro (by the computer interface), the overlapping of habitation and circulation. Materials used in architectural studies are now transparent (i.e. trace paper, plexiglass, plastic films). Night and day have been confused with the 24 hour clock in service based companies and constant artificial lighting.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Arjun Appadurai-Disjuncture and difference in the global economy
Argument against the cliché that an increasingly global economy is having a homogenizing effect on cultural and political identities:
The division between Nation and State is demarcated through differing flows of information (‘scapes’) that are becoming more distant from each other.
The forces of commoditization become indigenized once introduced into a community (evident with the subspeciating of McDonald’s chains that cater to ethnic preferences in food items).
“The new global cultural economy needs to be understood as a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order”:
What does this mean? Traditional models of the ‘balance of trade’ no longer apply to the new model of ‘disorganized capitalism’.
We owe this complexity to the disjuncture between culture, economy and politics present in the 5 dimensions of global cultural flow including ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financscapes, and ideoscapes. These scapes are perspectival in that they are subject to different linguistic, political and cultural situations of nations states, multi-nationals, communities and movements.
These are the building blocks that make up the imagined worlds of different groups that can ‘subvert the imagined world of the ‘official mind’ (authority).
Unprecedented mobilities of people, capital, technology and information provide an unpredictable landscape that is subject to its own constraints.
Imagined worlds of the ‘other’:
In an image centered world, the proliferation of strips of visual ‘reality’ into different sub-groups and nation-states promote the production of ‘imagined worlds’, the imagined lives of other peoples living in other lands. This contributes to the construction of fantasy and desire, which become the catalyst for human mobility and acquisition.
This contributes to the phenomenon of deterritorialization and displacement, evident in the rise of separatist movements at the state level and trans-national companies that seek out cheap labor and expatriates that move to seek out employment in different countries.
The division between Nation and State is demarcated through differing flows of information (‘scapes’) that are becoming more distant from each other.
The forces of commoditization become indigenized once introduced into a community (evident with the subspeciating of McDonald’s chains that cater to ethnic preferences in food items).
“The new global cultural economy needs to be understood as a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order”:
What does this mean? Traditional models of the ‘balance of trade’ no longer apply to the new model of ‘disorganized capitalism’.
We owe this complexity to the disjuncture between culture, economy and politics present in the 5 dimensions of global cultural flow including ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financscapes, and ideoscapes. These scapes are perspectival in that they are subject to different linguistic, political and cultural situations of nations states, multi-nationals, communities and movements.
These are the building blocks that make up the imagined worlds of different groups that can ‘subvert the imagined world of the ‘official mind’ (authority).
Unprecedented mobilities of people, capital, technology and information provide an unpredictable landscape that is subject to its own constraints.
Imagined worlds of the ‘other’:
In an image centered world, the proliferation of strips of visual ‘reality’ into different sub-groups and nation-states promote the production of ‘imagined worlds’, the imagined lives of other peoples living in other lands. This contributes to the construction of fantasy and desire, which become the catalyst for human mobility and acquisition.
This contributes to the phenomenon of deterritorialization and displacement, evident in the rise of separatist movements at the state level and trans-national companies that seek out cheap labor and expatriates that move to seek out employment in different countries.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
The Ecxtasy of Communication
The emergence of television gave people many conveniences, we just turn on the TV and could know what happened in the world, could get the information you need. So people more and more depend on it, from choosing the information you need to accepting information passively. It seems that we know everything, in fact, we just know what the television told us. Whoever or whatever that is important or not, if it occupies the television, it becomes important and focus of our world. We are controlled by the television, surrounded by the screen.
We are filled with information and communication, and controled by them. We seems know more things than before, but we do not know the essence of them. We have more and more information but we do not know the meaning of them. The media dissolve the meaning of objects. When we do not have meaning but information, the information and communication are useless.
Automobile shortens the distance of us. But with the speed culminating, people began to pursue the optimalization of other functions. The automobile is like a capsule, then the desire to be the master of the speed weakened. From this perspective, the psychological dimension disappears. But I think psychological dimension does not disappear, but transforms into a frantic state that the automobile becomes the collection of the functions.
We are filled with information and communication, and controled by them. We seems know more things than before, but we do not know the essence of them. We have more and more information but we do not know the meaning of them. The media dissolve the meaning of objects. When we do not have meaning but information, the information and communication are useless.
Automobile shortens the distance of us. But with the speed culminating, people began to pursue the optimalization of other functions. The automobile is like a capsule, then the desire to be the master of the speed weakened. From this perspective, the psychological dimension disappears. But I think psychological dimension does not disappear, but transforms into a frantic state that the automobile becomes the collection of the functions.
reading notes---overexposed city
Contemporary science and technology are producing new forms of experience, new modes of perception and representation. Virilio suggested that the city is decentered in relation to the rise of suburbs and then telecommunications and new sites of work and interaction in a post-industrial society. Virilio's "overexposed city" is penetrated by media and advertising, information technology. In Virilio's vision, the urban wall and gateways have given way to the openings to media channels, information and communication networks, and diverse new technologies. With the interface of monitors and control screens (computers, television, teleconferencing), “elsewhere” begins here and vice versa. Not long ago, the opening of the city’s gates was still determined by the alternating of day and night. Today, since we not only open the shutters but also the television, daylight itself has been changed. A false electronic day, whose only calendar is based on “commutations” of information bearing no relationship whatsoever to real time, is now added to the solar day of astronomy, electric light and the dubious “ daylight” of candles.
Technology is a window to the outside world. It obliterates urban boundaries and spaces to the geopolitical channels of the global world and the world of cyberspace. Exposed to global culture and communication, the city loses its specificity. City life gives way to technological cyber-life, a heterogeneous and fractured space, and a world-time that enables individuals to experience events simultaneously from every time zone in the world..
Technology is a window to the outside world. It obliterates urban boundaries and spaces to the geopolitical channels of the global world and the world of cyberspace. Exposed to global culture and communication, the city loses its specificity. City life gives way to technological cyber-life, a heterogeneous and fractured space, and a world-time that enables individuals to experience events simultaneously from every time zone in the world..
Encoding and Decoding
People process codes automatically in their head, this can be a positive thing or a negative thing since the full meaning is never totally understood, this causing a lot of misunderstanding. Not only does this happen locally but globally as well. There are universal codes and local codes but it is impossible for everything to be understood by everyone.
In Hall's article he writes this misunderstanding or miscommunication and has come up with this own methods of decoding messages they are;
1) dominant-hegemonic position: everything is understood, assumes the responsibility of carefully constructing 'perfect transparent communication' where the viewer ideally takes the encoded meaning and decodes the message using the reference code from which it was constructed
2)negotiated code: global is understood(small local codes are not), still acknowledged the dominate code, operates on its own, more locally situated logic
3)oppositional position:global not understood, smaller local codes are understood, where the viewer takes the coded message and deliberately reads it using opposing framework of understanding to deconstruct the constructed meaning in order to get closer to the truth behind the message being conveyed
The four stages of communication are production,circulation,use and reproduction.
All of this is important in understanding the hidden meaning is things but it is not fool proof it has it problems. Knowing when it use coded meaning or not is the question. But no matter what you do everything is open to interpretation, people will get what they get out of it know matter how you send you message.
In Hall's article he writes this misunderstanding or miscommunication and has come up with this own methods of decoding messages they are;
1) dominant-hegemonic position: everything is understood, assumes the responsibility of carefully constructing 'perfect transparent communication' where the viewer ideally takes the encoded meaning and decodes the message using the reference code from which it was constructed
2)negotiated code: global is understood(small local codes are not), still acknowledged the dominate code, operates on its own, more locally situated logic
3)oppositional position:global not understood, smaller local codes are understood, where the viewer takes the coded message and deliberately reads it using opposing framework of understanding to deconstruct the constructed meaning in order to get closer to the truth behind the message being conveyed
The four stages of communication are production,circulation,use and reproduction.
All of this is important in understanding the hidden meaning is things but it is not fool proof it has it problems. Knowing when it use coded meaning or not is the question. But no matter what you do everything is open to interpretation, people will get what they get out of it know matter how you send you message.
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