Dunn, N., 2010.

Digital Networks: between open source mobility and closed loop assemblages

The emergence of what many authors have referred to as the ‘network city’ through an increasing abstraction of space coupled with the continual erosion of place has precipitated a number of effects on social and cultural activity and respective communities. Most significantly, the original nature of the public realm within the built environment as both a receptive and reflexive domain may now be located in digital networks that permeate contemporary life rather than physical conditions. The ubiquity of technology across our daily communication and other exchanges as a correlation of increased growth of broadband in the developed world and the global continuum facilitated by mobile phones, has become manifest in readily accessible, ever-present networks that not only challenge our ideas and experience of place but have precipitated an evolution in relationships of time and distance. In addition, these digital infrastructures afford the connectivity and mobility of communities with niche interests to be networked in an unprecedented manner. Who operates across this territory, how and why? The schism between the high degree of connectivity that permeates the digital networks versus the increasingly fragmentary nature of the physical urban condition has provided a rich geography for exploitation for artists, communities and sub-cultures who are involved in navigating this ‘inbetween landscape.’ A range of case studies will be used to illustrate such negotiations and subversions of urban space and their implications for an increasingly hybridised public domain that seeks to explore digital and physical boundaries.

Related Research:   Nick Dunn