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FCJ-228 University, Universitas
Erin Manning SenseLab, Concordia University, Canada [Abstract] It cannot be denied that the university is a place of refuge, and it cannot be accepted that the university is a place of enlightment. (Moten and Harney, 2009: 145) Nothing About Us Without Us! (Charlton, 2000) Universities have a long history. The mantra of the universitas – ‘the whole, the universe, the world’ – has moved thinkers across the centuries: the university of al-Qarawiyyin, in Fez, Morocco, was founded in 859 followed by Al-Azhar University, in Cairo, Egypt, in 972. The first in Europe, the University of Bologna (the oldest university still in existence), opened its doors in 1088. In 1636, Harvard University became the first university in the United States. In The History of American Higher Education, Roger Geiger (2014) demonstrates how in the context of the United States, universities have evolved over ten or eleven generations from the religious college…
FCJ-224 Design Thinking, Design Activism, Design Study
Maria Hynes The Australian National University, Australia [Abstract] But we won’t stand corrected. Moreover, incorrect as we are there’s nothing wrong with us. (Harney and Moten, 2013: 20) In their consideration of the contribution of academic labour to what they call the ‘social reproduction of conquest denial’, Stefano Harney and Fred Moten isolate a number of factors. They examine modes of intellectual practice that deny: the ‘incessant and irreversible intellectuality’ that was already there; political practices that, claiming to engage in just redistribution, wish to think away the division of private and public and, with it, the unpayable debts at the heart of the social; and forms of criticality that deny the underlabour that makes the social being of critical academics possible. To these characteristic forms of labour practiced in the university they oppose a somewhat idiosyncratic sense of ‘study’: ‘study is what you do with other people. It’s talking…
FCJ-223 Fugitively, Approximately
Erin Manning SenseLab, Concordia University, Canada [Abstract] Two phrases haunt my thinking. The first comes from Fred Moten: all black life is neurodiverse life. It might also have been black life is always neurodiverse life. The second is approximation of proximity. The feeling is that the ambiguity of memory in the first has a connection to the approximation of the second. Moten’s words, written in a manuscript review before the publication of The Minor Gesture in 2016 felt vitally important when I received them. But The Minor Gesture was already too close to completion to fully carry the force of the proposition, and so, while I did signal it in the book, I decided to make Moten’s words the fugitive force of the thinking to follow. I say fugitive force both to carry forward Moten and Harney’s concept of fugitivity, and to emphasize that this is how work comes into…
FCJ-227 Survey and Project: On the (Im)possibility of Scholarship in an Era of Networked Knowledge
Glen Fuller University of Canberra, Australia [Abstract] Researchers concerned with networks have engaged with a variety of conceptual and technical problems and areas of interest. Fibreculture’s key focus has been any and all manifestations of network culture, with a particular interest in media. Our interest in scholarly publishing – both this journal, books and experimental forms – has long been as advocates for open access. We have critically engaged with shifts in the technologies of editorial production, publishing and then storage and retrieval. The changes to the systems of scholarly and intellectual publishing over the last 30 years mean that academics, scholars and intellectuals of all types now have access to a huge array of material either with open or closed (paid) access. Let’s call it the Google Scholar Effect. (Of course, it is more than the effect of Google Scholar and Google Scholar has its own specificities.) Writing in…
FCJ-226 ‘And they are like wild beasts’:[1] Violent Things in the Anthropocene
Susan Ballard School of the Arts, English and Media, University of Wollongong [Abstract] Disappearance At the opening of the temporary Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 2010 there was a room curtained off from all the others. Looking behind the curtain I found two chairs, headphones, a silently meditative voice, a highly-reflective dark blue leaning-yet-standing wooden panel, a rug, and a humming slide projection of an old ballroom. Of all the various objects somehow existing together for this moment, it was the chairs that held my attention. They were just chairs but they seemed important. The work was Circular Facts (2009, figure 2) by New Zealand artist Ruth Buchanan: an installation based on the script of a performance Buchanan staged after researching the strange and highly publicised disappearance of British writer Agatha Christie. [2] In 1926 Christie vanished for eleven days until she ‘was found staying in a hotel under a…
FCJ-225 One Definite Note and the Anarchic Share of Listening
Andrew Goodman La Trobe University, Australia [Abstract] What you listen to or what you’re reading is still moving and still living. It’s still forming. (Harney and Moten, 2013: 107) Music charms us, even though its beauty consists only in the harmonics of numbers and in a calculation that we are not aware of, but which the soul nevertheless carries out, a calculation concerned with the beats or vibrations of sounding bodies, which are encountered at certain intervals. (Leibniz, 1994: 212) Every room has its own melody, hiding there until it is made audible. (Lucier & Simon, 2012: 31) Introduction: A Sonic Can of Worms Alfred North Whitehead’s opus Process and Reality devotes slightly more than one page to the question of the audition of sound (1978: 233-5). [1] Whitehead slyly defines this as a ‘simple’ example that avoids any ‘unnecessary complexity’. In fact he opens a can of (vibratory) worms….
FCJ-219 The Sensed Smog: Smart Ubiquitous Cities and the Sensorial Body
Jussi Parikka Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, United Kingdom Air pollution and waste management are two interconnected environmental concerns that demand our attention in the modern era. While the focus on air pollution often revolves around quantifying and governing the quality of air in smart cities, it is essential to recognize the broader implications of atmospheric conditions. Air pollution, caused by various particles and pollutants, presents political dilemmas of inclusion and exclusion, highlighting the urgency of addressing this issue. Just like air pollution, waste management is equally important, as improper waste disposal can contribute to air pollution and its harmful effects. For effective waste management solutions and dumpster rentals, you can visit https://grissmandumpsters.com/neenah-dumpster-rentals/. By addressing both air pollution and waste management, we can work towards creating a cleaner and healthier environment for the present and future generations. [Abstract] Air Conditions There is not much that could not be…
FCJ-220 Imperial Infrastructures and Asia beyond Asia: Data Centres, State Formation and the Territoriality of Logistical Media
Ned Rossiter Institute for Culture and Society / School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University [Abstract] How do the technical operations and infrastructural properties of data centres produce new territorial configurations that depart from and challenge the territorial borders of the nation-state? And what is distinct about such formations within the Asian region? These are the core questions that guide my thinking on digital infrastructures as a novel instantiation of imperial power. This is a power not beholden to the logic of the sovereign state, though it may take on attributes of the state such as the authority to decide and the power to govern economy and space, society and culture. It is a power that may also overlap with policy making and the ideological contours of the state. [1] And while such power may manifest chiefly in metropolitan, urban settings, its computational dimensions lend it an elasticity…
FCJ-218 Train Ticket Sharing: Alternative Forms of Computing in the City
Paula BialskiLeuphana University, Lüneburg [Abstract] Introduction In the city of Grodno, Belarus, which is populated by around 300,000 inhabitants, the main form of transportation is the bus. This transit system is run by a public company called Grodno Bus Park. In 2008, the bus company cancelled their reduced-price tickets for students and seniors, and all passengers were expected to pay the same price for a ticket. While each ticket cost only 0.15 Euro (1700 Belarusian rubbles), this was enough for somebody on a 200 Euro monthly salary to get agitated. In order to challenge the change in ticket price, public bus system commuters started ticket sharing. A bus passenger would leave the bus at their destination and hand their used ticket to a boarding passenger, free of charge. As Grodno Bus Park tickets had to only be ‘punched’ by the ticket machine located inside the bus in order to be…
FCJ-214 Visions of Urban Informatics: From Proximate Futures to Data-Driven Urbanism
Sarah BarnsInstitute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University [Abstract] Introduction Urban informatics, the nascent field that took as its subject the urban contexts of increasingly connected, smartphone-enabled citizens, is ten years old. Armed with tools of digital experimentation, data science, and design, equipped to decipher and decode complex urban environments, the field is increasingly positioned as a vital contributor to the contemporary urban sciences. The proliferation of distributed computing throughout our cities presents seemingly unlimited opportunities to explore and interrogate the workings of the city using novel methods of information retrieval, analysis and visualisation. Reflecting this opportunity, investment in urban informatics research capability is growing. In 2012, three significant research institutes focused on establishing city-focused data sciences capabilities were created in New York alone, [1] joining existing groups such as Queensland University of Technology’s Urban Informatics Research Lab and the MIT SENSEable City Lab in promoting the applications of…
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