Announcing FCJ29: Computing the City

We are happy to announce the publication of FCJ29: Computing the City (https://twentynine.fibreculturejournal.org) edited by Armin Beverungen, Florian Sprenger and Su Ballard.

Issue 29 : FCJ-212 Computing The City

issue doi:10.15307/fcj.29 introduction doi:10.15307/fcj.29.212.2017 Introduction by Armin Beverungen of Leuphana University Lüneburg and Florian Sprenger of Goethe University Frankfurt. Ubiquitous computing and the Internet of Things are often referred to as prime examples not only of new modes of computing, but of a new paradigm of mediation itself. If Lewis Mumford could already ascribe key…

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FCJ-221 Collecting Elements of a Minor Future: Commoning in Alphabet City­

Soenke Zehle xm:lab – Experimental Media Lab, Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Saar, Germany [Abstract] Much more than an exercise in urban development, the smart city is the harbinger of a providential processuality, announcing yet another machine age of algorithmic architectures. Marked by the missionary rhetoric and sense of manifest destiny immanent in the infrastructural informatisation…

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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?…

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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…

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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…

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FCJ-217 Socio-Technical Imaginaries of a Data-Driven City: Ethnographic Vignettes from Delhi

Sandeep MertiaThe Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi [Abstract] Several decades from now cities will have countless autonomous, intelligently functioning IT systems that will have perfect knowledge of users’ habits and energy consumption, and provide optimum service … The goal of such a city is to optimally regulate and control resources…

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FCJ-216 ‘Know Your Place’: headmap manifesto and the Vision of Locative Media

Dale Leorke Melbourne School of Design, The University of Melbourne [Abstract] What is the point of all the extraordinary technical inventions the world now has at its disposal if the conditions are lacking to derive any benefit from them, if they contribute nothing to leisure, if imagination is absent? Constant Nieuwenhuys, ‘Another City for Another…

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FCJ-215 Demoing unto Death: Smart Cities, Environment, and Preemptive Hope

Orit HalpernDepartment of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University Gökçe GünelSchool of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, University of Arizona [Abstract] Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living.(Nicholas Negroponte, 1995: 6) Today, growing concerns with climate change, energy scarcity, security, and economic collapse have turned the focus of urban planners, investors,…

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FCJ-213 Babylonian Dreams: From Info-Cities to Smart Cities to Experimental Collectivism

Clemens Apprich Leuphana University, Lüneburg. [Abstract] Welcome to post-liberal Los Angeles, where the defense of luxury lifestyles is translated into proliferation of new repressions in space and movement, undergirded by the ubiquitous “armed response”. This obsession with physical security systems, and, collaterally, with the architectural policing of social boundaries, has become a zeitgeist of urban…

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