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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
Keith Armstrong Queensland University of Technology [Abstract] Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss (1995) defined ecosophy as a form of personal, relational and intersubjective philosophy, or a guiding series of principles, which he contrasted with the discipline(s) of ecophilosophy. Ecosophy was subsequently developed by a number of commentators, notably Félix Guattari (1995) who categorised it as a…
Lian Loke The University of Sydney [Abstract] Falling is not usually viewed as a desirable act for humanoid robots, as it can lead to damage and injury of people, things and the robot itself. This article explores how falling can be viewed as an aesthetic, creative, and indeed desirable act, through positioning it within the…
Angie Abdilla Robert Fitch The University of Sydney [Abstract] https://fibreculturejournal.org/AbdillaFitch.mp4 Introduction It could seem to some that Indigenous Knowledge is fundamentally at odds with the contemporary digital age, and with Western society’s thirst and demand for new knowledge to be constantly generated. Furthermore, it would also seem diametrically opposed to science-led ventures into the Brave…
Paul GranjonCardiff School of Art and Design, Cardiff Metropolitan University [Abstract] This paper explores the phenomenon of social robots from the perspective of an electronic artist, a practitioner making robots and other machines within an artistic context. My art objects are vehicles for reflecting on the co-evolution of humans and machines, a reflection informed by…
Michaela Davies [Abstract] Introduction The focus of this paper is a participatory artwork, Game On, which is a boxing “game” where one participant can control the actions of another via electric muscle stimulation. [1] The paper explores Game On as a creative enquiry into agency and the nature of cognition in distributed systems. Game On…