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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? 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…
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 Life’ (2006/1960: 71) Introduction When the headmap manifesto first appeared in 1999, Google was barely a year old, the U.S. government had not yet removed the GPS signal degradation that prevented its widespread commercial use, and Apple’s iPhone was still almost a decade away. Predominantly written by computer engineer Ben Russell, headmap (always spelt in lower case, although I capitalise it here when beginning a sentence) envisioned a world not entirely unlike the one we inhabit today, in which location-aware devices have radically transformed everyday life. It foreshadows recent developments from the emergence of location-based…
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 restructuring, a master narrative in the emerging built environment of the 1990s. […] Images of carceral inner cities (Escape from New York, Running Man), high-tech police death squads (Blade Runner), sentient buildings (Die Hard), urban bantustans (They live!), Vietnam-like street wars (Colors), and so on, only extrapolate from actually existing trends. (Davis, 1990: 223) In his bestselling book City of Quartz, Mike Davis, urban sociologist and rigorous chronicler of his Southern California home, described the imminent end of the ‘California Dream’ in the early 1990s (cf. Davis, 1990). By ‘excavating the future in Los Angeles’…
FCJ-211 Embodying a Future for the Future: Creative Robotics and Ecosophical Praxis
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 relational process that draws upon interconnected networks of mind, society and environment. My own synthesis, or ecosophical undertaking, is contexualised within the aegis of experimental arts practices, comingled over the past 22 years with diverse historical tendencies in new media arts and net art. In response to societal and environmental imperatives, I have evolved an approach to thinking and working that I call ecosophical, and that involves scoping out a relational, interactive, embodied and interdisciplinary series of interventions that interrogate cultural conditions. This process has involved a broad swathe of media and approaches, and in…
FCJ-210 Falling Robots.
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 disciplines of dance and choreography. Strategies for falling safely in dance are compared with engineering approaches to controlling falling for bipedal robots. By this comparison, the article identifies two main areas in which an aesthetic approach to movement might be used to extend falling strategies for humanoid robots. Studying and categorising reflexes used by dancers and humanoid robots in falling, the article proposes that particular reflexes be used as common ground in developing a more communicative language for moving, falling and performing robots. Then, by playing with parameters of movement as dancers and choreographers do,…
FCJ-209 Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Pattern Thinking: An Expanded Analysis of the First Indigenous Robotics Prototype Workshop
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 New World of technological advancement in the field of robotics. Yet, precisely at this juxtaposition a commonality can be drawn. How might we create a space for Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Pattern Thinking to impact and influence future developments in, for example, autonomous systems in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI)? Creating a physical and pedagogical space for an initial foray into these ideas, the Indigenous Robotics Prototype Workshop embarked on practical and creative experimentation along new Indigenous Digital Songlines. This paper is formatted as a dialogue between the lead author, an Indigenous consultant in innovation,…
FCJ-208 This Machine Could Bite: On the Role of Non-Benign Art Robots
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 observation and experience. Intelligent robots are of particular interest to my practice as they combine mobility, service, social interaction and adaptive skills so as to integrate with the fabric of human society as embodied semi-autonomous agents. They also have captured the imagination of a wide public through works of fiction, wherein advanced robot characters have been commonplace for many decades. People, it appears, are curious about the capabilities of intelligent robots. Buoyed by techno-scientific progress and financial interest, the field of robotics is fast gaining visibility and maturity, undergoing a tremendous development effort for research,…
FCJ-207 Game On: A Creative Enquiry into Agency and the Nature of Cognition in Distributed Systems
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 explores what happens to agency in a system where embodied experience is disrupted or extended, based on the understanding that a sense of personal agency is created through actions, and that the actions of others influence our understanding of ourselves as separate from them. Participatory artworks like Game On can be viewed as a form of performative research, creating a system which is analogous in some ways to states of affairs outside that system. [2] In this way, Game On does more than represent possibility: it enables an exploration, in real time and space, of…
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