[MEL] Mobility, cosmopolitanism and public space...

peter_j

RMIT ARCHITECTURE AND FEDERATION SQUARE PRESENT
ARCHITECTURE + PHILOSOPHY PUBLIC LECTURE SERIES

Mobility, cosmopolitanism and public space in the media city
Scott McQuire

6:00pm Thursday, 13 September at the BMW Edge, Federation Square

What happens when the TV screen leaves home and moves out into the
street? Public space in the 21st century is increasingly shaped by
interactions between media platforms and architectural structures.
The result is the formation of media-architecture complexes which are
fast coalescing into 'media cities'. The social implications of the
new public spaces created at the intersection of media networks and
material structures are ambivalent. In a context where fear of
strangers is frequently promoted as a strategy of political control,
new media forms such as large public screens can play a critical role
in promoting collective interactions in public space. However,
realizing the ideal of cosmopolitan public culture demands strategic
displacement of the flexible forms of power deployed in the public
spaces of contemporary cities.


Scott McQuire is an academic and writer with a strong interest in
interdisciplinary research linking social theory, new media, art, and
urbanism. He is currently a chief investigator on the ARC funded
research project 'Large Screens and the transformation of public
space', and is one of the convenors of the major conference Urban
Screens Melbourne: Mobile Publics to be held at Federation Square in
October 2008. Scott is the author of Crossing the Digital Threshold
(1997), Visions of Modernity (1998), and Maximum Vision (1999),
co-author with Peter Lyssiotis of the limited edition artists' book
The Look of Love (1998), and co-editor with Nikos Papastergiadis of
Empires, Ruins + Networks: The Transcultural Agenda in Art (2005).
Scott teaches in the Media and Communications Program at the
University of Melbourne and his new book The Media City will be
published by Sage as part of the Theory, Culture and Society series
in February 2008.

http://www.architecturephilosophy.rmit.edu.au/