Goodwin, Mitch (2011) Cyber City Mesh. [Creative Work]

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Abstract

The prefecture of Akihbara is a grid. But unlike Le Corbusier's geometric Cartesian enclave this grid presents a more complex navigation – an information matrix, a repetition of space both physical and virtual. Wired for data and humming with electricity its atmosphere is thick with vectoral spectrums of push, pull and exchange. A home page of RSS feeds, semicodes and AdWords, a hive of resource and reference structures with more exit points than entry points – a network ecology for the internet imaginaire. "The Cyber City Mesh" installation recognises this as a metaphor for our mobile device enabled interconnectedness. We have become the camera, the node and the fibre on which the human network is self replicating.

Research Statement

Research Background	The city as metaphor. The Google map as network device. A hybrid of 20th century silicon technology and mass entertainment marketing, the streetscape of Akihabara and its many sidewalk bazaars peddle a unique pop cultural blend of western megatainment and Japanese iconography. Writ large, this meta-narrative pulses, while within its midst the rhizomatic structure of the network hive shifts its associations replicating themselves within screens within screens. On the periphery, evidence of this abounds and yet the origins of this collision are rapidly dissolving as new techno-cultural forms emerge.
Research Contribution	Placing images in wooden frames of course aestheticises the printed image above the mobile devices they are designed to represent. The light box beneath the large print of Google Earth's rendering of Tokyo's Akihabara magnifies the bitumen, concrete and glass structures which constitute its assemblage.
Research Significance	The mode of the installation is designed to represent the site at which the grid of the network meets the human counterpoint through the lens of the personal mobile device. Through physical assemblage this tactile work is designed to engender an understanding of the processes which have evolved via networked communication and the role that urban design is playing in its evolution - rather than purely user-centric ergonomic design.
Item ID:	26483
Item Type:	Creative Work
Media of Output:	Light table, large scale inkjet print, small photographic images printed on transluscent acetate, wooden picture frames and perspex.
Keywords:	akihabara, cyber city, mobile technology, network culture, photographic installation
Related URLs:	Organisation
Additional Information:	This work was exhibited in Dark Euphoria: Unclassified Media at the eMerge Media Space, Townsville from October 2011-March 2012.
Date Deposited:	24 May 2013 05:56
FoR Codes:	19 STUDIES IN CREATIVE ARTS AND WRITING > 1905 Visual Arts and Crafts > 190503 Lens-based Practice @ 60% 19 STUDIES IN CREATIVE ARTS AND WRITING > 1905 Visual Arts and Crafts > 190504 Performance and Installation Art @ 20% 20 LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE > 2002 Cultural Studies > 200204 Cultural Theory @ 20%
SEO Codes:	95 CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING > 9501 Arts and Leisure > 950104 The Creative Arts (incl. Graphics and Craft) @ 100%
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