La mia presentazione dal titolo "Citynet - The City as Macro-Media" presentata al symposium "Spaces, Images, Communication: Improving New Urban Models" da me organizzato per il festival Screen City (Stavanger - NO)

1. CITYNET
The city as macro-media
Simone Arcagni
University of Palermo

2. SCREENCITY
DIGITAL CITY
CITY AS
MACRO-MEDIA
CITYNET

3. Informational city
SCREENCITY - DIGITAL CITY
From modern to postmodern metropolis: from Paris described by Walter
Benjamin to Las Vegas analyzed by Robert Venturi and coming up to the
present, the meeting between the urban system and the mass media has
defined a universe of images.

4. Jean Baudrillard
Videosphere
(Régis Debray)
Stereoreality
Megaoscopie
(Paul Virilio)
City of Bits
Networked City
(William J Mitchell)
Informational City
(Manuel Castells)

5. Screencity
SCREENCITY - DIGITAL CITY
Cities incorporate digital displays and become a platform for
a grid of media visions.

6. Screen City
(Simone Arcagni)
City as a media
(Friedrich A. Kittler and
Matthew Griffin)
City as Interface
(Martij de Waal)

7. Digital city
SCREENCITY - DIGITAL CITY
An “in-depth hybrid” city, with a “new digital DNA”.
The Third Wave (Self-media)
(Heidi and Alvin Toffler)

8. Ubiquitous city
SCREENCITY - DIGITAL CITY
... more than a place where media combine and coexist. It is instead a
post-medial aumented macro - medium.
“From windows to screens” ... “and the return”.

9. Computer city
SCREENCITY - DIGITAL CITY
Mark Shepard calls this in depth hybryd city, Computer City:
1. Ubiquitous Computing
2. Locative Media

10. Screencity as macro-media
SCREENCITY AS MACRO-MEDIA
The city has become the macro-media where different media
and different devices meet and redefine public space and social
interaction.
A new macro-media crisscrossed by wires and waves, capable of
keeping us connected and located.
A macro-media that is a place in which people can been informed,
see and communicate, with screens that are the interface for
accessing (and also managing) digital information flows.

11. City as macro-media
SCREENCITY AS MACRO-MEDIA
Contemporary screens combine the different functions they served in
the past:
1. screens for concealment, for covering places;
2. screens on which images could be projected (as happened in
cinema);
3. screens for video transimission. Screens capable both of shooting
and showing (as happened with tablets and smartphones) like the
Lumiere machine.
LED lighting | Digital technology | Internet connection

12. Screens
SCREENCITY AS MACRO-MEDIA
1. Urban Screens
2. Media Architecture
3. Portable Media

13. Sentient City (Mark Shepard)
CITYNET
“Today, as computing leaves the desktop and spills out onto the
sidewalks, streets and public spaces of the city, we increasingly find
information processing capacity embedded within and distributed
throughout the material fabric of everyday urban space”.
“Ubiquitous computing avengelists herald a coming age of urban
infrastructures capable of sensing and responding to this events and
activities transpiring within the city”.

14. Citynet
CITYNET
Citynet is the result of a deep hybridation between real and virtual
space, a new expanded dimension of space and urban space
experience.
Citynet is a ubiquitous dimension of urban space, accessible in
different spaces and times, a dimension expanded in space, created
at the intersection of real and virtual places.
Citynet is the product of objects and architectural computerization,
the environment cover through the connections and stratifications of
places, maps, information, and participation made from geolocation.

15. Citynet
CITYNET
Citynet is not a city, but a urban space increased to which you can
connect, navigate, and inhabit, in which, according to the temporal
scan decided by the user, different experiences can be made in any
place.
Citynet lives in the looks that inhabit it and pass through, but those
same looks work to modify it, interacting with this space through
comments, photos, blogs, sites, texts, links and tags.

16. Citynet
CITYNET
Citynet is this spatial dimension that invests real places and daily
practices transforming each of us in citizen-users that acquire and
produce information through their performativity.
Our presence itself and our daily actions modify Citynet’s space and
each screen, public or private, institutional or commercial, portable
or architectural, becomes a window and a mirror, but mostly a
threshold through which access expanded and increased spaces of
our experience.

17. A Day Made of Glass
CITYNET
A Day Made of Glass...
1. The future of urban space
2. Emergent technologies
3. Comunicational models
... this space is: expanded | augmented | postmedial

18. The features of the Citynet
CITYNET
• The Internet of Things
• Spime (Bruce Sterling)
• Informational Architecture
• Social Memory and Networked Objects (Chris Speed)
• More than 50 billions objects connected until 2020 (Leandro Agrò)
For Jason Farman the keywords of the Internet of Thing are:
•
•
•
•
•
Embodiment
Mapping
Locative interfaces
Immersion
Ubiquitousness

19. The features of the Citynet
CITYNET
• Sensors
• Microchips
• New connections
• Clouding computing
• Geolocalization
• New screens

20. Beyond the screens
CITYNET

21. Glass
CITYNET

22. Holographic Images
CITYNET

23. Touch screens
CITYNET

24. Connected and Geolocalized
CITYNET

25. Motion sensing control
CITYNET

26. Videomapping and architecturial projection technologies
CITYNET

27. THANK YOU