Networked Mobilities and Performative Urban Environments: Keynote paper for the Conference Space Interaction Discourse

Abstract

Physical mobility has an important cultural dimension to contemporary life. The movement of objects, signs, and people constitutes material sites of networked relationships. However, as an increasing number of mobility practices are making up our everyday life experiences the movement is much more than a travel from point A to point B. The mobile experiences of the contemporary society are practices that are meaningful and normatively embedded. That is to say, mobility is seen as a cultural phenomenon shaping notions of self and other as well as the relationship to sites and places. Furthermore, an increasing number of such mobile practices are mediated by technologies of tangible and less tangible sorts. Thus by focusing on the complex relationship between material and virtual technologies within the sphere of mobility it is shown that we need to move beyond dichotomies of; global or local, nomad or sedentary, digital or material. The paper investigates the meaning of mobility and the potential in mediation and technologies to enhance the experiences and interaction in relation to urban transit spaces. In understanding the importance of mediation, global-local interactions, networks, and the distributions of meaning and mediated discourses this way of thinking about mobilities points to the importance of understanding pervasive computing and situated technologies. In particular a critical awareness to how such technologies shape the foreground/background attention of social agents seems crucial. By studying embedded technologies and ‘ambient environments' we increase our knowledge about the over layering of the material environment with digital technologies. The presences of GPS, mediated surfaces, mobile agents (robots), RFID and other technologies that all relate to contemporary mobility practices add a new dimension to the notion of movement and constitutes new arenas and tools for identity construction and social interaction (as well as of course commercial exploitation and state control). In the creation and design of new interaction spaces applying urban technology there is a potential for conceptual critique but also for discussing these mediated sites of interaction as venues for new meaningful social interaction and relationships ultimately shaping new ways of thinking about the political. It is argued that the design and experimentation with ‘<em>performative urban environments</em>' constitutes a field of explorations into broader issues of democracy, multiple publics, and new mobile (electronic and material) agoras pointing towards a critical re-interpretation of contemporary politics of space and mobility.