This is the conclusion of my thesis From Metaphysics to Metadata. Aesthetics and Politics of Interface. Click to read the first, second, and third part.
In the conclusion of my work I give a few examples of how new stereotypes can be created and spread through the media, thus modifying the interface by the creation of new strategic and socially-conscious metadata: the Muslim punk-rockers depicted in The Taqwacores, the Hip Hop Clowns documented in David LaChapelle’s Rize, or the black-nerd comedy showcased in The Awkward Comedy Show are some of the cases where new figures are promoted to change limiting stereotypes (for example the ghetto = gangster equation) and open new spaces for identity. Sometimes whole countries can reclaim their own version of globalized genres – like sci-fi, in the case of District 9 or Ataque de Pànico.
In the closing lines I propose a mapping of such virtuous uses of metadata and the definition of somewhat of a metadata ethics, in order to take conscience of stereotype and proceed to outline new strategies to escape it.
This is the third part of my thesis From Metaphysics to Metadata. Aesthetics and Politics of Interface. Check back to read the first part and the second part.
In this chapter I define four main types of metadata and four stereotypical figures to exemplify each of them respectively: structural metadata (the Nerd), textural metadata (the Hipster), body metadata (the Comedian), and metadata of scale (the Gangster). The former two are characterized by higher levels of choice and agency, the latter two are instead metadata beyond choice, labels one is subjected to rather than active tools for participation in infrastructure and interface.(more…)
Starting from the example of urban simulacra (in form of virtual environments, mapping applications, or augmented reality renderings), in this chapter I introduce how a virtual infrastructure actualizes into an interface by means of metadata. Relying on Gilles Deleuze’s concept of virtual as used by Pierre Levy, and especially on Michel Foucault’s heterotopia, I also explain the connections between urban simulacra and some emerging practices in urban design and architecture. In particular, I highlight the relationship between the XML node and the shipping container. Referring to Alexander Galloway’s Protocol, I point out how the use of informational units as both a communication device and a content shape is a common protocological practice in both urban simulacra and actual globalized urban landscapes. (more…)
Starting from today, I will publish my thesis From Metaphysics to Metadata. Aesthetics and Politics of Interface on this blog. Since nobody wants to read some 70 pages in blog format, I’m attaching it in four separate PDFs introduced by as many short abstracts. So here it goes, I hope to receive some feedback.
This work is a conceptualization of the use of stereotype, as it is deployed as both an active and a passive tool to read people and space as information. Stereotypical tags are attached to professionals as well as immigrants, to particular places or whole neighborhoods. If people and space are data, stereotypes are then metadata, images extracted from a globalized imagery. Metadata affects the imagination of identities, leading them to adhere to certain pre-formatted formulas, and the perception of space, as it is constructed both physically and culturally. (more…)
“My nephew has HDADD: Hi-Definition Attention Deficit Disorder. He can barely pay attention, but when he does it’s unbelievably clear.” – Steven Wright
Since Twitter came out it was pretty obvious it was something else. Its minimal, quasi-zen approach (short haiku-style posts, ultra-light interface, a very “carpe diem” real-time nature) won many users over. But why would such a restrictive, limited social network become so popular? There are so many more things you can do via MySpace or Facebook, where you can easily embed everything possibly embeddable.
Nonetheless, although Mark Zuckerberg‘s well-tested money-making machine is still bigger than Twitter (I’d go as far as to say it’s almost necessary for internet users), the social colossus has been learning a lot from its younger, smarter brother.
The “twitterification” of Facebook has raised some perplexities and the opening of that once closed and well-guarded environment wouldn’t necessarily be a good thing for their business. I like the definition of Facebook as a “gated community” (read here): you can easily do everything you need on the internet inside of it and forget about the outside web. This has been part of the network’s strenght in the past, one more reason why it is both scary and addictive.
While Twitter’s openness (making information public and searchable in real-time) has definitely played a major role in the social network’s rise to pop culture phenomenon, replacing Facebook as the next internet thing, I think there is another factor worth analyzing (and no, it’s not journalist A.D.D.). (more…)
In one of the last scenes of Werner Herzog‘s Where the Green Ants Dream (1984) an Aborigine stands up in a court room to speak up against some mineral excavations happening in a sacred tribal ground. The judge asks for a translation, but nobody can provide it. The man is called “the Mute”, being the last living member of his village and the only one in the world left speaking his native language.
This saddening scenario may not just be a relevant piece of cinema, but a likely future for many of today’s less technology-savvy linguistic minorities.
Although there are diverging opinions about it, there are from 4,000 to 7,000 languages currently spoken in the world, but on the internet English reigns as an unquestioned king (enlightened, yet patronizing), since the first bit was transmitted back in the ’60s. Nevertheless, despite it being the globalization’s lingua franca, more languages and some interesting linguistic phenomena have been emerging on the net in the past years, drawing the attention of linguists and media scholars. The Multilingual Internet, published by Oxford University Press and edited by Brenda Danet and Susan C. Herring, is a very interesting and significative attempt at making sense of such phenomena, in both their novelty and urgency. (more…)
This is an article I wrote for Ymag about the Venice Biennale in 2009.
The similarities between the Architecture and the Art Biennale in Venice are getting more and more evident, but this is not limited to aesthetic intersections like building deconstruction or the invasion of the white cube by contemporary art pieces. Visual artists and architects overlap not only in the public/exhibition space, but in their very design practice. (more…)
