Marcos P. Dias

https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526135780/

The machinic city reveals the potential of performance art to create spaces for reflection and deliberation on contemporary urban living and to speculate on the future of cities. As social and spatial interactions in the city become increasingly mediated by machines, performance art can help us reflect on the new modes of subjectivity that emerge as human and machine agency become intermingled and digital media permeates the urban fabri

Several case studies of urban art interventions are analysed and discussed as examples of the potential of the aesthetic machine of performance art, as it assembles with media, Capitalist, human and urban machines. These case studies reveal the importance of acknowledging dissensus as a constitutive factor of urban life and as a means of countering machinist determinism in present and future conceptualisations of city life.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

1 A Machine To See With

2 Probing the machine of performance art

3 Rethinking machines

4 The aesthetic machine

5 Participation in the machinic city

6 Future machines

Conclusion

Author bio:

Marcos Dias is an Assistant Professor at the School of Communications, Dublin City University. He completed a PhD in Media Studies in the University of Melbourne, Australia in 2015 and also holds a MSc with Distinction in Interactive Digital Media from Trinity College Dublin. His research investigates the social and spatial impact of digital technologies in the contemporary mediated city.