Urban Projection - Project Development

Our team has worked closely together from the beginning of the semester. Many of the assignments and activities of the group have been workshopped within the group and undertaken together. Through this dialogue, the various activities, readings and personal research, I have developed the following interests.

Wi-fi voids - Access to free wi-fi across the Sydney CBD is currently being developed by the State Government. The potential for this technology to radically re-shape our habits and reorganise work and leisure is significant. It is likely that long before 2030 we will be able to achieve permanent connection all the time within the public realm. Will there be a counter desire to move into connection voids? To escape? Does this offer the potential to design ‘wi-fi free’ environments. (A)voids? Blocking the wi-fi signal can be achieved via a technological disruption of the signal or via material intervention. A UK based military contractor is currently developing a ‘wallpaper’ to block wi-fi signals. This new material is based on the same technology developed to allow the ‘stealth’ bomber’s skin to evade radar detection.

The Glitch - By week 4 our team had begun to investigate the idea of the ‘intervention’ taking the form of a digital game. This opened up a lot of ideas within the group and has been a driving concept. One particular area of interest for me was the idea of the ‘glitch’. A disruption of the game that could be the result of a crossing of the real and the virtual or a slip in the system. Like the ‘a-voids’ the glitch was a way to articulate a form of escape from the rules. This idea was further enriched by the specific use of the term within gaming. Players that seek to take advantage of an error in a program are named by others as ‘glitchers’. Sometimes a glitcher will use the glitch to win, other times they use it to explore beyond the framework, to create new narratives. While Glitches are generally understood to be mistakes there is some speculation that they may be actually programmed into the game to give advanced users an alternative space in which to play.

The Game as mediator – While initial discussion of the game focused on arcade game style scenarios I have explored the idea that the game might instead be the ‘mediator’ or ‘device’ to explore a virtual scenario of the future within the present.

The game then becomes a platform for speculation. How will the citizens of the future use technology? Navigate it, adapt it and corrupt it? How will they negotiate a world that is at once more remotely connected and physically ‘planned’ and idealised? The video game is a virtual world but so perhaps is Sydney of the 2030 plan. Does Sustainable Sydney 2030 sustain a city or an image? What is the imagined real and what is the game?

Repro City – All indications are that the future city will be more virtually connected; that technology will pervade every aspect of our daily lives. While for some this may signal a fear about being ‘controlled’ through a vast array of information sets it may in fact lead to the opposite. Technology will still be used to regulate society, to increase efficiency, to sell stuff, to research the market. But it will equally be used to socially connect, to play, to live a fantasy, to save time to waste time. It may enable us to manage the sustainability of the planet, to move away from objects to digital design and prevent the production of surplus and waste. It may enable everyday citizens to mobilise opinion (quickly) and thereby strengthen the democratic process. What will happen when we have the ability to reprogram overnight rather than rebuild?