Visualizations of Urban Space: Digital Age, Aesthetics, and Politics PDF
Preview Visualizations of Urban Space: Digital Age, Aesthetics, and Politics
VISUALIZATIONS OF URBAN SPACE This book explores environments where art, imagination, and creative practice meet urban spaces at the point where they connect to the digital world. It investigates relation- ships between urban visualizations, aesthetics, and politics in the context of new tech- nologies, and social and urban challenges toward the Sustainable Development Goals. Responding to questions stemming from critical theory, the book focuses on an interdisciplinary actualization of technological developments and social challenges. It demonstrates how art, architecture, and design can transform culture, society, and na- ture through artistic and cultural achievements, integration, and new developments. The book begins with the theoretical framework of social aesthetics theories before discussing global contemporary visual culture and technological evolution. Across the 12 chapters, it looks at how architecture and design play signifcant roles in causing and solving com- plex environmental transformations in the digital turn. By fostering transdisciplinary encounters between architecture, design, visual arts, and cinematography, this book pre- sents diferent theoretical approaches to how the arts’ interplay with the environment responds to the logic of the constructions of reality. This book will appeal to scholars, researchers, and upper-level students in aesthetics, philosophy, visual cultural studies, communication studies, and media studies with a particular interest in sociopolitical and environmental discussions. Christiane Wagner is a visiting research professor at the Contemporary Art Museum of the University of São Paulo (MAC USP), Brazil. Her research focuses on culture, media, education, image studies, and the interface of architecture, art, design, and digital technology concerning cultural heritage, politics, postcolonial aesthetics, and urbaniza- tion. She is a member of the Scientifc Committee of the Society for Interdisciplinary Image Science in Germany. Wagner is also a member of the International Committee and chair of the International Publications Subcommittee of the College Art Association of A merica (CAA) New York. Advances in Urban Sustainability Urban Sustainability in Theory and Practice Urban Sustainability in Theory and Practice Circles of Sustainability Paul James Sustainability Citizenship in Cities Theory and Practice Edited by Ralph Horne, John Fien, Beau B. Beza, and Anitra Nelson Street Fights in Copenhagen Bicycle and Car Politics in a Green Mobility City Jason Henderson and Natalie Marie Gulsrud Adaptation Urbanism and Resilient Communities Transforming Streets to Address Climate Change Billy Fields and John L. Renne Performance Metrics for Sustainable Cities Edited by Sylvie Albert and Manish Pandey The City is an Ecosystem Sustainable Education, Policy, and Practice Edited by Deborah Mutnick, Margaret Cuonzo, Carole Grifths, Timothy Leslie, and Jay M. Shuttleworth Visualizations of Urban Space Digital Age, Aesthetics, and Politics Christiane Wagner For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Advances-in-Urban-Sustainability/book-series/AUS VISUALIZATIONS OF URBAN SPACE Digital Age, Aesthetics, and Politics Christiane Wagner Designed cover image: Christiane Wagner First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Christiane Wagner The right of Christiane Wagner to be identifed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-32417-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-32418-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-31494-3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003314943 Typeset in Bembo by codeMantra For Nikolas, my son CONTENTS Foreword by Morton Schoolman ix Introduction 1 1 Cultural Images: Real and Imagined Experiences 12 2 Urban Space and Collective Consciousness 29 3 The Arts and Traces of the Ideal City 45 4 Democratization of Art and Culture 60 5 Visual Media Efects 76 6 Urban Resilience: Toward Postcolonial Aesthetics 91 7 Sociopolitical Facts, Art, and Technology 108 8 Technicization and Aestheticization of Social and Urban Structures 124 9 The Urban Image in Motion and Connection 141 viii Contents 10 The Arts’ Function: Social Inclusion and Sustainability 159 11 Designing for Sustainability 175 12 Aesthetic, Social, and Urban Solutions for a New World View 192 Index 211 FOREWORD By teaching us to actively perceive what we passively see, to understand at deeper levels the life whose surface alone our eyes record, Christiane Wagner’s Visual- izations of Urban Space: Digital Age, Aesthetics, and Politics undertakes the timely, invaluable work of illumination. Visualizations reveals the meaning and signif- cance of images that are the irrepressible ofspring of the continuous interactions between metropolitan habitats, their omniform aesthetics, cultural processes, and broadband social media. Wagner’s contribution is to discover within this open- ended network of evolving interconnections powerful new sources for enlight- enment that are able to make us aware of immanent and potentially imminent possibilities for world-historical democratic social change. Such change changes everything. For our world, at our historical point in time, changing everything means nothing less than a planetary future newly populated by an all-inclusive community of social diferences who respect and protect the natural world on which it depends for its every breath. To achieve those ends, Visualizations shows that image and sustainability must be taught together. As I have no doubt Wagner’s remarkable book will inspire a like-minded super-abundance of uplifting thoughts and feelings, I want to share my own frst reaction to her work. I realized I had been waiting for “this book,” one whose author had the breadth and depth, theoretical imagination, and clear under- standing of what can be done to nurture a public sphere devoted to the politi- cal possibility of a sustainable environment. It is an incipient public sphere that we—earth’s inhabitants—are already always engaged in that ofers the promise of a critical consciousness able to redirect our form of life to diferent ends. It is that consciousness that Wagner seeks to educate, while the diferent ends to which her pedagogy leads culminate in a sustainable future. To Wagner, nothing is more important. Nothing more possible. Morton Schoolman Professor of Political Science State University of New York at Albany
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