‘Indexical Landscapes’ Symposium with Shannon Mattern

By Marielle Verni in Workshops on November 7, 2015

PAST DATES:
Thursday, October 29, 2015, 6-9pm, The Wind Tunnel Graduate Center for Critical Practice,
950 S. Raymond Ave, Pasadena, CA 91105

Indexical Landscapes, hosted by Shannon Mattern, with Jason Weems, Emily Bills, Jesse LeCavalier, Mark Vallianatos, Lorie Velard, and Richard Wheeler.

Our streets stream data from embedded sensors, our metropoles splinter into districts defined by delivery logistics or crime data, while our contested zones yield their secrets to drone surveillance. Our cities and metropolitan regions are code-spaces, algorithmic landscapes, with layers of data and informational networks laid atop, and often spilling over, their traditional geographic boundaries. “Now, There: Scenes from the Post-Geographic City,” a concurrent exhibition in Art Center for Design’s gallery, will feature projects that explore these new forms and practices of digital urbanity. Yet even without their datified dressings, our landscapes have long been shaped using techniques and technologies that render them “intelligent” and intelligible – either to we humans who inhabit them, or to the various tools we use to cultivate, navigate, and operationalize them. So many of our landscapes – from factory farms and container ports, to libraries and factories, to airwaves and railways and codifed urban “zones” – materialize, and even render perceptible, the logics behind their own organization, management, and use. This panel discussion examines myriad such “indexical landscapes,” those spaces shaped to refer to their own organized content and operative logics.

To find out more about this event please visit:

– Sharon Mattern’s post on her personal site

– Media Practices