For years, pundits have trumpeted the earthshattering changes that big data and smart networks will soon bring to our cities. But what if cities have long been built for intelligence, maybe for millennia? In Code and Clay, Data and Dirt Shannon Mattern advances the provocative argument that our urban spaces have been “smart” and mediated for thousands of years. Offering powerful new ways of thinking about our cities, Code and Clay, Data and Dirt goes far beyond the standard historical concepts of origins, development, revolutions, and the accomplishments of an elite few. Mattern shows that in their architecture, laws, street layouts, and civic knowledge—and through technologies including the telephone, telegraph, radio, printing, writing, and even the human voice—cities have long negotiated a rich exchange between analog and digital, code and clay, data and dirt, ether and ore. Mattern’s vivid prose takes readers through a historically and geographically broad range of stories, scenes, and locations, synthesizing a new narrative for our urban spaces. Taking media archaeology to the city’s streets, Code and Clay, Data and Dirt reveals new ways to write our urban, media, and cultural histories.
The past twenty years have seen a building boom for downtown public libraries. From Brooklyn to Seattle, architects, civic leaders, and citizens in major U.S. cities have worked to reassert the relevance of the central library. While the libraries’ primary functions—as public spaces where information is gathered, organized, preserved, and made available for use—have not changed over the years, the processes by which they accomplish these goals have. These new processes, and the public debates surrounding them, have radically influenced the utility and design of new library buildings. In The New Downtown Library, Shannon Mattern draws on a diverse range of sources to investigate how libraries serve as multiuse public spaces, anchors in urban redevelopment, civic icons, and showcases of renowned architects like Rem Koolhaas, Cesar Pelli, and Enrique Norton. Mattern’s clear and careful analysis reveals the complexity of contemporary dialogues in library design, highlighting the roles that staff, the public, and other special interest groups play. Mattern also describes how the libraries manifest changing demographics, new ways of organizing collections and delivering media, and current philosophies of librarianship. By identifying unifying themes as well as examining the differences among various design projects, Mattern brings to light the social forces, as well as their architectural expressions, that form the essence of new libraries and their vital place in public life. Featured libraries are located in Brooklyn, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Nashville, New York, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Francisco, Seattle, and Toledo. Shannon Mattern is assistant professor of media studies and film at The New School.
This book offers a reassessment of "smart cities" and reveals what is lost when we conceive of our urban spaces as computers. -- Publisher's description.
This book offers a reassessment of "smart cities" and reveals what is lost when we conceive of our urban spaces as computers. -- Publisher's description.
For years, pundits have trumpeted the earthshattering changes that big data and smart networks will soon bring to our cities. But what if cities have long been built for intelligence, maybe for millennia? In Code and Clay, Data and Dirt Shannon Mattern advances the provocative argument that our urban spaces have been “smart” and mediated for thousands of years. Offering powerful new ways of thinking about our cities, Code and Clay, Data and Dirt goes far beyond the standard historical concepts of origins, development, revolutions, and the accomplishments of an elite few. Mattern shows that in their architecture, laws, street layouts, and civic knowledge—and through technologies including the telephone, telegraph, radio, printing, writing, and even the human voice—cities have long negotiated a rich exchange between analog and digital, code and clay, data and dirt, ether and ore. Mattern’s vivid prose takes readers through a historically and geographically broad range of stories, scenes, and locations, synthesizing a new narrative for our urban spaces. Taking media archaeology to the city’s streets, Code and Clay, Data and Dirt reveals new ways to write our urban, media, and cultural histories.
Going beyond current scholarship on the “media city” and the “smart city,” Shannon Mattern argues that our global cities have been mediated and intelligent for millennia. Deep Mapping the Media City advocates for urban media archaeology, a multisensory approach to investigating the material history of networked cities. Mattern explores the material assemblages and infrastructures that have shaped the media city by taking archaeology literally—using techniques like excavation and mapping to discover the modern city’s roots in time. Forerunners: Ideas First is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital publications. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.
The past twenty years have seen a building boom for downtown public libraries. From Brooklyn to Seattle, architects, civic leaders, and citizens in major U.S. cities have worked to reassert the relevance of the central library. While the libraries’ primary functions—as public spaces where information is gathered, organized, preserved, and made available for use—have not changed over the years, the processes by which they accomplish these goals have. These new processes, and the public debates surrounding them, have radically influenced the utility and design of new library buildings. In The New Downtown Library, Shannon Mattern draws on a diverse range of sources to investigate how libraries serve as multiuse public spaces, anchors in urban redevelopment, civic icons, and showcases of renowned architects like Rem Koolhaas, Cesar Pelli, and Enrique Norton. Mattern’s clear and careful analysis reveals the complexity of contemporary dialogues in library design, highlighting the roles that staff, the public, and other special interest groups play. Mattern also describes how the libraries manifest changing demographics, new ways of organizing collections and delivering media, and current philosophies of librarianship. By identifying unifying themes as well as examining the differences among various design projects, Mattern brings to light the social forces, as well as their architectural expressions, that form the essence of new libraries and their vital place in public life. Featured libraries are located in Brooklyn, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Nashville, New York, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Francisco, Seattle, and Toledo. Shannon Mattern is assistant professor of media studies and film at The New School.
This book gives an engaging overview of alligators, from their diet and habitat to how their strong jaws crush prey. Short paragraphs of easy-to-read text are paired with plenty of colorful photos to make reading engaging and accessible.
A lavishly illustrated history and critical appraisal of The Builders Association, an award-winning intermedia performance company, with detailed accounts of its major productions. This book begins with the building of a house, and the building of a company while building the house. It expands to look at the ideas found in various rooms, some of which expanded into virtual space while they still were grounded in the lives of the artists in the house. —from the preface by Marianne Weems The Builders Association, an award-winning intermedia performance company founded in 1994, develops its work in extended collaborations with artists and designers, working through performance, video, architecture, sound, and text to integrate live performance with other media. Its work is not only cross-media but cross-genre—fiction and nonfiction, unorthodox retellings of classic tales and multimedia stagings of contemporary events. This book offers a generously illustrated history and critical appraisal of The Builders Association, written by Shannon Jackson, a leading theater scholar, and Marianne Weems, the founder and artistic director of the company. It also includes critical meditations from such artists and scholars as Elizabeth Diller, Pico Iyer, Saskia Sassen, Kate Valk, and many others. Technological wizardry in the theater has a long history, going back to the deus ex machina of ancient Greek drama. The Builders Association makes its technological dependence visible, putting backstage technologies center stage and presenting architectural assemblies of screens and bodies. Jackson and Weems explore a series of major productions—from MASTER BUILDER (Ibsen by way of Gordon Matta-Clark) to SUPERVISION (an exploration of dataveillance) to HOUSE/DIVIDED (the foreclosure crisis juxtaposed with the Joads of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath). Each work is described through a series of steps, including “R&D,” “Operating Systems,” “Storyboard,” and “Rehearsal/Assembly.” The Builders Association not only traces the evolution of an intermedial aesthetic practice but also tells a story about how a group makes the risky decision to make art in the first place.
This book explores the cause, impact, and aftermath of the volcano that erupted in Hawaii in 2018. Easy-to-read text, compelling photos, and a simple timeline give readers an age-appropriate look at how people prepare for and respond to volcanoes.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.