The Academy develops from the knowledge foundation of the handbook What Urban Media Art Can Do – Why When Where & How?, eds. Susa Pop, Tanya Toft, Nerea Calvillo and Mark Wright (av edition, 2016).
Urban media art is possibly one of the most momentous expansions within the field of contemporary public art. Referring to various forms of media-aesthetic, artistic engagement in urban environments and evolving from a mix of genealogies of media art, avant-garde, architecture, urban development, design and technology, and biology, urban media art creates a space in which artists make, utilize and critically explore innovations in software and technology to create artworks, installations and situations in response to the urban discourses and urgencies of our time.
What Urban Media Art Can Do – Why When Where and How? engages leading thinkers, artists, curators, architects and designers in an exploration of the aesthetic, theoretical, technological and practical conditions of what urban media art can do. The publication considers artistic responses to current urban threats and discourses in a time characterised by specific technological literacies and constructions of meaning, contextualised within theoretical perspectives.
The publication departs from the global, exploratory research undertaken by the Connecting Cities Network into media art’s contribution to urban culture and environments, architecture and co-creation of cities (2013-2016). It features a number of recent artworks and urban media environments from around the world, which critically engage with geospatial, (trans)local, hybrid, intelligent urban contexts and visions for digital placemaking. These artworks contribute to developing the still-emerging domain of urban media art.
New and classic benchmark essays by Inke Arns, Josef Bares, Moritz Behrens, Maurice Benayoun, Claire Bishop, Martin Brynskov, Sandy Claes, Matthew Claudel, Marcus Foth, Eric Kluitenberg, Susa Pop, Carlo Ratti, Ava Fatah gen. Schieck, Mark Shepard, Henriette Steiner, Norbert Streitz, Tanya Toft, Martin Tomitsch, Andrew Vande Moere, Kazys Varnelis, Kristin Veel, Nanna Verhoeff, Martijn de Waal, Peter Weibel, Katharine Willis, Niels Wouters, Mark Wright, and Soenke Zehle outline major historical moments and critical concerns relating to the current transformation of society in our digital era, to which urban media art respond.
Edited by Susa Pop, Tanya Toft, Nerea Calvillo and Mark Wright