Open
Open is a “bi-annual journal about art and the public domain” - although I think it’s fair to say it covers all sorts of topics related to space and culture. Here are a few of the articles available online:
‘How Many Movements?’ Mobile Telephones and Transformations in Urban Space by Caroline Bassett
Mobile telephones create aural space that is both technological and imaginary. Caroline Basset explores the new spatial economy that is the result of the dynamics between physical and virtual space, between old and new space. Fragmentation and individualization are not her primary findings. Rather, according to Basset, the changing dialectics of presence/absence also generate new types of connectedness and continuity, of mobile subjectivity.
Public Interventions. The Shifting Meaning of the Urban Condition by Saskia Sassen
Saskia Sassen, professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, is specialized in the influence that globalization and digitization processes have on the transformations of urban space. In this essay, she looks at the possibilities of artistic practice to ‘make’ public space that can produce unsettling stories and make visible that which is local and has been silenced.
Mindful Disconnection: Counterpowering the Panopticon from the Inside by
Howard Rheingold and Eric KluitenbergIn this article, media experts Howard Rheingold and Eric Kluitenberg ask us to consider if unquestioned connectivity – the drive to connect everything to everything, and everyone to everyone by means of electronic media – is necessarily a good thing. To stimulate ideas, the authors propose a possible alternative: a practice of ‘mindful disconnection’, or rather the ‘art of selective disconnectivity’.
Urban Media and the Politics of Sound Space by Jonathan Sterne
Muzak, also known as ‘nonaggressive music deterrent’, is used more and more often as a strategic weapon in the effort to make public space ‘safe’ and controllable. But according to Jonathan Sterne, its use is primarily aimed at excluding non-consumers – whereas he believes it should be seen as a vital component of urban design. In Sterne’s opinion, besides an aesthetical dimension, sound also has a political and ethical dimension.