Text-Space Dynamics: the Digital Media in Defining New Urban Languages

Abstract

From the point of view of cultural and media studies, digital media can be taken as a key to approach the understanding of new urban languages, as they introduce new dynamics in the text / space relationship: as a matter of fact, in digital media "texts become spaces", as they become viable (eg in hypertexts and video games); and - on the other side - "spaces become texts", as they become readable and writable (eg in media walls and in geotagging).

Full text

LUGHI
Text-space dynamics
| New Urban Languages Int. Conference, Milan, Italy, 19 -21 June 2013 |
1
Giulio Lughi
Text-Space Dynamics: the Digital Media in
Defining New Urban Languages
This is an author version of the contribution
published on:
Questa è la versione dell’autore pubblicata in:
[Planum, 27, 2, 2013, 1723-0993]
The definitive version is available at:
La versione definitiva è disponibile alla URL:
[http://issuu.com/planumnet/docs/atti_conference_nul_by_planum_n.27__907bf2b2
a88d69]

LUGHI
Text-space dynamics
| New Urban Languages Int. Conference, Milan, Italy, 19 -21 June 2013 |
2
Text-space dynamics
The digital media in defining new urban languages
Giulio LUGHI
Associate Professor of Sociology of Cultural and Communicative Processes
University of Turin, Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning
Keywords: text, space, media, locative, mobile
Introduction
From the point of view of cultural and media studies, digital media can be taken as a
key to approach the understanding of new urban languages, as they introduce new
dynamics in the text / space relationship: as a matter of fact, in digital media "texts
become spaces", as they become viable (eg in hypertexts and video games); and - on
the other side - "spaces become texts", as they become readable and writable (eg in
media walls and in geotagging).
So, in this paper, when we talk about "new urban languages" we mean that the city -
thanks to the digital network infrastructure - have become a semiotic space where the
experience of living and going around is very similar to the experience of reading /
writing, or to the experience of watching a show / acting in theatre, and more generally
to the experience of being a user of the media.

LUGHI
Text-space dynamics
| New Urban Languages Int. Conference, Milan, Italy, 19 -21 June 2013 |
3
Consciously or unconsciously, the modern flâneur equipped with mobile phone, who
moves in the urban space, continuously reads the spectacular performances of the
media walls; or activates the intriguing perspectives offered by augmented reality;
anyway he writes digital traces of his passage, which will be read by the tracking
systems and data mining systems, creating the powerful underground structure of data
and information that binds producers, consumers, digital media and the urban space
into a single complex network.
The relationship between text and space obviously does not concern only the digital
media: it was born in ancient times with the birth of writing [1], and thus with the
transposition of the temporal flow of speech in the delimited space of the page, thereby
starting the close relationship between written code and iconic code which
characterizes our cultural transmission processes.
A relationship that was strengthened with the invention of printing, when the spatial
organization of the text became even more rigid, and when the first mechanical and
technological applications for the transmission of culture - in order to control the
textual spatiality - were carried out on both planes, of written and iconic text: with
movable type print on the one hand; and with devices for the reproduction of
perspective on the other.
Later, at the beginning of the industrial age, the relationship between cultural
processes and urban spaces become institutional: since its foundation, sociology as a
science has been closely related to the theme of the city [2], especially with regards to
the social and cultural changes that urbanization brings in people's lives. Georg
Simmel (The Metropolis and Mental Life, 1903), talks about a "tragedy of culture",
the contradiction experienced by the inhabitants of the city between their own
individuality and the multiplicity of urban forms. Max Weber (Economy and Society,
1921) talks about "disenchantment" as a characteristic feature of modernity, as the
loss of the emotional, spiritual and mythical culture, absent in the urban space
dominated by bureaucratization, mechanization, rationalization.
Somehow, starting from these premises, the age of mass media has gradually produced
a negative interpretation of the text / space relationship, insisting on the concepts of
de-localisation, de-territorialisation, de-spatialization, etc., as founding characteristics

LUGHI
Text-space dynamics
| New Urban Languages Int. Conference, Milan, Italy, 19 -21 June 2013 |
4
of “mass media culture” [3]. And later, at the beginning of digital media age, the
prevailing idea of delocalisation was subsequently extended — as if driven by inertia
— also to the “digital media culture”: extension probably due to the fact that most of
the debate was centred on a high visibility phenomenon (academic, industrial,
emotional, mediatic, etc.) such as Virtual Reality and its presumed distance from
“real” reality.
Today, a more mature theory of digital media has activated a partial revision of this
position, and has gone on to a revaluation of space, guided generally by the
consolidation of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) and the
pervasiveness of the network as a communication environment, and more specifically
by:
• the rise of interactivity in digital media, that means the ability to act on a text as
a practicable space;
• the enormous development of mobile devices and, therefore, the birth of a
scenery naturally placed within a spatial dynamic;
• the growing importance of gamification;
• the general growth of visual culture and data spectacularization;
• the diffusion of social networks as places of meetings and exchanges of
experiences.
A set of five theoretical paradigms, based on relations between space / text /
technology, which represent now a proposal for reasoning on new urban languages.
Digital media and interactivity
Digital media are the transposition of the technical, professional, emotional, cultural
world of mass media into the new technological environment offered by the rise of
ICT. In this transposition, the key elements that characterizes the digital media is the
distinction between two different levels:
- the surface structure: the place - on computer or tablet screens - that offers a view
apparently similar to what we are used to seeing on paper, film and television;

LUGHI
Text-space dynamics
| New Urban Languages Int. Conference, Milan, Italy, 19 -21 June 2013 |
5
- the deep structure: the place - consisting of hardware and software - where the digital
information is processed and made perceptible to the human senses; the deep structure
is a logic engine, based on the underlying database and algorithms, which performs
calculations on abstract entities, but which is able to generate any kind of spectacular
effects in the surface structure.
Thanks to the difference between surface and deep structure, the main characteristic
of digital media is the interactivity. That means that the text becomes able to receive
an input, perform calculations, and return an output: in other words the text - which
was only visibile until then - in the last quarter of the Twentieth Century becomes
practicable, accessible. This transformation of the textual space from visible space to
viable, playable space represents the decisive turning point as opposed to the previous
mass media age.
This turning point was mostly achieved through the two dominant paradigms in
cultural digital text: hypertext and immersive 3D graphics; the first one mostly tied to
the world of writing; the second one to the visual world; but they are both destined to
flow into ever more convergent interactive multimedia forms. In particular, Manovich
[4] emphasizes the difference between the traditional paradigm of media
representation (where the relationship between observer and observed is static) and
the new paradigm of simulation (where the observer moves within the observed
space): a real construction of space as a mediated text, permitted by 3D graphics.
However, Manovich still talks about a user / reader / spectator who is sitting in front
of a computer; whereas the first decade of the Twenty-First Century represents the
phase of mass diffusion of mobile communication devices (mobile phones, smart
phones, portable consoles, media players, e-book players, tablets).
The "mobile / locative" paradigm
In order to place the mobile / locative paradigm in digital media age, Manuel Castells’s
theory [5] is very important for its many references to the urban organization.
Castells's theory highlights three concepts:

LUGHI
Text-space dynamics
| New Urban Languages Int. Conference, Milan, Italy, 19 -21 June 2013 |
6
- the information society: the awareness that the social and cultural life is governed
today by the exchange of information rather than by the movement of goods and
people;
- the space of flows: the technological network that supports and integrates the
physical space, within which social relationships can grow and develop;
- the global city: intended as a the infrastructure of a technological, emotional and
cultural space, within which people can recognize themselves as world citizens.
With the diffusion of mobile communication devices, this paradigm develops ever
more. Locative media are communication systems that use specific location based
technologies in order to give life to significant spatial and temporal relationships
between people, groups and institutions: recovering strong connections with local
realities, creating shared representations of the surrounding territory, becoming a link
between physical reality and the internet.
A profound scenery change has occurred, where - through information technologies -
new forms of embodiment are springing up, reflecting both a physical presence in the
world and a social embedding in a web of practices and purposes, transferring the
realm of virtuality to the realm of everyday experience.
This paradigm shift is determined by the development of the ubicomp (ubiquitous
computing) [6]: it gradually gets rid of the old desktop computer, to make room for
sensors and microcomputers which, associated with an object, can be unequivocally
identified and gather information in real time and in real space.
After all, the Internet of things is a mediated space, since it is an area where are
located, installed and wired many things that are not just objects but also activators,
receptors and transmitters, input and output devices: in other words, communication
tools that transform the physical space in a text area.
The miniaturization of electronic devices takes possession of the space, transform the
world around us in a sort of "liquid Internet", completely different from the the world
of bulky desktop computer: the liquid Internet is the wireless connection of micro
objects, barely visible and scattered everywhere, as a communicative powder (smart
dust) on which is based the semiotic environment of new urban languages [7].

LUGHI
Text-space dynamics
| New Urban Languages Int. Conference, Milan, Italy, 19 -21 June 2013 |
7
Gamification and pervasive gaming
The importance of the ludic dimension has emerged more and more in contemporary
culture: the ludic dimension has progressively lost its negative connotation, acquiring
instead a central position in the socio-cultural dynamics and remodelling the concepts
of loisir, free time, consumption (cultural and non cultural) [8]. The connection
between space and games is physiologic, in the sense that in motion games and street
games, as in many sports, the game allows the player to take control over space and
territory, involving the creation of behavioral models and the appropriation of external
reality.
In this sense, all classic videogames (ability games, adventure games, simulation
games, etc.) represent some forms of control over space: over the game space, where
the adventure takes place; and over the player space, mostly with the extension to the
net, and the diffusion of multiplayer games.
Nintendo Wii must be mentioned relating to consoles. It based its success on the
introduction of the dimension of space: not in the text, but outside it. The Wii, by
extending the remote control and mouse potential out of the screen, introduced a
homology between text and space that well represents - on a symbolic level - the topic
we are discussing about. In the Wii, in fact, the movements of body, arms and legs are
read in the real space and reproduced on the screen, immediately becoming a feedback
for the player. In fact, the player who moves in the physical space writes precise
instructions on the text controlling the game (the deep structure); this text in turn
writes, or better projects, onto the screen a visual text (the surface structure) that
suggests to the human device (the player) how s/he must act.
But from our point of view, the most interesting phenomenon in gamification are now
the pervasive games, an umbrella term for a wide range of situations: location-based
game, location-enabled game, location-aware games, augmented reality games,
alternate reality game, etc. Pervasive games are played using a mobile device, that
means: a) the localization of the player; b) the opportunity to interact with other
players in the surrounding area, by phone or meeting them physically. As can be seen,
the pervasive games are a very complex but interesting example of social discourses

LUGHI
Text-space dynamics
| New Urban Languages Int. Conference, Milan, Italy, 19 -21 June 2013 |
8
constructed in the urban environment, since they involve the use of communication
technology, the geographical knowledge of the environment, the geo-location, the
willingness to communicate with strangers, the use of leisure time for entertainment
but also for knowledge.
Visual culture and data spectacularization
The development of visual culture offers important opportunities for developing
fascinating hypotheses for the identification of new urban languages, especially taking
into account the assets of open / big data which represent a huge resource of
knowledge offered by ICT [9].
The management of the open / big data opens up great possibilities to invent new
forms of monitoring and data collection (relating to the environment, mobility and
welfare, but also to the cultural habits and leisure time activities) using advanced
sensors technologies and ubicomp. The management of the open / big data allows to
work on formats and protocols in order to achieve interoperability and cross-media,
but also to work on the aesthetics of the data publishing form [10] .
In this way, we can get spectacular forms of data streams that cross the city without
interruption and enter into cognitive and emotional habits of smart people, creating
advanced forms of evolved touristic services, where digital technology may support
complex information infrastructures for cultural heritage re-use, event management,
local mobility strategies, enhancement of the traditions and local products [11].
For instance, Real Time Rome is a pilot project born from the collaboration of the
SENSEable City Laboratory at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) [12]
with Telecom Italy, presented at the Biennale of Architecture in Venice in 2006. In an
effort to understand the configurations of everyday life in Rome, the project: uses
mobile devices (cell phones and GPS receivers) as position sensors, assigned in a
capillary way to the citizens; allows the collection of information to a maximum level
of detail (the individual); through the development of appropriate software for
statistical processing and data display, gives an extremely precise real-time flows of
the population in urban space.

LUGHI
Text-space dynamics
| New Urban Languages Int. Conference, Milan, Italy, 19 -21 June 2013 |
9
Social networks as media spaces
After the decline of Second Life, where the overlap between real life and virtual life
was realized within a space clearly recognizable as a physical environment, current
social networks are rapidly evolving towards complex forms of identity creation (in
Facebook you are generally yourself, the adoption of an avatar is second choice); a
sort of virtual meeting place, where identity creation is based on an accurate dosing
of personal text and messages adding quotes taken from other mediatic forms (literary,
musical, iconographic, cinematographic).
In Facebook it is very frequent the use of Flickr, YouTube or other mediatic
repositories as databases in order to create the messages: a way to create a platform
space, in juxtaposition to - or overlapping with - the space of flows identified by
Manuel Castells as a typical example of informationalism.
Overall, the physical presence and the socio-spatial-temporal location of people -
when they are communicating - becomes increasingly important: this depends on the
mobile / locative paradigm, within which they can develop new forms of creativity
[13], characterized by a fundamental difference compared to "sedentary" creativity
(usually leading to the creation of a work). To activate the mobile / locative creativity
implies necessarily to take into account the contexts of use, where and how users will
be placed, such as in pervasive games, or in urban tagging experiments as the "walk
show" organized by Urban Experience in Rome [14].
In these cases, it is important to understand the "spectacle of the city", not to act a
show in the streets of the city; read and write an event self-promoted via social
networks convocations, supported by the use of bluetooth, mobtag, mobile
applications, geoblog mapped and tracked via GPS.
Conclusions
In contemporary cities, the mass media come out of their specific channels in order to
take hold of the urban areas, in order to use the urban environment as a projection
screen [15], as in the visionary imagination of Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), but
now with the addition of augmented reality [16].

LUGHI
Text-space dynamics
| New Urban Languages Int. Conference, Milan, Italy, 19 -21 June 2013 |
10
The ambivalence of augmented reality, his being inside and outside at the same time,
fits well with the central assumption of this paper: the text becoming a space, the space
becoming a text. A good example of this ambivalence is the Museion in Bolzano-
Bozen [17], a contemporary art museum with a special, huge Media Wall that acts as
an interface between the outside and the inside, between the art and the city, between
the culture and nature: technology as intermediary between institution and everyday
life.
An ambivalence that is also found in many symbolic characters that modernity – and
postmodernity - of media has presented to us, with an uncertain statute and a
borderline collocation: firstly the flâneur, but then the surfer, the wreader (writer-
reader), the spectactor (spectator-actor), the prosumer (producer-consumer).
Probably we can assume also the smartphone as a symbolic gadget of this
ambivalence, of the complex dynamic between text and space: thanks to the
smartphone, people become writers (for example when put tags on places by
associating them to some fragments of her own life); at the same time, people are
written in a metanarrative that derives from their being present and geo-localized in
the places, and from the uninterrupted exchange of data (in input and output) caused
just by the fact of having the phone turned on.
To accept this ambivalence is perhaps the right way to tackle the complex relationship
between text and space: and the ways in which this relationship is structured
(interactivity, locative distribution of media contents, gamification, spectacularization
of data, social dynamics in virtual /physical places) are perhaps the right way to
understand the dynamics of our everyday life in mediated city, and can be used as the
basis to discuss a possible definition of new urban languages.
References
[1] Ong W. (1982), Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the Word, Methuen, London
- New York NY
[2] Gamba F. (2009), Leggere la città. Indizi di contaminazioni sociologiche, Liguori, Napoli
[3] Meyrowitz J. (1985), No Sense of Place, Oxford University Press, Oxford - New York NY
[4] Manovich L. (2000), The Language of new media, MIT Press, Cambridge MA.

LUGHI
Text-space dynamics
| New Urban Languages Int. Conference, Milan, Italy, 19 -21 June 2013 |
11
[5] Castells M. et al. (2007), Mobile Communication and Society. A Global Perspective,
Massachusetts Institutes of Technology, ,
[6] Dourish P. and Bell G. (2011), Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in
Ubiquitous Computing, MIT Press, Cambridge MA
[7] Sterling B. (2005), Shaping Things, MIT Press, Cambridge MA
[8] Pecchinenda G. (2004), Videogiochi e cultura della simulazione. La nascita dell'homo
game, Laterza, Bari-Roma
[9] Rosenfeld L. and Morville P. (2002), Information Architecture for the World Wide Web,
O'Reilly Media, Sebastopol CA
[10] http://www.domusweb.it/en/design/2012/06/25/in-screen-sports-graphics.html
[11] Ekman U. ed. (2012), Throughout. Art and Culture Emerging with Ubiquitous Computing,
MIT Press, Cambridge MA
[12] http://senseable.mit.edu/urbancode/
[13] Beardon C. and Malmborg L. (2010), Digital Creativity. A Reader, Routledge, New York
NY
[14] http://www.urbanexperience.it/groups/format-di-performing-media-per-lurban-
experience/forum/topic/walk-show/
[15] Arcagni S. (2012), Screen City, Bulzoni, Roma
[16] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6c1STmvNJc
[17] http://www.museion.it/?page_id=11889