Media places: digital flows in modern urbanity

The impact that ubiquitous wireless network technologies and mobile phones have on our experience of the modern cityscape, has been a driving force in many research projects in recent years. The agendas differ in relation to perspectives, but it seems safe to claim that such technologies are no longer neutral layers in urban living, but rather an integrated part of the materialities of architecture and urban planning, the social dimensions of city life and emerging new cultural frameworks. Arguably, we have reached a point at which digital designs may be regarded as elements of our everyday construction of place in the urban setting. The concept of Hertzian space, put forth by Anthony Dunne and others (Dunne, 1999) also carries a dimension of how spaces of wireless communication may be problematized, and how we can criticize cultural phenomena taken for granted through innovative technology. From this perspective wireless technology can also be a way of temporarily appropriating places within the city space for a variety of different groups, at times questioning hierarchical structures of ownership of public spaces. These spaces can be said to be hybrid spaces, bringing forth the fundamental question of how meaning can emerge in the interplay between people, artifacts and place. This paper will present the early and ongoing work in the project “Media places”, which is part of the research platform for new media at Malmö University; MEDEA. The intention is to introduce conceptual foundations for the Media places project, give some brief insights into the themes of setting up temporary digital streams of media and mobile games. Considering the work-in-progress character of the research and the smaller format of text, no real in-depth analysis will be carried out. The goal is rather to position a strand of research within the research network of Culture of Ubiquitous information.