Conflux 2007 presents Toward a Schizogeographic Society? Re-evaluating the psychogeographic in terms of contemporary conditions of subjectivity and urban space :: A panel discussion with Janet Abrams and Adam Greenfield, moderated by Mark Shepard :: September 16, 2007, 2 — 4 pm in the Luna Lounge, 361 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, NY :: 718.384.7112.

The psychogeography of a city like New York today is not at all the same as that of Paris in 19th or mid 20th Century. Alone in the crowd, at home in the crowd – today we dérive in the shopping mall. If the Flâneur presents a point of reference for a mobilized observer for whom the aestheticisation of the urban is simultaneously a liberatory and alienating practice, the Situationist dérive suggests a spatial practice for liberation from an alienating commodification of the city. Today, negotiating our daily lives in and through a city like New York involves evermore-subtle maneuvers between public and private, virtual and actual. In place of a unified, embodied subject we find new hybrids and assemblages of body, data, self and consciousness. The placing and spacing of the urban experience is strewn across radically different environments. The gaze of the crowd has been replaced by that of the surveillance camera and the RFID reader; the pyschogeographic “attractions of the terrain” have become a schizogeography of nodes and networks. This panel will attempt to re-evaluate the psychogeographic in terms of contemporary conditions of subjectivity and urban space.

Janet Abrams is Director of the Design Institute, the University of Minnesota’s think tank on design futures, which focuses on innovations in design education, and mapping as a strategy for understanding the dynamics of space, data and social organization. Janet edited IF/THEN: PLAY - Design Implications of New Media (NDI/BIS, 1998) at the Netherlands Design Institute in Amsterdam, and co-edited ELSE/WHERE: MAPPING - New Cartographies of Networks and Territories (DI, 2006) with Peter Hall, at the Design Institute. At the DI she has commissioned and produced numerous experimental design prototypes via the DI Fellows program, including the Big Urban Game, and Twin (a typeface that morphs with the weather). The DI has also published Knowledge Maps on diverse issues, hosted six editions of Design Camp for Teens, and held symposia, most recently on Mapping New Knowledge Ecologies, and on contemporary design curating. A former architecture and design critic, Jan’s favorite environment these days is a ceramics studio.

Adam Greenfield is a writer, user experience consultant and instructor at New York University’’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. Before starting his current practice, Studies and Observations, Adam was lead information architect for the Tokyo office of well-known Web consultancy Razorfish. His clients have included Toyota, Sony, Capgemini, and various agencies of the United States government. Adam has spoken frequently on issues of design, culture, technology and user experience before a wide variety of audiences, including the SXSW Interactive festival, LIFT, the European Civilizations Numeriques” conference, Microsoft Research’s HCI2020 workshop, Aula, and the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. Most recently, he keynoted the 2007 International Conference on Pervasive Computing. His 2006 book Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing, has been acclaimed as groundbreaking,” “elegant,” and “soulful” by Bruce Sterling, and gracefully written, fascinating, and deeply wise” by Wired’s Steve Silberman. He lives and works with his wife, artist Nurri Kim, in New
York City.

Mark Shepard is an artist, architect and researcher focusing on the impact of mobile and pervasive technologies on architecture and urbanism. He co-organized the Architecture and Situated Technologies Symposium, with Omar Khan and Trebor Scholz, at the Architectural League of New York and Eyebeam in October 2006. His recent project, the Tactical Sound Garden [TSG] has been presented at museums, galleries, and festivals internationally, including CONFLUX (2006), Brooklyn, NY; ISEA (2006), San Jose, CA; Futuresonic (2006), Manchester, UK; Sonar Festival (2006), Barcelona, Spain; The Contemporary Museum (2007), Baltimore, MD; SIGGRAPH (2007), San Diego, CA; and FILE (2007), Sao Paolo, Brazil. He is currently Assistant Professor of Architecture and Media Study at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, where he is a co-director of the Center for Virtual Architecture and a researcher with the Situated Technologies Research Group.