Fantasies of seamless interoperability
A series of online talks with Vladan Joler, Miglė Bareikyte, Rahul Mukherjee and Adriana Knouf organized in the context of Sensing Urban Matter by Architektūros fondas and Future Architecture Platform programme Landscapes of Care.
Fantasies of seamless interoperability is a series of four weekly online talks organized by the art-science collaborative Towards Atmospheric Care which explore how collective environmental and social imaginaries, hopes and fantasies are shaped through invisible, yet material and very influential, infrastructure and novel ecosystems emerging at the nexus of political economy, communication technologies and the atmospheric medium in its role as a carrier of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Used as a technical term, 'seamless interoperability’ describes the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and computer-based tools to achieve information and data exchange between heterogeneous and geographically distributed devices, products, technologies, or systems and organizations. Yet, seamless interoperability is not only about streamlining existing technical operations. Nor is it immaterial any more than the wireless transmission technologies it relies on (such as the emerging 5G and the projected 6G network) which are conditioned by heavily material networks of wires, cables, data centers and protocols. Rather, it is a sociotechnical vision, linked to specific ideologies and material realities with significant transformational impact on society and human environment interactions.
While the technofuturistic projections of the ICT-sector promote efficiency and sustainability deemed profitable for all, the technical complexity of these digital ecosystems render them inaccessible for most people. For the nonexpert – mostly conceived of as the customer – the quirks of technological determinism and modes of mediation, translation and erasure remain sealed within a black box.
Unsettling the ’seamless’ imaginary of communication technologies, this series of talks looks at the materiality and historical specificity of wireless networks, at noise, errors and leaks with the intent to broaden the discussion on what technoecological networks and digital ecologies we need for communal concerns in the ongoing ecological and social crisis. It departs from a conviction that non-expert engagement – before novel technoecosytems are firmly settled in material, economic and political path dependencies – is crucial to explore possibilities of reparative approaches and alternative futures to the high-tech enclosure of the electromagnetic domain.
The four sessions will reflect on Signal space with Vladan Joler, Maintenance of the media technology with Miglė Bareikytė, Radiant infrastructures with Rahul Mukherjee and Noise with Adriana Knouf. Rather than an overview of the subject matter, the series proposes four distinct and different perspectives and practices that bring together critical mapping, conceptual analysis, research and art. Conceived as an exercise in co-learning, the speakers will all share additional resources (texts, work, videos) available here (for the duration of the series). The talks are taking place on ZOOM.
Migle Bareikyte
22 September 2021, 18.00 CET
Rahul Mukherjee
29 September 2021, 18.00 CET
Adriana Knouf
6 October 2021, 18.00 CET