After successful completion of the course, students are able to understand contemporary art and architecture production as a means and expression of cultural, political and economic changes and to engage themselves in new approaches of experimental, critical spatial practice. Due to its orientation toward a combination of scholarly and artistic research, the Visual Culture module offers students a range of transdisciplinary competences - critical thinking, cooperation, experimental approaches, research-oriented project work, interpretation and adaptation skills – for independently engaging with the production/reception of art and architecture.

Imaginaries and Frictions of Platform Urbanism

In the seminar: ‘Imaginaries and Frictions of Platform Urbanism,’ Mattia Frapporti and Maurilio Pirone (Into the Black Box Collective and University of Bologna), will consider the notion that despite a narrative that considers digital platforms as immaterial entities, their impact on urban spaces is more and more tangible.
Framing these actors as infrastructures, the course will explore the ways in which platforms place themselves into a territory both in material and symbolic terms to radically transform it.
In particular, the course will consider the ways in which platforms territorialize, i.e., through Amazon warehouses or Deliveroo dark kitchens influencing not only labour conditions, but urban life as a whole. These processes, anyway, are not flat or frictionless, but generate resistances that express other urban imaginaries.
These ideas will be further explored in a public lecture led by Niccolò Cuppini of the Into the Black Box Collective and School of Applied Sciences and Arts of the Italian Switzerland. In this public programme: ‘What urban future: Do high-tech metropolises dream of electric sheep?’  
The lecture will consider imagery such as satellites reflecting images of the completely deformed contemporary metropolises, and drones designing new architectural shapes. Aerial, aquatic and terrestrial images are part of the mosaic of contemporary urbanization processes.
The enduring circulatory vortex of urban metabolism. Upon this, a new high-tech layer superimposes on contemporary metropolises. The lecture will investigate these contemporary urban-scapes from a critical perspective, showing the main currents of contemporary urban transformations, grounding them with a geo-historical analytical matrix.

see also: https://visualculture.tuwien.ac.at/

For more details, please see the German note.

Introduction meeting of the Visual Culture module: Mon 3 October 2022, 2 pm

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Monday, 07. November 2022

14:00-16:00 pm Mattia Frapporti, Niccolo Cuppini

Imaginaries and Frictions of Platform Urbanism

18:00-20:00 pm Mattia Frapporti, Niccolo Cuppini

What urban future: Do high-tech metropolises dream of electric sheep

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The lectures and seminars will take place on Mondays.
In addition, workshops/seminars will be held on Tuesday mornings.
For the positive completion of the module, participation in both, the lectures/seminars and the workshops is required.
Exact dates will be communicated separately to all participants of the module.

Online: You are going to find the links to the individual Zoom dates on TUWEL

for further information see: https://visualculture.tuwien.ac.at/

The students' contributions (individually or in groups) are the result of dealing with all the courses in the VISUAL CULTURE module.