Urbiquity is a multiple format investigation project questioning the dissolution of the city into planetary urbanisation, with a specific attention to the increasing intertwining of spatial and image production. In this process, information and communication technologies play a crucial role: everything that once justified the existence of the city as a discrete and circumscribed spatial entity - market, education, entertainment, culture, health, care, etc. - is now available virtually everywhere. It is a new condition in which the complete digital interconnection between bodies, objects and places has achieved the process of urbanisation on a planetary scale, wherein the proliferation of digital images has literally exploded the vertical articulation of communicating surfaces. It gives rise to a cloud of mediated interactions that envelop and at the same time traverse bodies and corporations, legal entities and social institutions in a continuum that takes on the gaseous consistency of the electronic cloud. The ultimate prophecy of the Society of Spectacle, a social relationship between people mediated by images is established. Phenomena such as financialisation, globalisation, gentrification, festivalisation and touristification of urban centres correspond to as many forms of control over flows of images, which call for new tools of analysis.
In this dynamic, the urban environment has changed role, texture and disposition, but continues to be a fundamental element of the human landscape. Documenting transformations that happen along more than 50 years, from 1968 up to tomorrow, the project explores the three phases of planetary urbanisation - the horizontal, the vertical and finally that of urbiquity - a city no longer to be traversed, but which traverses us.
Different outcomes of Urbiquity include a book, a web documentary, a film and an interactive exhibition. This website is the portal connecting different formats and media and providing the interface to navigate the materials and the connected discussion.
An ogino:knauss project
Produced by Tesserae
Conceived, written and directed by Lorenzo Tripodi
Art direction, photography, editing Manuela Conti
Scientific supervision Laura Colini
Interaction design and coding Sergio Segoloni
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Urbiquità is a book written by Lorenzo Tripodi and published in Italian by AgenziaX.
Urbiquità is a diary of navigation in the changing urban landscape. Mixing urban theory with artistic practices and psychogeographical drift, the book reinterprets the concept of the city in relation to the growing intertwining of spatial and image production.
Urbiquity explores innovative media to represent the fluid and interconnected reality of planetary urbanisation. This web platform provides access to a rich archive of materials and conversations generated during a long investigation process, that resulted also in the research and development of diverse experimental formats, tools of publication and user interfaces. It proposes different means to navigate its content and generate collective reflection.
Ubiquity: the film is a feature narrative documentary condensing key arguments in cinematic forms. It is based on the exploration of key spaces invested by the process of planetary urbanisation and technological interconnection accompanied by voices and creative contributions by a number of thinkers, activists and activists that provide critical and inspiring point of views on the subject. Featured participants (TBC) foresee David Harvey, Christian Schmidt, Franco Berardi “Bifo”, Cory Doctorow, Lutz Henke, Keller Easterling
The project foresee also the realisation of an exhibition, including video installations, photographic and sound works, data visualisations, maps and interactive devices.