[Commlist] CFP: Conference "The (Post-)Digital City: Media, Technology and Architecture"

CFP: “The (Post-)Digital City: Media, Technology and Architecture”

Final Conference of the Research Network “The Digital City. Materiality 
and Objects of Urban Communication Culture (DIGISTA)”. (www.digista.de 
<http://www.digista.de>)

17-18 February 2022 at University of Augsburg (Germany)

Deadline: October 31, 2021 (either in English or German).

Cities are spaces where processes of social, cultural and technological 
change unfold with particular intensity. In the past decade, it is above 
all processes subsumed under the term “digitalisation” that are regarded 
as the main driver and catalyst for the ongoing transformation of urban 
spaces. While there is broad consensus that technologies such as sensors 
and cameras, measuring stations, platforms and dashboards are changing 
urban life, culture and governance, and have permeated cities to such an 
extent that they have been lately also referred to as “post-digital 
cities” (Negroponte 1998; Cramer 2014), it is contested in what ways 
these changes actually occur, what impact they have on different levels 
and how these changes can be normatively evaluated.

DIGISTA is an interdisciplinary research network that addresses the 
topic of digitalisation in cities from the perspective of communication 
and media studies, cultural sociology, architectural history and  
computational sciences. While “digitalisation” has arguably impacted the 
administration, planning and everyday life in cities for quite some 
time, we believe that changes in (post-)digital cities have recently 
picked up speed. Neighborhood platforms on the Internet are changing the 
ways local residents interact; the architecture and function of central 
squares and buildings in cities have changed; the infrastructures in 
cities have been altered and specific architectural typologies, such as 
libraries, are redefined. Technologies such as location-based apps and 
dashboards as well as applications of virtual and augmented reality have 
changed the perception and production of space. Understanding 
digitalisation as an umbrella term under which a wide range of 
developments and technologies that permeate cities today can be 
subsumed, we investigate the impact and significance of different 
processes of digitalisation for urban space. Assuming that 
digitalisation processes are neither neutral, nor purely technological, 
but constitute a field of highly contingent, situated and material 
practices mediated through technologies, as well as discourses, 
architectures and infrastructures and produced in different ways in the 
everyday lives of inhabitants, we believe that these processes in cities 
must be analysed from an interdisciplinary perspective.

For the final conference of our research network, we invite 
contributions that deal with digitalisation processes in the 
(post-)digital city. Submissions may relate to the four disciplines 
represented in our network (communication and media studies, 
architectural history, cultural sociology, computer science), but also 
come from other disciplines dealing with the complex phenomenon of 
(post-)digital cities. The aim of the conference is to bring together 
researchers as well as practitioners from the social sciences, 
humanities and information sciences to discuss the complexity and 
diversity of phenomena relating to the (post-)digital cities of our 
time. Negotiated in the everyday life and practices of city inhabitants 
and dwellers, but also in a variety of discourses, infrastructures and 
architectures, specific technologies and particular places, we invite 
submissions addressing theoretical aspects of the (post-)digital city, 
as well as empirical studies on the interwoven processes of social, 
cultural and technological changes and the associated practices and 
representations. Submissions on the following topics are welcome, but 
need not be limited to these:

Media representations, governance of and appropriation of urban spaces 
in the (post-)digital city
Within less than a decade, “smart urbanism” and the “smart city” have 
become major topics in the discourse on urban development. While the 
“smart city” has become somewhat of a leitmotif in the context of city 
branding, promising sustainability, efficiency, security, transparency 
and participation, it has also been criticized as instrumental to 
impoverishment and inhospitality, surveillance and control, as well as 
the enforcement of capitalist logics and technocracy (Srnicek 2017; 
Zuboff 2019; Dijck, Poell, and Waal 2018). In contrast, “smart urbanism” 
promises to take into account local conditions and the needs of citizens 
(Odendaal 2021; Marvin, Luque-Ayala, and McFarlane 2016; McFarlane and 
Söderström 2017; Söderström, Paasche, and Klauser 2014). Digitalisation 
of urban spaces is, as these discourses indicate, apparently not a fixed 
path, but a conflict-ridden field. Questions we want to address in this 
panel include, but need not be limited to the following: What are the 
current discourses and narratives relating to the actual or imagined 
“smart city” or “smart urbanism”? What are the strategies and practices 
of local actors (civil society, politics, business) in the context of 
these narratives? How is the (post-)digital city represented? Do 
specific platforms, such as neighborhood platforms or maps, contribute 
to more inclusion and participation or do they (re-)produce or 
(re)inforce existing social, cultural and economic power structures? 
What are the practices and interventions that create and constitute the 
(post-)digital city beyond such apps and platforms? And what are the 
ethics of the (post-)digital city?

Augmentation and virtualisation in the (post-)digital city
The (post-)digital city is in many respects a hybrid space. While we 
already interact with media augmented cities in the form of digital maps 
in our everyday lives, research and large companies are increasingly 
looking toward a future of visually augmented three dimensional urban 
spaces“? From a technological as well as practical perspective, we are 
interested in Mixed Reality technologie such as Augmented Reality (AR) 
and Virtual Reality (VR) in the (post-) digital city, particularly in 
public places. In order to move towards Mixed Reality technologies being 
an omnipresent phenomenon, we need to rethink paradigms that we are used 
to in the smartphone age. How can Mixed Reality applications for public 
spaces be designed and where can they be used? Which challenges do users 
of such applications face? How do design principles, philosophies, and 
technologies change the way we communicate and perceive public space? 
How can established best practices in human-computer interface design be 
transferred or reinterpreted in Mixed Reality? Besides HCI-related 
topics, it is crucial to develop concepts and negotiate rules for the 
participatory design of augmented public spaces as a society. In this 
context, content-filtering technologies such as collaborative filtering 
and AI-based approaches need to be designed and evaluated, both from the 
perspective of content creators and consumers.

Architectures and infrastructures in the (post-)digital city
The (post-)digital city is not located in some remote “cloud”. Although 
data transmission and storage may seem ephemeral, they are tethered to a 
whole range of real, material and physical infrastructures and 
geographically situated in actual spaces and architectures. It is these 
kinds of tangible infrastructures on the ground (such as cable routes, 
transmission masts, distribution boxes or Wi-Fi routers) and specific 
architectures (such as data centers and control rooms) that enable 
digitalization “to take place”. Physical infrastructures and 
architectures, hence, form an important part of the (post-)digital city. 
While architectures and infrastructures have been the subject of social 
science research for quite some time now, it remains open to what extent 
these are distinct in the (post-)digital city. Questions we want address 
in this panel include, but need not be limited to the following: In what 
ways are the infrastructures of the (post-)digital city unique  and how 
do they differ from other infrastructures (Laak 2018; Barlösius 2019; 
Büchner 2018)? What are their politics, what power relations are 
(re-)produced by the infrastructures of the (post-)digital city and 
which (new) inequalities possibly arise in this process (Graham and 
Marvin 2001; Rodgers and O’Neill 2012; Larkin 2013)? In what ways can 
digital infrastructures be usefully described as invisible, and what 
does that imply? To what extent has this invisibility increased in the 
(post-)digital city? Because infrastructures have been generally 
conceived of as embedded in (other) structures, shaped by and shaping 
the conventions of a community of practice, as well as largely invisible 
but visible upon breakdown (Star and Ruhleder 1996; Star 1999), these 
are some of the questions worth asking. Apart from the infrastructures 
and architecture of and for the (post-)digital city, digitalization has 
also affected the architectural nature of long-standing institutions 
(such as museums and libraries). In what ways are such existing 
architectural typologies transformed by digitalization (Arantes 2012)? 
What does the architecture of the (post-)digital look like and how do 
people interact with it? What new architecture is being produced in the 
(post-)digital city? And does this architecture influence the practices 
and interaction processes of its inhabitants and, if so, in what ways?

The conference is planned for February 17 and 18, 2022. Depending on the 
pandemic situation, the conference will be either held in a hybrid 
format online and onsite in Augsburg or online only.

Proposals (that address the topics listed under the three headings or 
related topics) can be submitted in the form of an abstract (max. 7,000 
characters) by October 31, 2021 (either in English or German). Notice of 
acceptance will be given until November 15. Please also indicate whether 
you would like to present in English or German. Selected papers of the 
conference will be published in a peer reviewed book. We especially 
encourage emerging scholars. Please contact us for travel support.

We are looking forward to your abstracts. Please send them to Paula 
Nitschke, University of Augsburg ((paula.nitschke /at/ phil.uni-augsburg.de) 
<mailto:(paula.nitschke /at/ phil.uni-augsburg.de)>).


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