In this piece, we introduce the notion of ‘atmoculture’ as a conceptual tool to analyse the new forms of mobility supported and enacted by digital algorithms. In historical perspective, we analyse how modernity has created a movement-space where the problem of finding one's way through an increasingly ‘displaced’ urban space first emerged, with noticeable psycho-social consequences. Reconstructing the new digital media as a continuation of this spatial imagination, we seek to zoom in on the forms of mobility facilitated by digital algorithms. Urban digital navigation, we suggest, proceeds in parallel with a reorientation of the urban experience towards atmospheric considerations, maximizing safety and pleasure in the user's encounters with the environment. In this context, atmoculture appears a spatial-aesthetic, psycho-cultural, and bio-technological milieu that prepares space for convenient navigation. We discuss a number of consequences: first the disburdening effect, whereby subjects delegate to a number of perceptions and decisions to algorithms, expropriating the natural problem-solving aspect of subjectivity; second, the invisible transformations of urban space due to the biases that are built in algorithms themselves; third, the tensional, even contradictory outcomes of atmocultural expectations, whereby the goal of a secure and pleasant environmental interaction is undone by the very quantity of information provided and the level of alertness required from the user.

On urban trajectology: algorithmic mobilities and atmocultural navigation / Brighenti, A. M.; Pavoni, A.. - In: DISTINKTION. - ISSN 1600-910X. - 2021:(2021), pp. 1-24. [10.1080/1600910X.2020.1861044]

On urban trajectology: algorithmic mobilities and atmocultural navigation

Brighenti A. M.;Pavoni A.
2021-01-01

Abstract

In this piece, we introduce the notion of ‘atmoculture’ as a conceptual tool to analyse the new forms of mobility supported and enacted by digital algorithms. In historical perspective, we analyse how modernity has created a movement-space where the problem of finding one's way through an increasingly ‘displaced’ urban space first emerged, with noticeable psycho-social consequences. Reconstructing the new digital media as a continuation of this spatial imagination, we seek to zoom in on the forms of mobility facilitated by digital algorithms. Urban digital navigation, we suggest, proceeds in parallel with a reorientation of the urban experience towards atmospheric considerations, maximizing safety and pleasure in the user's encounters with the environment. In this context, atmoculture appears a spatial-aesthetic, psycho-cultural, and bio-technological milieu that prepares space for convenient navigation. We discuss a number of consequences: first the disburdening effect, whereby subjects delegate to a number of perceptions and decisions to algorithms, expropriating the natural problem-solving aspect of subjectivity; second, the invisible transformations of urban space due to the biases that are built in algorithms themselves; third, the tensional, even contradictory outcomes of atmocultural expectations, whereby the goal of a secure and pleasant environmental interaction is undone by the very quantity of information provided and the level of alertness required from the user.
2021
Brighenti, A. M.; Pavoni, A.
On urban trajectology: algorithmic mobilities and atmocultural navigation / Brighenti, A. M.; Pavoni, A.. - In: DISTINKTION. - ISSN 1600-910X. - 2021:(2021), pp. 1-24. [10.1080/1600910X.2020.1861044]
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11572/297383
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