Infrastructures: A Conversation with Shannon Mattern

In this colloquium with infrastructures, media, art and literature scholar Shannon Mattern, we will discuss various pedagogical strategies, representational techniques, and modeling methods that have been employed to promote “infrastructural intelligence” — and we’ll consider what epistemologies, ontologies, ethics, affects, and politics are embedded in those approaches.

There are three readings we’ve chosen to look over prior to the session:

Typologies of Topologies (+ Hearing and Smelling Infrastructure), Shannon Mattern.

The artist as engineer: we need to talk about infrastructure, Paul Graham Raven, The Guardian (September 4th, 2013)

How to See Infrastructure: A Guide for Seven Billion Primates, Adam Rothstein, Rhizome (July 2, 2015)

And five project/practice references to look at beforehand as well:
Los Angeles Urban Rangers
Unknown Fields
Center for Urban Pedagogy
Center for Land Use Interpretation
Situated Systems

Medialogue is a joint research colloquium of the Institute of Media Studies, University Basel, and the Institute of Experimental Design and Media Cultures, Academy of Art and Design FHNW. Medialogue will serve as a forum of exchange on current issues of media (research) practice, a testing ground for research approaches and hypotheses, and an endeavour to extend the very format of a colloquium. Medialogue as a series will take place at different locations and combine elements like demonstrations, guest lectures, text discussions, and experiments.