FCJ-141 Spaces for Play - Architectures of Wisdom: Towards a Utopic Spatial Practice.

• Main Author: Dan Frodsham
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Open Humanities Press 2012-01-01
• Series: Fibreculture Journal
• Subjects: speculative; critical; art; locative; media; virtual; Second Life; Louis Marin; Pierre Levy
• Online Access: http://twenty.fibreculturejournal.org/2012/06/19/fcj-141-spaces-for-play-architectures-of-wisdom-towards-a-utopic-spatial-practice/

The paper speculatively proposes a critical artistic practice that takes utopia to be a dynamic and specifically spatial device for achieving social transformation, and allies this with the ability of locative media to create virtual ‘second worlds’ in real-world spaces. It sketches a ‘Utopic Spatial Practice’ that would, through the superimposition of speculative other-worlds, deliberately create distance and incongruity between the ‘virtual’ and the ‘real’ in order to instigate a potential-generating dialectic. The paper explores parallels between Louis Marin’s utopics and Pierre Levy’s account of virtualization, as well as ideas about ‘nomadic’ space, and architectonic models for such a practice.