Deep City:

Climate Crisis,

Democracy

and the Digital

24—26/03

At the crossroads between the algorithm and the assembly, we seek to discuss strategies and tools to propose new and alternative images for the city as the political realm where the physical and the digital interfere and negotiate with each other. The fabrication of our cities responds increasingly to algorithmic logics of arrangement. Meanwhile public squares and streets roar louder than ever. If the city is both organization of knowledge and socio-ecological structure, we must always think critically about its guiding images and values. We will consider alternative images, imaginaries and counter narratives, and dive into their modes and techniques of production as well as into the effects they have on our agency as architects, politicians, engineers or citizens. How do we articulate and figure fairer possible futures in the encounter between the digital and the physical?

We are interested in experiences and initiatives that show us the way to overcome the current limitations of algorithmic governmentality, from new inclusive methods of urban commoning to DIY and technological cooperatives. We will explore and debate these technologies and innovative uses proposing new methods for engagement, accountability and political participation. Taking into account privacy concerns, the tensions between proprietary data and open source solutions or the inherent risks to statistical homogenization, how can we envisage inclusive and capable interfaces for social engagement and city making? How do we develop tools that help us assess, debate and decide on the promises and challenges of the data economy for our cities?

Through the 24/7 logistical city, information runs in a never-ending cycle fostering new attentional regimes, hybrid temporalities and forms of experience we don’t fully understand yet. This flow of information feeds a growing market of personalized analytics and the practices of the quantified self, allowing for the creation of fine tailored services and new forms of behavioral design that are changing how architects, politicians or citizens affect and are affected by the city. Under this new economic paradigm where experience has become raw material and speed a ruling unit, we want to consider the emergence of new material agencies between the biological and the technological and how they are threading new ecologies and powers while exploring their democratic potentials.

The deep city is a complex mesh of interwoven processes and motions where the social coexists with the natural, the real with the imaginary, and the endless flows of data with silicon and organic flesh. We must accept that there are complexities within it which cannot be quantified nor approached simply through technological problem-solving nor through mere critical or speculative musings. They demand new negotiations and techniques bridging fields and existing cultural divides. What kind of common grounds, both material and immaterial, can foster these pressing tensions of our present? What new tools, practices and spaces are needed to reconcile divisions that risk holding up our action against the urgencies of our time?

The magnitude of the current environmental crisis may go beyond our biological capacity as humans to comprehend and (counter) act. Is our vision of the future of cities too hedonistic to realize the urgency of the crisis? Are there limits in human rationality, which prevent us from thinking and acting for our planet?  If machines are programmed to save the planet, should they be conferred decision rights and override human authority, in order to prevent them from further destroying the planet? What are the ethical consequences of machinic decision-making on planetary survival? Are the emerging ML and AI technologies game-changers? What can go wrong with machine supremacy? What are future forms of human-machine intelligence for generating and operating ecologically resilient cities?

The past years have also seen an explosion of experimentations with deep learning models to generate art and music, Sustained criticism regarding its derivative use of code and datasets among the tiny, but emerging, A.I. art community is deemed obscure or irrelevant by the broader public. Can we arm the current data to probability schema with reasoning ability, facilitating design intervention and imaginative counterfactuals? Can we recast computational tools like deep convolutional neuronal networks (CNN), generative adversarial networks (GAN), natural language processing (NLP), computer vision and pattern recognition as environmental design agents for cities? Can products of artificial creativity simply be accepted on the same grounds as human creations? Is there anything that prevents us from accepting them as legitimate forms of sensory and intellectual pleasure and curiosity?