#3 Unstable Infrastructures
Recent Submissions
- ArticleScaffolding, Hard and Soft. Infrastructures as Critical and Generative StructuresMattern, Shannon (2016) , S. 1-10
- ArticleThe Experience of Digital Objects. Toward a Speculative EntropologyRossiter, Ned; Zehle, Soenke (2017) , S. 1-12
- ArticleHumanitarian Media Intervention: Infrastructuring in Times of Forced MigrationKubitschko, Sebastian; Schütz, Tim (2016) , S. 1-14
- ArticleLocative Media and the Production of Georesources: A Pan-Arctic Spatial Data InfrastructureRuiz, Rafico (2016) , S. 1-16
- ArticleLost in the Cloud: The Representation of Networked Infrastructure and its DiscontentsLevin, Boaz; Jeffery, Ryan (2016) , S. 1-8
- ArticleInfrastructuring as Critical Feminist Technoscientific PracticeForlano, Laura (2016) , S. 1-4
- ReviewA Case for Media Infrastructures. A Comment on Activism in LandscapesPinkrah, Nelly Y. (2016) , S. 1-5
- ArticleZimbabwe's Unstable InfrastructureAtwood, Amanda (2016) , S. 1-18
- ReviewAccounting, Registering and Distributing. Commentary to Rafico RuizSprenger, Florian (2016) , S. 1-4
- ArticleFree Basics by Facebook. An Interview with Nishant ShahLuchs, Inga (2016) , S. 1-8
- ArticleActivism in Landscapes. Culture, Spectrum and Latin AmericaLara, Paulo; Caminati, Francisco; Belisário, Adriano (2016) , S. 1-13
- ReviewInfrastructure & Future Library. A Reflection on "Scaffolding, Hard and Soft"Mickiewicz, Paulina (2016) , S. 1-4
- ReviewOn the Western Narrative of Empowerment through ICT. A Comment to Amanda AtwoodLeistert, Oliver (2016) , S. 1-4
- ArticleUnstable InfrastructuresSpheres Editorial Collective (2016)No digital cultures without infrastructures! This issue will look into the theoretical as well as practical explorations of infrastructures as operational backbone of digital cultures. We deem infrastructures, understood as an ensemble of human, social and technological individuals, important for yielding new forms of knowledge, which are able to challenge and transform the current architecture of infrastructural systems, software protocols, and network media, represented by corporate Internet-platforms like Amazon, Facebook or Google. Even though we have been witnessing an ‘explosion’ of the discourse around digital cultures and its infrastructures in the last years, most of the research and critique in this field is still based on the model of a predefined network, thereby repeating the epistemological presuppositions of nodes and links, rather than thinking about alternative perspectives for our technocultural future. Beyond commercial media platforms, where the individual remains a clearly identifiable point within the network, in order to address him or her with personalized ads, network technologies contain the potential to foster new forms of subjectivity, where the individual becomes a network itself – from the networked individual to the individual as network.
- VideoAll That is Solid Melts into DataLevin, Boaz; Jeffery, Ryan (2016)Equal parts building and machine, a library and a public utility, data centers are the unwitting monuments of knowledge production to the digital turn. This documentary video traces the historical evolution of the structures that make-up “The Cloud”, the physical repositories for the exponentially growing amount of human activity and communication taking form as digital data. While our “smart tools” and devices for communication become increasingly smaller, thinner, and sleeker, the physical infrastructure they require grows larger, affecting and shaping the physical landscape and natural resources. The rhetoric surrounding so-called “Big Data” proclaims it as the solution to every problem faced by either governments or private industry. This film looks to the often-overlooked materiality that “The Cloud” is reliant upon, in order to elucidate its social, environmental, and economic impact, and call into question the structures of power that have developed out of the technologies of global computation.