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| Philipp Oswalt (Translation Tas Skorupa) | 2000 | |
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Urban Rumors |
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 Our existence
today oscillates between two worlds: the media space of telematics on
the one hand and the physical world on the other. But what is the relationship
between these spheres? There is the idea of cyberspace as an autonomous
reality, a rather unattractive idea of the eighties - just think of those
awkward cyberglasses and datagloves. Yet the manifold penetration of both
worlds cannot be described as a one-sided dependence in which the media
space is allotted the function of illustrating or serving the physical
world. Take, for
example, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989: It was not the result of
a conscious decision made by politicians. Western media exaggerated the
vague remarks of the East German government spokesman on relaxing travel
restrictions and interpreted them as 'opening the borders.' Curious about
this rumor in the media, the first East Berliners hurried to the border
crossing points to 'check out' what was happening, and more and more curious
citizens followed suit. In the end, the accumulating crowd's expectations,
spread by the rumor, made the unplanned inevitable: the opening of the
East German border and with it the peaceful end of the Cold War. This episode
is an extreme example of a general tendency: With the atomization of society
in mass individualism and its simultaneous interlinking by electronic
means, public space has shifted to a great extent to the communication
networks of television, radio, computer, and telephone. From here it sometimes
enters the real space of the city. With the help of electronic amplification
small events can be blown up into gigantic events by the mass media..
The dematerialized urbanity of the information age resists manifestation
in buildings. Be it the Polish markets of the late eighties, Blade Night,
Christo's Wrapped Reichstag, or the Love Parade, the mass events of the
last decade in Berlin are prime examples of how media space influences
what happens in the real space of the city, oscillating between self-organization
and manipulation. The interaction
between media space and urban space can also take on a repressive character,
as is shown by the increasing predominance of safety criteria in the urban
planning of recent years. In the illusory world of television the share
of news on violence has doubled since the rise of private stations in
Germany of the eighties, while at the same time the number of serious
crimes has decreased. Nevertheless, due to the presence of violence in
the media, the fear of crime has risen and has not least of all led to
the construction of gated communities, to the video surveillance of public
squares, and to the omnipresence of guard services. In the
information age the value of information is not proven by its factuality,
but by its projective quality: which stimulus it can trigger, which decisions
and actions it can influence. To this end the vagueness, the dubiousness,
and the difference from the real can prove to be advantageous. And the
intensive interplay of the real and the media leads to new urban phenomena
beyond the classic categories of urban planning and architecture.For the Exhibition 'Mutations' | Bordeaux | France | 2000-2001 |
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Philipp Oswalt Quelle : http://www.oswalt.de/en/text/txt/rumors_p.html |
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