Visuality in the 21st century — especially as promoted by digital content providers and planners of the smart city — relies on unhindered, smooth, and seamless communication. Yet both urban life and new media depend also on
haphazard, intrusive, blemishing signals. The talk examines recent multimedia art from the People’s Republic of China, which mounts a cultural criticism of mediated space, challenging notions of the digital city based on virtual reality and augmented reality. Urban spaces are imagined instead as photomontage, and traversing the city is seen as reliant on the digital noise produced by the city.
About the Speaker
Yomi Braester is the Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor in the Humanities at the University of Washington. His research focuses on literary and visual practices, with emphasis on modern China and Taiwan — in architecture, advertisement, screen media, and stage arts.
Originally published at asia.nd.edu.