Skypeography. Investigating and mapping the public mind space of urbaness

Abstract

‘Skypeography: investigating and mapping the public mind space of urbaness’ is an overview of the public space of Skype. This article discusses how mediation by screens is creating new urban concepts across an emerging new spatial geography and its new sociologies and cartographies. It begins by tracing an overview from perceptions of ‘city’ to experiences of ‘urbaness’ and explores the role of screens in creating a mobile state of being and a conceptualization of urban public space as transient and paradoxical mind space. The paper argues that an appropriate urban lexicon or cartographic recording is yet to be developed in relation to the public space of screens. In an increasingly visualized world, art practice has a significant role to play in exploring and mapping urban transience, movement, rhythm and paradox that forms a state of ‘urbaness’. This article explores the concept of ‘Skypeography’ through the methods and aesthetics of artistic screen research practice undertaken in the fluid space of the SkypeLab research project. Key to the research is the project to identify 100 Questions emerging out of the practice of SkypeLab. Through its experimental approach in digital space, SkypeLab poses and exposes questions arising out of the practice, about urban space itself. Through both answers and questions, SkypeLab and its ‘Skypeography’ method contribute valuable knowledge towards an understanding of new conceptual territory within a profoundly changing urbanscape.