The inmobility project: modes of textualities and unpredictable visualities of everyday life

Abstract

The text is concerned with the contemporary condition of everyday life transformed by mobile technologies and digital networks. The article discusses new possibilities for behaving and for occupying urban space since mobile phones connected to the Web enable real time informational exchanges – data access, and interpersonal communication processes. In big cities such as São Paulo, pedestrians, drivers, and motorcyclists have diverse modes of choosing their routes and moving because they use mobile technologies, which superimpose the urban landscape with layers of data. By understanding other possible perceptions of urban space, the INmobility project – a digital artwork – makes visible personal experiences, using topological structures of users’ visual perception by the recombination of images of the city. As a result, visual narratives emerge, structured through computational algorithms, and create different perspectives and visual patterns of people’s everyday routine.