We are delighted to announce that Professor Alexander Singleton from the Geographic Data Science Lab of the University of Liverpool will open this term's WISC Seminar Series next week:

Professor Alexander Singleton, University of Liverpool:

How Data Philanthropy Can Help Us Understand Contemporary Urban Environments

Thursday, 17 January 2019, 16:00, Ramphal Building, R0.03

Abstract: Cities are awash with data that provide partial and fleeting glimpses into human activities and their contexts. Unlike many of those traditional sources of data that have been used to provide insight about population attributes and human behaviour, data are often located within the commercial sector and have limited degrees of access. Data Philanthropy provides a model for the more egalitarian access to such data. This talk focuses on the operationalisation of this concept within a UK context through case studies developed at the Geographic Data Science Lab.

Snacks and refreshments will be served! Please sign-up before attending, to assist us in managing numbers and to avoid food waste:

https://warwick.ac.uk/research/priorities/sustainablecities/newsandevents/calendar/wisc2019/register

Please find an overview of all upcoming Seminars published online: https://warwick.ac.uk/wisc2019. For further information, please contact Dr René Westerholt (Rene.Westerholt@warwick.ac.uk) or Dr João Porto de Albuquerque (J.Porto@warwick.ac.uk).

Naomi Waltham-Smith (Associate Professor, CIM) has published an article entitled ‘A Music Worthy of the Name; Or, Agamben’s Museicology’ in a special issue on music and theory, edited by Chris Swithinbank and Irving Goh, of CR: The New Centennial Review.

The article develops a critical reading from a Derridean perspective of the appendix to Agamben’sWhat is Philosophy?, interrogating music and sound’s (quasi)-transcendental status. It can be found here

https://www.auralflaneur.com/writing/

“A Music Worthy of the Name; Or, Agamben’s Museicology,” special issue on Music & Theory, CR: The New Centennial Review 18, no. 2 (2018): 179–202.

We look forward to welcoming David Stark and Giovanni Formilan to present a talk on Moments of identity: Artists and their aliases in electronic music on 23rd January at 15.30-17.30 in R0.03.

In many creative fields, distinctive identities are shaped around named personas – pen names in literature, stage names in the performing arts, aliases in music. More than just responding to the need for artistic recognition, these personas also serve as test devices to navigate the complexity and unpredictability of one’s presence in the creative journey. Drawing evidence from the underground electronic music scene, a field where both genres and aliases proliferate, we outline dynamics of anonymity, visibility, and engagement that surround the use of aliases. We identify nine ideal moments in which the relation among person, persona, and audience gives temporary shape to the creative identity of the artist. Representing a part of the artist, the alias is projected apart from the artist and, through this curious distance that anticipates expectations and demands feedback, creative identity develops as a process of ongoing curation.

Lizzie Richardson is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Geography at Durham University, UK. Her research focuses on the performance and qualification of work as an economic activity. She is particularly interested in the technologies and devices through which work is made (in)visible and accounted for.

Scott Wark (Associate Researcher, CIM) recently wrote a paper published in Subjectivity. The abstract from the paper is:

'The concept of the digital subject proposes that online subjectivity is a mediated construct. This article extends this concept by arguing that online subjectivity is not a property of human users, but of digital subjects enacted in circulating data. It develops the digital subject by, first, using Phillip Agre’s concept of “grammars of action” to argue that computational architectures exclude humans from the position of the user; and, second, using Gilbert Simondon’s and Yuk Hui’s philosophies of technology to posit the digital subject as a determinate technical entity that, as per Hui’s reworking of Simondon, inhabits a “digital milieu”. Online, this digital subject inverts the human–technology relationship. It individuates by entering circulation, excluding us from individuating whilst individuating us in turn. This article expands upon this claim by analysing projects by Amalia Ulman and Zach Blas and their thematisation of visibility, identity and authenticity in online subjectivity.'

The article can be read online at https://rdcu.be/bdtYS . The link to the full article is https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41286-018-00062-5 .

Applications are invited for an Associate Professor in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (CIM).

The final stage of a CIM postgraduate degree is the dissertation research project. This piece of independent research is an opportunity for students to bring together the skills, knowledge and methods they have developed in the first two terms of taught modules. CIM students can follow the theme of their postgraduate degree in their optional modules, or branch out, sculpting their own degree in relation to their interests and goals.

Maria Petrescu investigated collaborative mapping within Coventry’s OpenStreetMap community for her dissertation research. Maria studied the Big Data and Digital Futures MSc with the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (CIM) and the Warwick Q-Step centre. In addition to her core modules, Maria chose optional modules such as IM919 Urban Data, Theory and Methodology and IM921 Visualisation which are taken by students in the MSc in Urban Analytics and Visualisation, as well as auditing IM923 User Interface Cultures, with the MA in Digital Media and Culture. Maria also took advantage of ongoing research projects in CIM, related to Humanitarian Mapping, and helped establish the “Resilience Mapping” student society, in which students create digital maps of areas in need of humanitarian assistance.

We spoke to Maria about how her time at CIM allowed her to develop an innovative interdisciplinary research approach.

The Digital Test of the News workshop brought together digital sociologists, data visualisation and new media researchers for two days at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the University of Warwick in May 2018. The workshop is part of a broader research collaboration between the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies and the Public Data Lab which investigates the changing nature of public knowledge formation in digital societies and develops inventive methods to capture and visualise knowledge dynamics online. This workshop report, written by Liliana Bounegru, Noortje Marres and Jonathan Gray, outlines the workshop’s aims and outcomes.

From 7 to 9 November 2018 the city of São Paulo in Brazil has seen the launch of the project ‘Waterproofing Data: Engaging Stakeholders in Sustainable Flood Risk Governance for Urban Resilience’.

Waterproofing Data is an interdisciplinary project with around €1m funding provided by an international association of research councils: ESRC (Economic and Social Sciences Research Council), FAPESP (São Paulo Research Foundation) and BMBF (German Federal Ministry of Education and Research) in collaboration with the Belmont Forum, Norface and the International Science Council within the Transformations to Sustainability programme. Professor João Porto de Albuquerque from the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies is the Principal Investigator of an international consortium which includes Heidelberg University (Prof Alexander Zipf) and Fundacao Getulio Vargas (Prof Maria Alexandra Cunha), alongside cooperation partners in Brazil (National Disaster Monitoring and Early-Warning Centre/Cemaden, Sao Paulo City Hall, State Secretary for the Environment of Acre, Brazil Geological Survey), Germany (Rhein-Neckar Water Rights Office and Eberbach City Council) and the UK (British Geological Survey, Environment Agency).

WIRL-COFUND Fellow Karol Kurnicki has authored a chapter titled 'Defending modernist architecture in Poland' in Architecture, Democracy and Emotions: The Politics of Feeling since 1945.

This article focuses on the defence of socialist modernist architecture in Poland and explores its entanglement with today’s urban condition. It sees the defence in the context of post-socialist urban transformation, characterized by the rapid privatization of real estate and infrastructure, the influx of foreign investment and a significant reconstruction of the material fabric of cities. Defending architectural socialist modernism poses questions about modernist democratic ideas and ideals in general. The article explores why only selected buildings are deemed worthy of attention and saving, who selects them, and what consequences this has for urban transformation in general.

The emotional element of architecture as realized in practices and actions, in which the buildings partake, is explored in the context of vanishing materiality of socialist welfare state. Currently, democratic activities are mobilized in architecture in the moment when it stops functioning as a backdrop for everyday routines and starts requiring action from people. The social and political value of architecture is strengthened when it becomes engaging, positional, and processual. This makes emotions an essentially political matter, bound closely to power. Instances of protest prove to be occasions for the re-enactment of democratic values and architecture provides an important platform for this to happen.