Public Space Media Space
de Chris Berry
Public Space, Media Space asks how public space is being mediatised in different ways in different cities around the world today. Urban public spaces today are saturated by media, perhaps more than ever before. These range from highly visible large LED screens in cities like Tokyo, through the cassette sermons one hears in the streets of Cairo, to the invisible, inaudible satellite surveillance systems that are everywhere. They include personal media like MP3 players and mobile phones, public information systems, commercial advertising, and more. How do these media shape, interconnect, or constitute physical public space, and how do they connect to virtual public spaces? How should we understand these phenomena? Is this simply a process of ever greater degradation of the public as direct face-to-face communication is replaced by ever more mediated and commercialized forms of communication among strangers? Or are new publics, new public processes, and new public spaces being constituted?
