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Abstract
How are we to recognize the social dimension of place without limiting ourselves to the physical? What tools can we use? What happens when we deal with new public spaces in a large and complex metropolitan reality? Things become complicated. But some new information technologies offer us the possibility of capturing an enormous quantity of data and images published by users online, using various applications designed for tablets and smartphones. Perhaps the most common one is Instagram: one of the most relevant mass phenomena in the era of social media, for having implemented a process of democratization of artistic photography, and the sharing of moments of everyday life. In the case of Le Centquatre and Place de la République, two very different public spaces in Paris, Instagram was used as a tool for documentation, as an observatory in the search for urban dynamics and the changes that are underway in contemporary society.
Notes
From a talk by Ezio Manzini called “Localismo cosmopolita”: Internet Festival 2015, October 8–15, 2015, at Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.
From “La città open source: creazione partecipata dell’identità locale,” published on the blog of Domenico Di Siena [http://urbanohumano.org/it/uncategorized-it/la-citta-open-source-creazione-partecipata-dellidentita-locale/].
From “Il Videocomunicatore. Informazione audiovisiva dalla casa alla città e viceversa” [La Pietra Citation2011: 95].
Doctoral thesis in architecture and urban planning, 2015, at the Dipartimento di Architettura di Pescara, Scuola Superiore G. d’Annunzio, entitled: Ordinary Public Spaces. Nuovi ruoli per il progetto/Nuovi ruoli per l’architetto; supervisors Francesco Garofalo and Carmen Andriani.
Post-it City. Occasional Urbanism, CCCB, Barcelona 2008; Actions. What you can do with the City, CCA, Montreal 2008-09; Into the Open. Positioning Practice, U.S. Pavilion—XI International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, 2008; Spontaneous Interventions, Design Actions for the Common Good, U.S. Pavilion—XIII International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, 2012; Hands-On Urbanism, 1850–2012, The Right to Green, Architekturzentrum, Vienna, 2012.
Two people were interviewed: the architect Vincent Hertenberger (October 8, 2013) who works in the Agence TVK architectural office and was responsible for the redesign of the Place de la République (completed in June 2013) from the competition entry to its construction; and Ricardo Basualdo (October 24, 2013), a former consultant to the City of Paris and “father” of Le Centquatre cultural project.
“From Berenice Abbott to Walker Evans to Bill Brandt to Henri Cartier-Bresson, street photography gradually took on the social and cultural features that made it a major cultural praxis of the 20th century” [Baird Citation2011: 57].
A brief history: Instagram was launched as an application in October 2010, initially available only to users of iOS. In 2012 Facebook acquired the application for one billion US dollars, and within a year versions were available for users of Android and Windows Phone. Five years after being launched, Facebook announced that Instagram boasts over 400 million users, 75 percent of whom are non-American. The following numbers were published by Gadgetreview in 2015: 100 million active users per month; 40 billion images shared; 3.5 billion ‘likes’ per day; 80 million images shared every day. Data about users tells us that 20 percent are between the ages of 12–17, 34 percent between 18–24, 33 percent between 25–34, 8 percent between 35–44 and only 5 percent between 45–54. Today Instagram is considered one of the most widespread applications and represents one of the most relevant mass phenomena of this era of social media, responsible for the democratization of artistic photography and the sharing of moments of everyday life with the online community.
The term “hashtag” refers to a special tag that can be created by anyone simply by placing the “#” symbol in front of the selected word. The tag is used to provide an address for an image and render it viral.
In 2013 Ribeiro launched a project called “Real Life Instagram,” which consists in attaching real filters (cardboard frames with colored plastic film) to lampposts, streetlights and walls near important monuments in various cities around the globe, beginning in London. The idea was that people could take photos using these small devices instead of the filters offered by Instagram. The artist’s objectives may have been multiple: Inviting people to take pictures framing his device, and thus the hashtag of his project, and sharing them to publicize his profile? Or placing the real world alongside the virtual, seeking a compromise between the two? Or stimulating users to think about the scarce artistic skills that lead them to choose filters to post spectacular images? Bruno Ribeiro has never clearly expressed the meaning of his installations, though they undoubtedly stimulate curiosity and considerations on the coexistence between the real and the virtual and the more or less artistic value of the material published by generic users of social media; [http://reallifeinstagram.com/].
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Notes on contributors
Patrizia Toscano
PATRIZIA TOSCANO earned a degree in Architecture in 2007 from the G. D’Annunzio University in Pescara. Between 2007 and 2011, during professional work, her interest in the study of the urban phenomena occurring in the public spaces of the contemporary metropolis broadened. Her Ph.D. research has investigated formal and informal strategies aimed at redefining the role of the project for the public space in a context that works toward a new notion of Public. In 2013 she was a visiting scholar at the Laboratoire Architecture Anthropologie in Paris, and during 2014 was a visiting scholar at O.S.T., Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio, Università della Svizzera Italiana. She obtained a Ph.D. in 2015.