Mapping the mast (2014)

Abstract

There is currently widespread popular, professional and academic interest in communications infrastructures, particularly with the material networks that enable our seemingly immaterial systems to function.¹

¹ Mattern, “Infrastructural Tourism.”

For example, Andrew Blum’s²

² Blum, Tubes.

book Tubes takes us inside places like the former AT&T telephone exchange on 60 Hudson Street, New York, to reveal the overlooked physical stuff that comprises the Internet. Similarly, Timo Arnall’s recent film, Internet Machine (2014), reveals something of the ‘cloud’, in cloud computing, via a filmic tour of a giant Telephonica data-centre in Alcalá, Spain. These works echo a concern within media scholarship³

³ Horst, “The Infrastructures”; Parks, “Around the Antenna Tree.”

for the materials and infrastructures of the ‘network society’ and the power relations that surround and shape these systems. In this article, I discuss how designers are involved in efforts to make infrastructures more legible ⁴

⁴ Mattern, “Ear to the Wire.”

and report on a practice-research project that explores a contested mobile mast in Winchester, UK. The project responds to media scholar Lisa Parks’⁵

⁵ Parks, “Around the Antenna Tree.”

call to analyse mobile media networks by paying close attention to specific nodes in the network, local stories of development and the practices that surround mobile telecommunications infrastructure systems once they are activated.

Keywords:

• Actor-network theory
• mobile media
• communications infrastructure
• infrastructure literacy
• practice-research
• communication design

Notes

¹ Mattern, “Infrastructural Tourism.”

² Blum, Tubes.

³ Horst, “The Infrastructures”; Parks, “Around the Antenna Tree.”

⁴ Mattern, “Ear to the Wire.”

⁵ Parks, “Around the Antenna Tree.”

1. Parks, “Around the Antenna Tree.”

2. Parks, “Around the Antenna Tree.”

3. Parks, “Around the Antenna Tree.”

4. Parks, “Around the Antenna Tree,” n.p.

5. Star, “The Ethnography,” 379.

6. Horst, “The Infrastructures.”

7. Horst, “The Infrastructures,” 148.

8. Mackenzie 2002, cited in Thrift, Non-representational Theory, 9.

9. Blanchette, “A Material History.”

10. Rosenheim, The Cryptographic Imagination.

11. (Blanchette, “A Material History,” 3.

12. Barlow, “A Declaration.”

13. Mattern, “Infrastructuaral Tourism,” citing Mackenzie, “Wirelessness.”

14. Mackenzie, “Wirelessness.”

15. Arnall, No to NoUI

16. Cubitt, “Telecommunications Networks,” 1.

17. Mattern, “Infrastructural Tourism.”

18. Mattern, “Infrastructural Tourism.”

19. Arnall, “Exploring ‘Immaterials’.”

20. Arnall, “Exploring ‘Immaterials’.”

21. Arnall, “Exploring ‘Immaterials’.”

22. Chalmers, MacColl and Bell, “Seamful Design.”

23. Dunne and Raby, Design Noir, 26.

24. Blanchette, “A Material History,” 9.

25. Bratton, “The Black Stack.”

26. Easterling, “Extrastatecraft.”

27. Arnall, “Exploring ‘Immaterials’.”

28. Oliver, “Border Bumping.”

29. Parks, “Around the Antenna Tree.”

30. Latour, Science in Action.

31. Latour, Science in Action, 258.

32. Akrich, “The De-scription,” 207.

33. Akrich, “The De-scription,” 211.

34. Law, “Notes on the Theory,” 2.

35. Latour, Reassembling the Social, 114.

36. Latour, Reassembling the Social, 5.

37. Latour, Reassembling the Social, 12.

38. Gittelman, “Holding Electronic Networks.”

39. Gittelman, “Holding Electronic Networks.”

40. Gittelman, “Holding Electronic Networks.”

41. Parks, “Around the Antenna Tree.”

42. Beer, “Popular Culture,” 24.

43. Graham and Marvin, Splintering Urbanism.

44. Parks, 2013.

45. Parks, 2013, 62.

46. Mattern, “Infrastructural Tourism.”

47. Bogost, Alien Phenomenology.

48. Bogost, Alien Phenomenology, 50.

49. Bogost, Alien Phenomenology, 51.

50. Wajcman, “Reflections,” 452.

51. Beer, “Popular Culture,” 23.

52. Benjamin, The Arcades Project.

53. Dourish and Bell, “The Infrastructure,” 413.

54. Lievrouw, “Materiality and Media,” 27.

55. Cubitt, “Telecommunications Networks,” 1.

56. Arnall, No to NoUI

57. Arnall, “Exploring ‘Immaterials’.”

58. Ratto, “Critical Making”, 254.

59. Smith and Dean, “Introduction.”

60. Graham and Marvin, Splintering Urbanism.

61. Beer, “Popular Culture.”

62. Graham and Marvin, Splintering Urbanism, 8.

63. Graham and Marvin, Splintering Urbanism, 11.

64. Lievrouw, “Materiality and Media,” 30.

65. Lievrouw, “Materiality and Media,” 30.