Online/Virtual Event
Wednesday, September 15th from 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Join New School faculty member and METRO board president Shannon Mattern for this conversation with Ever Bussey, Trevor Owens, Everest Pipkin, and Jasmine McNealy, inspired by Shannon's new book, A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences (Princeton University Press):
A City Is Not a Computer reveals how cities encompass myriad forms of local and indigenous intelligences and knowledge institutions, arguing that these resources are a vital supplement and corrective to increasingly prevalent algorithmic models...Incorporating insights from urban studies, data science, and media and information studies, [Mattern] offers a visionary new approach to urban planning and design.
Shannon Mattern is a Professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research. Her writing and teaching focus on archives, libraries, and other media spaces; media infrastructures; spatial epistemologies; and mediated sensation and exhibition, themes explored in her latest book, A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences (Princeton University Press). She is also the author of The New Downtown Library: Designing with Communities, Deep Mapping the Media City, and Code and Clay, Data and Dirt: Five Thousand Years of Urban Media, published by University of Minnesota Press. In addition to writing dozens of articles and book chapters, she contributes a regular long-form column about urban data and mediated infrastructures to Places, a journal focusing on architecture, urbanism, and landscape, and she collaborates on public design and interactive projects and exhibitions. You can find her at wordsinspace.net.
Ever Bussey is a social researcher and media maker from Detroit. Their interests concern digital technologies and the role they play in shifting or maintaining power dynamics in human relationships. Ever’s talents include using research and digital media to construct and combat narratives through data visualization, archives, or film. They hold a BA in Media Arts and Studies from Wayne State University and an MA in Media Studies from The New School.
Jasmine McNealy is associate director of the Marian B. Brechner First Amendment Project and an associate professor in the Department of Media Production, Management & Technology in the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida, where she studies information, communication, and technology with a view toward influencing law and policy. Her research focuses on privacy, data governance, surveillance, and communities. A 2018-2019 Fellow and current Data & Society Affiliate, she holds a PhD in Mass Communication with an emphasis in Media Law and a J.D. from the University of Florida, and a Bachelor of Science degree in both Journalism and Afro-American studies from the University of Wisconsin.
Trevor Owens is a librarian, researcher, policy maker, and educator advancing digital infrastructure and programs for libraries, archives, museums, and related cultural institutions. Owens serves as the first Head of Digital Content Management at the Library of Congress. He is also a Public Historian in Residence at American University, and a lecturer for the University of Maryland’s College of Information, where he is also a Research Affiliate with the Center for Archival Futures. Owens is the author of three books, the most recent of which, The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2018 and has won outstanding publication awards from both the American Library Association and the Society of American Archivists.
Everest Pipkin is a drawing, game, and software artist from Central Texas who produces small work with large data sets. They hold a BFA from University of Texas at Austin, an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and have shown nationally and internationally at The Design Museum of London, The Texas Biennial, The XXI Triennale of Milan, The Photographers Gallery of London, Center for Land Use Interpretation, and others.
This event is co-hosted by Code As Liberal Art at The New School and the Metropolitan New York Library Council.