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Film short abstract

"Uncoding the City" is a trilogy of Multimodal Anthropological Videographies (MAVs) examining urban digitalization. Part One analyzes how cities are being transformed into digitally codable spheres.

Film synopsis

"Uncoding the City" is a series of three short multimodal anthropological videographies (MAVs) that make two main contributions to anthropology: analyzing the sociocultural practices of urban digitalization and introducing a creative method of analyzing and presenting ethnographic observations.

The project is based on a multi-sited ethnography of urban digitalization, where digital algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) aim to make urban infrastructures, services, and planning more efficient, sustainable, and predictable by translating urban practices into digital data.

Part one of this trilogy examines how technology companies make the urban sphere digitally codable. It proposes uncoding the city by editing marketing videos against the grain and juxtaposing them with urban ethnography. This editing-as-analysis clarifies the associations and dissociations between how technology companies re-imagine urban space and sociality, and how human knowledge, intelligence, and sociocultural actions shape city life. Showing how both digital and cultural algorithms intervene in human interactions offers a gateway away from companies' posthumanist approach.

Methodologically, MAVs are distinguished by their unique editing technique, which creatively juxtaposes two or more ethnographic materials (videos, images, sounds, texts) on a single screen. This approach moves beyond conventional ethnographic film by actively constructing relational arguments, generating new analytical insights, and offering new ways for engaging diverse audiences.