Paper short abstract:

An immersive experience that explores a socio-political alternative Barcelona, through a combination of site-specific audio recordings, voice actors, a mobile GPS performance, and artefacts from a fictional government service.

Paper long abstract:

The planet's global population grew exponentially, enormous numbers of people migrated between countries, cities and territories. Evermore sophisticated algorithms were introduced to optimise the distribution of services, resources, transport, food and healthcare, and the sharing economy created more opportunity for access but parallel opportunity for capital. New behaviours from technology meant that citizens and their belongings were gradually being shared and distributed across the city. Meanwhile affordable housing disappeared, while vast areas of privately owned urban infrastructure sat unused and unavailable, the divide between wealth and poverty growing beyond imagination.

As global markets crashed, the state was forced to intervene, reclaiming the housing market and incorporating the most established sharing services within a new government policy. Temporary habitation of space became mandatory, as the city optimised the distribution of its citizens. The algorithm replaced the committee, providing real-time and immediate optimisation of invisible infrastructure, continually redefining the meaning between the spatial and temporal relationships of networked places, objects and people.

Mobile technologies were combined with ubiquitous networked devices, enabling the total sensing and recording of real-time citizen behaviour in public and private spaces. The Citizen Rotation Office was established and uses these technologies to predict, prevent, maintain and adjust the movement and location of all citizens.

This alternative version of Barcelona is experienced through a combination of site-specific audio recordings, voice actors, a mobile GPS performance, and artefacts from a fictional government service. This project investigates the changing value of the home, social inequality, and the socio-political implications of mobile technologies and cybernetics within this new landscape.