ABSTRACT

In this piece, we introduce the notion of ‘atmoculture’ as a conceptual tool to analyse the new forms of mobility supported and enacted by digital algorithms. In historical perspective, we analyse how modernity has created a movement-space where the problem of finding one's way through an increasingly ‘displaced’ urban space first emerged, with noticeable psycho-social consequences. Reconstructing the new digital media as a continuation of this spatial imagination, we seek to zoom in on the forms of mobility facilitated by digital algorithms. Urban digital navigation, we suggest, proceeds in parallel with a reorientation of the urban experience towards atmospheric considerations, maximizing safety and pleasure in the user's encounters with the environment. In this context, atmoculture appears a spatial-aesthetic, psycho-cultural, and bio-technological milieu that prepares space for convenient navigation. We discuss a number of consequences: first the disburdening effect, whereby subjects delegate to a number of perceptions and decisions to algorithms, expropriating the natural problem-solving aspect of subjectivity; second, the invisible transformations of urban space due to the biases that are built in algorithms themselves; third, the tensional, even contradictory outcomes of atmocultural expectations, whereby the goal of a secure and pleasant environmental interaction is undone by the very quantity of information provided and the level of alertness required from the user.

摘要

在这篇文章中，我们介绍了“大气文化”的概念，作为一种概念工具来分析由数字算法支持和制定的新形式的移动性。从历史的角度来看，我们分析了现代性如何创造了一个运动空间，在这个运动空间中，首先出现了在日益“流离失所”的城市空间中寻找出路的问题，并产生了明显的社会心理后果。重建新的数字媒体作为这种空间想象的延续，我们试图放大由数字算法促进的移动形式。我们建议，城市数字导航与将城市体验重新定位为大气因素同时进行，最大限度地提高用户与环境相遇时的安全性和愉悦感。在这种情况下，氛围文化似乎是一种空间美学、心理文化、以及为方便航行准备空间的生物技术环境。我们讨论了一些后果：首先是减轻负担的影响，即主体将一些感知和决策委托给算法，剥夺了主观性的自然问题解决方面；其次，由于算法本身的偏差，城市空间发生了无形的转变；第三，气氛文化期望的紧张甚至矛盾的结果，由此提供的信息量和用户所需的警觉水平使安全和愉快的环境交互的目标无法实现。主体将一些感知和决策委托给算法，剥夺了主观性的自然问题解决方面；其次，由于算法本身的偏差，城市空间发生了无形的转变；第三，气氛文化期望的紧张甚至矛盾的结果，由此提供的信息量和用户所需的警觉水平使安全和愉快的环境交互的目标无法实现。主体将一些感知和决策委托给算法，剥夺了主观性的自然问题解决方面；其次，由于算法本身的偏差，城市空间发生了无形的转变；第三，气氛文化期望的紧张甚至矛盾的结果，由此提供的信息量和用户所需的警觉水平使安全和愉快的环境交互的目标无法实现。