ABSTRACT
“A Walk on the Digital Sublime” bores into a St. Louis Missouri urban design praxis. The praxis _recursive urbanism_ uses the street as: 1) an evolving search engine, a tableau you drift through, synthesizing as you move, 2) a platform to assemble networks to critique the network, and 3) a probe into how digital kit edits-us. Videos and accompanying graphics frame a struggle of getting onto the street, and manning way-stations to navigate through a digital fog. This streetscape praxis is now snared in litigation in St. Louis. St. Louis is where Marshal McLuhan did foundational media work. McLuhan anguished that the “privileged diet for the elite” would thwart art as radar. “A Walk on the Digital Sublime” tracks how a bogus idea of community provoked a lawsuit, and why a St. Louis elite decided to forfeit and obliterate McLuhan’s St. Louis legacy. And do it in time to celebrate his 2011 Centennial.
BIO
Paul Guzzardo is a designer and lawyer based in St. Louis and Buenos Aires, Guzzardo maps the devolving state of the American public sphere. He’s interested in epistemology and where urban designers, creative practitioners and collectors fit, and or don’t, in a zoomed out digitized culture. His research is out on the street. His design praxis includes: nightclubs, outdoor multimedia projections, street-front media-labs, street theater, remix concerts, gallery installations and documentary film. He exploits these venues and disciplines to design epistemic gear _ maps_ for navigating through this digital minefield. He is a Fellow at the Geddes Institute for Urban Research.
Paul Guzzardo includes a video of the exhibition at OnSite on his blog >>