Hearing Urban Infrastructures: A Sonic Archaeology of the Media-City
Shannon Mattern, New School

For over a century, scholars and designers have acknowledged the existence of a spatial form commonly known as the "media city," which encompasses both the modern city as represented through photographs, film, and digital technologies; and the city as shaped by those same technologies. In this seminar I argue for the need to acknowledge the longue durée of the "media city," and to move beyond ocularcentric models of urban history. Drawing on the growing body of research on infrastructure that's emerging from across the design fields, and on work in "media archaeology" within my own field of media studies, I'll argue that we need to "excavate" the deep history of urban mediation, and I'll take as an example an aspect of the media city that wouldn't seem to lend itself easily to excavation. I'm referring to the "sonic city" - the city of public address and radio waves and everyday conversation. How does one dig into a form of mediation that seemingly has no physical form? What can we learn about how our cities have functioned as material sounding boards, resonance chambers, and infrastructures for various forms of sonic communication?