Visiting Speaker: Shannon Mattern, Feb. 1-2

Shannon Mattern will be giving a talk on Thursday, February 1^st at 4-5:30pm at CMU’s Sorrel Library Den (Wean Hall, 4th floor).

Studded with sensors, optimized by algorithms, interfaced via dashboards and apps, cities are imagined as computers writ large, planned “from the Internet up.” Yet this new age of sentient urbanism — in which place-based intelligence is reduced to “smartness” — has a long and deep lineage. This talk, drawing on my new book, Code and Clay, Data and Dirt: 5000 Years of Urban Media, will take us on a world tour of cities that embody various materialities of intelligence: both code and clay, data and dirt, ether and ore.

She will also be giving a workshop, in Pitt’s Digital Scholarship Services on Friday February 2nd at 10am.

In this workshop, we’ll look at the various motivations and ambitions behind campaigns for transdisciplinarity — and we’ll explore the opportunities and challenges of transforming trans- or post-disciplinary aspirations into program building, curricular design, and pedagogical practice.