Abstract
Much new media research and practice contributes to a reflexive study about the role of its technologies in the production of supermodernity and mobility. International artists such as Jordan Crandell, and Ursula Biemen have used network technologies, digital video and image surveillance systems to research the technologies’ role in producing environments such as border control areas and migration zones. However, attention has been focused upon the exclusionary nature of these zones. Ross Harley’s research investigates the airport as a unique zone of supermodernity; one which combines exclusionary deployments of security-based technological systems with the everyday population movement.
Aviopolis analyses the interrelations between networks of information and networks of human mobility, demonstrating how airports become zones for coordinating these relationships. It visually traces the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ networks (technical infrastructure, code and information flows) at play in the organisation of aircraft, ground crews, tarmac markings and terminal design that comprise ‘the airport’. The video comprises a moving image ‘essay’ that demonstrates the links between the circulation of information via secure networks, the zoning of space between ‘crew’ and ‘passenger’ and the use of visual design to code such flows and spaces.
The work has been exhibited at international symposia and exhibition venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. It has been cited by significant figures in the field of Mobility Studies, including John Urry’s (Head of the Centre for Mobilities Research Lancaster) Routledge books Mobiliites (2007) and Aeromobilities (2008).