Suchergebnisse

This article provides an overview of the analysis of technological zones. A technological zone can be understood as a space within which differences between technical practices, procedures and forms have been reduced, or common standards have been established. Such technological zones take broadly one of three forms: (1) metrological zones associated with the development of common forms of measurement; (2) infrastructural zones associated with the creation of common connection standards; and (3) zones of qualification which come into being when objects and practices are assessed according to common standards and criteria. The article argues that technological zones can have more or less clear borders, but such borders increasingly do not correspond to the borders of nation-states. Through a discussion of the global oil industry, some of the ways in which the formation of technological zones has become critical to contemporary economic and political life are examined.

Un territoire qui devient métropole se différencie en zones d'attraction et de répulsion, de production et de mise en réserves. La grande ville est transformée en zones de toutes natures par les coups de force, les régulations et les oublis. La désorientation qui s'ensuit a donné lieu à une abondante littérature sociologique et romanesque. Dans ces zones urbaines déçues se fomentent crimes, émeutes, innovations et histoires d'amour.

How can Michel Foucault's notion of heterotopias be transposed into a concept that describes medial and, more specifically, virtual spaces? What could such virtualized heterotopias look like? Can we find traces of utopian thinking within them? Zones*Virtopiques answers these questions in two ways: first by constructing a conceptual framework using notions of utopia and heterotopia, as well as reality and virtuality; and second, by applying theoretical findings to Zone*Interdite, a media art project on military areas authored by Mathias Jud and Christoph Wachter. Therefore, a micro-analysis of medial dispositifs has been developed.