SENTIENT CITY SURVIVAL KIT: ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE NEAR FUTURE
MARK SHEPARD
Biography Mark Shepard investigates entanglements of technology & urban life. Exhibitions include the Venice International Architecture Biennial, Ars Electronica, & the International Architecture Biennial Rotterdam. He is an Associate Professor of Architecture & Media Study at the University at Buffalo.
Talk The Sentient City Survival Kit is a collection of artifacts for survival in the near-future sentient city. Conceived as an archaeology not of a contemporary past but a possible future, these artifacts invoke a society yet to exist through fragments and traces of its technological milieu. As design fictions, they examine the material consequences of this urban future in playful and ironic ways, and ask us to imagine alternatives to this highly optimized, ever-more efficient and over-coded city.