The urban spectator : American concept cities from Kodak to Google / Eric Gordon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gordon, Eric, 1973-

Series:

Interfaces, studies in visual culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sociology, Urban--United States.

Sociology, Urban.

United States.

Photography--United States.

Photography.

Physical Description:

x, 228 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

American concept cities from Kodak to Google

Place of Publication:

Hanover, NH : Dartmouth College Press : University Press of New England, [2010]

Summary:

The Urban Spectator is a lively and utterly fascinating exploration of the ways in which technologies have influenced our collective conception of the American city, as well as our relationship with urban space and architecture. Eric Gordon argues that the city, developing late and in conjunction with a range of modern media, produced a particular way of seeing--what he labels "possessive spectatorship." Lacking the historical rootedness of European cities, the American city was open to individual interpretation, definition, and ownership. Beginning with the White City of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the efforts to commodify the concept city through photography, Gordon shows how the American city has always been a product of the collision between the dominant conceptualization, shaped by contemporary media, and the spectator. From the viewfinder of the Kodak camera, to the public display of early cinema, to the speculative desire of network radio, all the way to machine-age utopianism, nostalgia, and America's "rerun" culture, the city is an amalgam of practice and concept. All of this comes to a head in the "database city" where urban spectatorship takes on the characteristics of a Google search. In new urban developments, the spectator searches, retrieves, and combines urban references to construct each experience of the city.

Contents:

More than the sum of its parts : the white city and amateur photography

Picture thinking : Kodaking and the art of nature

City in motion : early cinema and Times Square

Scaling up : the "speculative architecture" of 1930s New York

The operative city : the machine intelligence of urban renewal

Rerun city : nostalgia and urban narrative

The database city : the digital possessive and Hollywood Boulevard.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781584658030

1584658037

OCLC:

326630799