DISTRACT Talk with Anders Koed Madsen

Title: Soft City Sensing – listening to data publics in the digital city

Abstract: In this presentation I suggest that the combination of geo-coded digital traces and qualitative AI makes it possible to map the human aspects of urban life in new and interesting ways. I use the label ‘Soft City Sensing’ (SCS) to outline an approach to data-driven urban cartography that takes inspiration from pragmatist theories of publics as well as attempts to create human-centered urban maps by scholars such as Robert Park and Stanley Milgram. The aim with SCS is to advance an ideographic approach to mapping that uses quali-quantitative digital data to tap into the multitude of urban values in circulation around situated urban issues. As such, it is a call for urban decision makers to expand their criteria for what serves as valid inputs to urban planning. After outlining the theoretical trajectory of SCS, I exemplify the approach through a recent collaboration with a local Danish architecture company called Henning Larsen. In developing a proposition to an idea-competition for the development of a new area of Copenhagen, we engaged in an experiment to understand the identity of the area though place-based social media data. More specifically we used qualitative AI to map the visual characteristics of the area through patterns in 35.000 Instagram images and its social characteristics through a segmentation analysis of event-attendance amongst Facebook users. I will discuss how this way of visualizing the area slowed down reasoning among the architects involved, but also come with a range of problems regarding algorithmic effects, data ethics and more.

Bio: Anders Koed Madsen is professor in techno-anthropology and computational SSH at Aalborg University where he serves as head of experimental practice at TANTLab. During the last five years he has developed ‘Soft CitySensing’ as a distinct framework for mapping and conceptualizing the social infrastructure of urban publics through the digital traces they leave of their urban life. This work draws on his distinct interdisciplinary background in pragmatist philosophy, computational humanities, internet studies and organizational analysis.