Flash Mobs

RESUMO
Este trabalho aborda a (in) visibilidade das juventudes (tribos) na pós-modernidade, tendo como pressuposto que nos espaços virtuais de confluência entre a tecnologia e a arte elas podem ganhar visibilidade. A abordagem ancora-se teoricamente, principalmente, no pensador francês Michel Maffesoli, tendo como método a sociologia compreensiva. A sustentação teórica articulou o pensamento maffesoliano às juventudes como categoria ou metáfora de um modo de ser juvenil e às implicações tecnológicas no processo de interação, mediação e potencialização das expressões estéticas juvenis. Utilizamos as noções de Maffesoli como categorias para compreender as novas formas de socialidade das tribos por meio de suas diversas manifestações artísticas na cibercultura. As descrições e análises das manifestações de Flash Mobs postadas em vídeos do Youtube e grupos que mantêm Site/páginas de Facebook destinados à divulgação de encontros artístico- culturais mediados pelo ciberespaço permitiram perceber que nem todas as tribos funcionam por meio da mesma dinâmica, o que nos levou a elaborar a ideia de intensidade das práticas juvenis tanto em termos das formas de apropriar-se, como do modo de relacionar-se com o que foi apropriado. O viés estético-emocional conduz a identificação do modo de ser juvenil com um espírito dionisíaco. Assim como a metáfora de Afrodite (sensualidade que se refere não apenas à sexualidade, mas à liberdade que se busca na vivência sem regras, a um retorno à natureza) que, para nós, também ronda o estar-junto das tribos. Deparamos, portanto, com muitas possibilidades de visibilidade das juventudes nas tramas artísticas que dialogam na interface físico-virtual e ocupam os espaços públicos da cidade.
Palavras-chave: Juventudes, Maffesoli, estética, cibercultura, Flash Mob, Facebook.

For the past few years, on Sundays during the Easter period, groups of Catholics fill city squares (parks, shopping centres and the like) and celebrate the liturgy giving a testimony to Christian life. Very often these places are crossroads of trade, leisure, entertainment and commute trails, hence the celebrations raise actual bewilderment in busy passers-by. Suddenly, by imposing sacral references on the spaces of the profanum, they become symbolic places, the embodiment of a living Church on the move. The article attempts to read these specific meetings in the context of cultural phenomena: a theatre play, a live performance act, flash mobs, and others. The article also contemplates the construction of meaning of such space interpreted anew through the prism of these forms of evangelisation.

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In May 2011, a widespread protest movement known as 15M emerged in Spain, emphasizing the sustained and purposeful occupation of public spaces. Based in Seville, the performance collective Flo6x8 protests financial and political malfeasance in Spain by converting corporate banks into flamenco performance and recording spaces. This essay explores how Flo6x8 generates new physical and conceptual spaces for political expression and protest in Spain's 15M Movement through their pioneering use of digital media, flash mobs, and flamenco performance. Flo6x8 temporarily converts spaces of the opposition into oppositional spaces and channels public outrage into powerful and irreverent productions. The group appropriates enduring symbols and associations of flamenco, including poverty and alienation, while simultaneously challenging notions of where and when performances of flamenco should happen. Drawing from literature in performance studies, theory of social movements, critical urban theory, and ethnographies of precarity and austerity in southern Europe, this article considers how visual, corporeal, and spatial elements are critical factors that shape the meanings of flamenco performance and protest in twenty-first century Spain.

This dissertation explores how flamenco performance models intimacy and solidarity in Andalusian communities based in Seville and Morón de la Frontera. The adaptability of flamenco performance underscores the inherent decision-making that goes into determining which physically, socially and affectively constructed environments are appropriate, if not ideal, for making music. Since expression within flamenco is largely based upon collective experience and reciprocal execution, the performance space constitutes a defining element of both social and sonic aesthetics. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork, I look at how artists and communities are responding to pressing subjects that involve cultural patrimony and protection as well as political corruption and interference. The first two chapters chronicle the maintenance and development of a flamenco guitar tradition in Morón that proliferated into the hands of international students beginning in the 1960s. I analyze how the introduction of recording and sound reproduction technologies in Morón served to create new types of mobility that separate sounds from their original bodies and spaces of production and, in so doing, alter and blur the boundaries between public and private in communities of flamenco performers and listeners. Next, I focus on the work of twenty-first century flamenco group Son de la Frontera, who organized the music of Diego del Gastor into lush and varied arrangements. By tracing this music back through particular genealogies of listening, I reveal how the Morón style has become entangled in larger processes of countercultural and transnational encounters that converge and become audible through the work of Son de la Frontera. In the final two chapters, I discuss how the recent encroachment of institutional capital and decree upon artists and venues has threatened, rather than supported, the local flamenco community in Seville. I demonstrate how members of this community are responding to these attacks through radical forms of performance protest. Highlighting the dangerous and deceptive elements of intangible cultural heritage, I interrogate the ways in which flamenco artists and community members continue to negotiate distinctions between public and private performance in an era of globalized media circulation, neoliberal economic regimes and complex localized structures of kinship and power.

Technology affects our social life, where the virtual spaces allow anyone to publish content and share it to millions of people. That not only affects our social life, but also the way we gather inside the city. This essay argues user-publish content in virtual spaces, and analyzes of public gathering at 21st century city’s spaces.

In One Billion Rising (OBR), a global flash mob protest against sexual violence toward women, the dancing body becomes a political site for advocating freedom and self-defined agency. The flash mob provides a liberating space, allowing marginalized women to make their voices heard through their bodies and to transform their unspeakable trauma into a danceable pleasure for all to experience in a community of mutual support and empathy. This article focuses on my autoethnographic
participation/observation at OBR events from February 2013 to February 2019 and draws from interviews with seven participants in the United States, Zimbabwe, and
Hong Kong.

John H. Muse surveys the recent phenomenon of the flash mob—brief, participatory performances in public spaces, often advertised virally and lasting no more than a few moments. He discusses the work of Improv Everywhere, particularly their events Frozen Grand Central and No Pants Subway Ride, as well as Bill Wasik's flash mobs and International Pillow Fight Day, among others. Muse considers the many types of audiences—live and mediated—that observe flash mobs and uses their relationship to these new types of participatory performance as clues to understanding spectatorship in a digitized age.

"This article analyzes the “13-M” flash mob protests following the 11-M terrorist bombings in Madrid and immediately preceding the March 14 Spanish General Elections of 2004. The Governing Popular Party’s insistence that ETA were the main suspects despite contradictory evidence led to a widespread perception that they were deliberately misleading the public for electoral purposes. This sparked the indignation and mobilization of thousands of citizens on March 13, 2004, in an illegal unprecedented “flash mob” protest. Contrary to the two main explanations in the literature, I argue that the 13-M protests were neither purely spontaneous manifestations of public opinion, nor were they the result of Socialist Party machinations. Autonomous social movement activists used cell phones and the internet to mobilize previously established networks for a protest that quickly spread as critiques and demands they were making resonated with an important segment of public opinion. Drawing on ethnographic, primary and secondary data, this analysis provides an inside look at the mobilizing structures and motives behind an important protest and adds to our understanding of political flash mobs in the 21st century.
Keywords: Politics, Spain, “flash mobs”, smart mobs, emotions, social movements, new information and communication technologies, ICTs, protest, elections, media, terrorism."

Este artículo analiza los flash mobs o "multitudes instantáneas" y los nuevos repertorios de acción colectiva presentes en las movilizaciones estudiantiles del año 2011. Se estudian estos repertorios desde su convocatoria, principales actores y objetivos. La metodología es cualitativa puesto que se utilizaron entrevistas a actores relevantes de los flash mob. Como resultados, es posible dar cuenta que este repertorio de acción colectiva representa una nueva forma de hacer política, de reapropiarse el espacio público y de integrar nuevos actores a las arenas políticas.

Flash mobs, participants in an event in which a group of people are organized via some form of telecommunications, assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and sometimes seemingly pointless act for a brief time, and then disperse. A recent phenomenon synthesizes the activity of flash mobs and street gangs. Communities everywhere have experienced the negative effects of street gangs, and their proliferation has led to an increase in destructive crimes in the United States. A flash gang is a group that uses a social media connection to invite participants to a time and location where they commit a crime and then they split up. Local law enforcement needs to examine response policies to prepare for this new and dangerous phenomenon. Recent protests in the Middle East and North Africa were coordinated using similar strategies, spotlighting the power of using social media technology to oppose government action. The spontaneity and secrecy of the flash mob combined with the targeted crime and/or violence of the street gang produces a mix that is hard to combat even with inside intelligence. The instant access and extended reach of mobile phones and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook bring a twist that makes the spontaneous volatility even more difficult to prevent.

Some of the most visible recent movements in Russia cannot be accurately described as either bottom-up or top-down. They are copycat movements, in that the initial idea for a new type of public activity spreads quickly across numerous locales with minimal organizational efforts on the part of those who originated it. This article analyzes three such movements and discusses the structural features they share despite their widely differing ideological background, objectives, and popularity: the Strategy-31 protests for the freedom of assembly, the ultranationalist temperance movement known as Russian Runs, and the commemorative processions titled Immortal Regiment.

W artykule odniesiono się do flash mob -zjawiska, które od kilku lat można obserwować w różnych zakątkach globu. Organizowanie takich przedsięwzięć w miejscach publicznych odbywa się z inicjatywy użytkowników internetu, którzy za pośrednictwem globalnej sieci komputerowej umawiają się, iż wspólnie, w wyznaczonym terminie, wykonają jakąś czynność. Atrakcyjność flash mobów dla ich uczestników wynika z tego, iż sprawują oni całkowitą kontrolą nad organizacją wydarzenia. Ponadto takie akcje często są kreowane według oryginalnych pomysłów, co nadaje im widowiskowy charakter. Flash moby są spontanicznymi inicjatywnymi społecznymi i z założenia nie powinny mieć komercyjnego charakteru. Pojawiły się jednak nieliczne przypadki wykorzystania takich wydarzeń w działaniach promocyjnych podmiotów rynkowych. Tego typu aktywność, ze względu na swój nowatorski wymiar, można zaliczyć do działań z obszaru ambient media. Celem opracowania jest wskazanie marketingowego "potencjału" flash mobów, jak również determinant skutecznego ich wykorzystywania w działaniach promocyjnych (do głównych czynników, warunkujących prowadzenie skutecznej aktywności marketingowej opartej na wykorzystaniu flash mob, należy zaliczyć: stworzenie niebanalnego scenariusza, staranny dobór oraz przygotowanie uczestników wydarzenia, zainteresowanie akcją przedstawicieli mediów, odwołanie się do flash mob w tradycyjnych reklamach, zamieszczenie w internecie interesującego przekazu wirusowego relacjonującego wydarzenie). Ponadto w artykule zidentyfikowano cechy wyróżniające flash mob na tle "zwyczajnych" wydarzeń marketingowych. Przeanalizowano także przypadki ich komercyjnego wykorzystania.

This research examined how social self-efficacy, collective self-esteem, and need to belong can be used to predict teens' use of social media. The particular focus was on how these social psychological variables together with social media use account for variation in teens' participation in a flash mob – an exemplar of 21st-century collective action. Empirical data come from a survey of teens in a major Midwestern city in the USA. Teens' need to belong was positively associated with the amount of time they reported spending on social networking sites, even when controlling for gender, race, and household socioeconomic status. Both teens' social self-efficacy and time spent on YouTube were positively associated with their intention to participate in a flash mob in the future. These and other findings are discussed in the context of the role of social media in youth culture and collective action.

Time and space are better understood as verbs, conveying action, instead of nouns. They are not just frames to understand youth experiences, as youth experiences, practices and relationships produce particular times and spaces. These experiences, practices and relationships involving people and their material environment reconfigure everyday rhythms and biographical times, as well as different places and spaces, from domestic environments to urban public places. Objects and bodies, with their trajectories and their senses, constitute and specify spaces, producing particular rhythms and assemblages of continuities and discontinuities, in a dynamic and changing process, where controversies and conflicts can emerge when the features, movements and intentions of this plurality of bodies and objects clash. This chapter discusses two examples of time and space dynamics of young people’s everyday, drawing on research on digital uses and practices in Spain and other European countries. Time has many dimensions. An important element that is often overlooked in academic study of childhood and youth is rhythm. A rhythmic analysis of young people’s everyday lives can highlight the similarities and differences with results of research on young people’s temporalities in the nineties regarding to the emergence of a new digital material environment. Topics explored are some examples of rhythmic behavior, such as rhythmic crowds in leisure and politic activities, and their role in the shaping of public spaces; the complex articulations between the public, privacy and intimacy; and the forms of synchronization and de-synchronization regarding times and rhythms given by the obligations, habits and expectations set by the family, institutions and peer groups.

The legend of Pussy Riot has spread since their arrest, trial, and incarceration for 'hooliganism.' The last charge stemmed from an improvised protest performance at a Moscow Russian Orthodox church. They have been labeled prisoners of conscious by Amnesty International and they have referred to themselves as political prisoners. This film follows their performances and arrest in 2010-11. This film follows an observational style of documentary filmmaking. The fly-on-the-wall approach is utilized, centered around the three main characters of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich, and Maria Alyokhina. Though there are more members of the collective, these are the three who were incarcerated for their actions. These incarcerations have become symbolic of how Putin's Russia is becoming more aligned with the culturally conservative Russian Orthodox church than the liberal freedoms established by the post-Soviet constitution.

Flashmobs, Information Bombs, Wikileaks, Twitter, Facebook, Twitter Revolution, ICT,New Media, Social Media, Sosyal Ağ, Toplumsal Paylaşım Ağları...


Bu yazı "Arap Bahar"ından önce yazılmıştır. This article was written before the "Arab Spring". Dieser Artikel wurde vor dem "Arabischen Frühling" verfasst.

A fierce and joyful sound, and a very warm feeling in our hearts Cauleen Smith is currently working on The Supernova Procession, a genre-bending Sun Ra-inflected procession as the culmination of her residency at ISSUE project room. Claire Tancons has researched and written extensively about Carnival, public ceremonial culture and protest movements since 2004 and, since 2008, curated art processions. Smith and Tancons pursue their ongoing conversation about processions as an unparalleled mode of public engagement with deep roots in the African American tradition. ISSUE will present Cauleen Smith's The Supernova Procession, Summer 2012.

This article addresses the complex relationship between digital activism and Internet art, from the initial proposals in the 1990s up to the present day. The analysis focuses on those projects that have most impacted the convergence of net art and "net-activism" during this period, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between artistic practice and hacktivism. Likewise, phenomena such as virtual sit-ins, DDOS-based strategies and several others that have emerged in the new context of social networks and participatory online platforms (memes, flash mobs, etc.) are analysed, in order to reflect on the new practices of social media art and their potential for specific critical action.


[es] Cultura red y estéticas de la disensión Resumen: En este artículo se aborda la compleja relación entre el activismo digital y el Internet art desde los inicios de este en la década de los noventa del pasado siglo hasta la actualidad. El centro del análisis lo constituyen las propuestas que de forma más intensa han reclamado a lo largo de este periodo la confluencia entre net art y "net-activismo", poniendo especial énfasis en las relaciones entre práctica artística y hacktivismo. Asimismo, se analizan fenómenos como las virtual sit-ins, las estrategias basadas en DDOS, los surgidos en el nuevo contexto de las redes sociales y de las plataformas participativas en línea (memes, flash mobs, etc.) para, finalmente, abordar la capacidad de actuación crítica específica de las nuevas prácticas de social media art. Palabras clave: Internet art; net art; hacktivismo; activismo digital en red; arte de medios sociales; sentada virtual. Summary: 1. Internet art and social criticism; 2. Online activism as "performance art" on the Internet?; 3. The "anti-system" possibilities of the "network-system"; 4. The critical manifestation of the connected multitude; 5. Hacktivism and artistic practices; 6. Social media art and dissent; 7. Bibliography. How to cite: Martín Prada, J. (2020) "Network culture and the aesthetics of dissension", en Escritura e Imagen 16, 271-284.

In my presentation, I'll take into account two phenomena: flash mobs and guerrilla gigs. I'll analyze them in a comparative perspective stressing differences and similarities in their conceptions and practices. Flash mobs can be considered as a new phenomenon including both dance and street music. Organized through internet communication, performances pop up in public spaces and are unexpected, short and temporary with a potential political or demonstrative aim and an underlying aesthetic aspect. What is crucial in flash mobs is that, even though they are based on dance and music, they have important social consequences such as the rearrangement of urban spaces and the interference with the stream of people passing by. Similar to flash mobs, guerrilla gigs are concerts taking place in unforeseen sites by bands performing for a short time, without the usual announcements characterizing regular concerts. Places to perform guerrilla gigs are also subway stations, building roofs or parking lots. In short, guerrilla gigs are based on an absence of typical publicity and on the quickness of preparation. In both flash mobs and guerrilla gigs, 'music' and 'streets' are basic elements but other factors, social and cultural, contribute to make these phenomena important nowadays. To discuss meanings and practices concerning flash mobs and guerrilla gigs, I will refer to linguistic anthropology, supporting my analysis on interviews and ethnographic experience. An objective of my presentation is to show how, even in a subverted manner, some kind of narrative tradition is anyway produced in the street through flash mobs and guerrilla gigs.

FUNCTIONALIZATION OF MEDIA-DEPENDENT STRATEGIES
BY SIMULATIVE COMMONS (COMMUNITIES) AT THE CROSSROADS BETWEEN "REALITY" AND "VIRTUALITY":  An article presented to scientific group the author's model of socio-philosophical conceptualization of the way for media discourse functionality and technological strategies in new type of commons collaboration (interactive communities). Author's purpose and point of view is – the actuality of crossroads between "reality" and "virtuality".
Key words: mediology, "common intention (intentionality)", identification, mob, multitude, new strategies of revolt, Ukraine.

ФУНКЦИОНИРОВАНИЕ МЕДИАЗАВИСИМЫХ СТРАТЕГИЙ
СИМУЛЯТИВНИХ ОБЩНОСТЕЙ НА ПЕРЕКРЕСТКАХ
"РЕАЛЬНОСТИ" С "ВИРТУАЛЬНОСТЬЮ": Статья представляет научному сообществу авторский подход к социально-философской концептуализации особенностей функционирования медиа-дискурса и технологических стратегий в общих взаимодействиях нового типа (интерактивных общностях). Ракурс, выбранный автором, – актуальность перекрёстков "реальности" и "виртуальности".
Ключевые слова: медиoлогия, "общая интенционность (интенциональность)", идентификация, моб, "multitude" (множество), новые стратегии протестов, Украина.

Ads are no longer unidirectional or one-dimensional but a blend of offline and online techniques designed to directly interact with the community. For many companies, advertising via online platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo has replaced commercials on television altogether. Recently, branded flash mobs have emerged as a popular form of viral advertising. While many branded flash mobs have experienced millions of YouTube views a metric such as view count does not fully indicate the effectiveness of the ad. This netnographic study evaluates viewers’ attitude toward the ad to better understand the effects of branded flash mobs. After examining 2,882 YouTube comments from three virally successful branded flash mob ads, a typology is developed, referred to as the archetype of consumer attitude matrix, to enable academics to formulate research questions regarding branded flash mobs. These archetypes of consumer attitudes to the online ad, in this case branded flash mobs, aid in the assessment of consumer response based on processing (cognitive versus emotive) and stance (supportive versus antagonistic). This typology also serves as a guide to marketing managers in the use of branded flash mobs in their viral campaigns. The article concludes with recommendations for future research.

This introduction applies a conjunctural approach (Clarke 2017; Hall 1978) to contextualizing this section’s particular analyses and theorizations of the French Nuit Debout social movement that began in 2016 (and may or may not have ended that same year). Integrating popular press, alternative media, and scholarly treatments of Nuit Debout, it assembles a longer French historical view of forces, repertoires, and aspirations as well as a broader culturally specific (though sometimes cross-culturally shared) set of developments that inevitably converged to create the conditions for Nuit Debout’s emergence. With regard to one enduring part of the past, Nuit Debout demonstrates a palpably French critique and counter-production of everyday life, based in a desire to unleash human creativity while practicing an alternative direct democracy and forms of social relationship that exceed the value grids of consumer capitalism—prefigurative political features shared with other recent especially leaderless anti-austerity movements. The introduction then particularly emphasizes the innovative role of media and communication in Nuit Debout, before situating each contributing article in this larger set of cultural-historical relationships.

The article aims to give an introductory view of the development of tactical media practices and specifically tactical media actions that took place in Estonia in 2000–2010, devoting separate treatment to particularities stemming from the local context: points where phenomenon lagged or was interrupted compared to the rest of the world, as well as the commonalities.

The design of our physical and virtual environments highly rules how we act and interact in space and among other people. This paper focuses on analysing event-based campaigns and marketing, particularly, how they appeal to our kinaesthetic sense, concretely by moving our affective bodies. We introduce choreography as a theoretical concept to understand in depth the systems of social movements within devices in urban environments.

Negli ultimi anni la barriera che separa il gioco dalla realtà quotidiana si è fatta via via sempre più sottile e porosa, permettendo al gioco di conquistare una centralità che fino a ora gli era negata. Questo fenomeno, la ludicizzazione, sembra andare incontro alla necessità di risemantizzare, di dare un nuovo significato al tempo e allo spazio destrutturati e resi indifferenti dall'avvento del digitale. Il gioco emerge allora come capace di fornire struttura e dare al tempo e allo spazio un ritmo e una direzione — in altre parole, un senso. La città, ambiente antropico per eccellenza, luogo dell'esperienza e della costruzione delle autobiografie, diventa così soggetta ad azioni di gamification urbana, ovvero a pratiche che mirano a riscrivere la città attraverso l'uso del ludico. Il gioco si rivela un importante strumento per agire sugli spazi urbani: tracciando percorsi, valorizzando luoghi, trasformando i cittadini stessi in giocatori. Dai flash mob agli urban games, passando per gli autovelox che ti iscrivono automaticamente alla lotteria, il gioco invade la città portando con sé nuove strategie, nuovi valori, nuove pratiche di cittadinanza e nuove letture degli spazi urbani. Il volume propone una raccolta di contributi di accademici e professionisti che affrontano la gamification urbana in tutte le sue sfumature, utilizzando gli strumenti della semiotica, della filosofia, della storia dei media e, non da ultimo, del game design.

This article addresses the complex relationship between digital activism and Internet art, from the initial proposals in the 1990s up to the present day. The analysis focuses on those projects that have most impacted the convergence of net art and “net-activism” during this period, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between artistic practice and hacktivism. Likewise, phenomena such as virtual sit-ins, DDOS-based strategies and several others that have emerged in the new context of social networks and participatory online platforms (memes, flash mobs, etc.) are analysed, in order to reflect on the new practices of social media art and their potential for specific critical action.

[Danish Book Chapter]
Kapitlet er del af bogen Kreativ Markedskommunikation.

Det ligner leg. Og så leger du selv med. Men i virkeligheden er du pludselig en del af en markedsføring med sløret afsender. Det hele tager kun et par minutter i virkeligheden, og det synes måske ikke af noget stort, men det efterlader et medieprodukt, der varer langt længere, og deles til hele verden. Måske står du på en banegård, og pludselig bryder alle rundt om dig ud i operasang. Eller du går rundt i et supermarked, og lige pludselig vrimler det med balletdansere i strutskørt. Efter tre minutter er de væk igen. Først er den der, så er den væk igen. En flash mob. På et øjeblik kan den forvandle ethvert offentligt sted til kulisse og enhver forbipasserende til statist. Er det leg, reklame, virkelighed eller fiktion?

TORRES, Rodrigo, “Espace public et esthétisation des mobilisations. L'exemple des jeunes Chiliens” in ROUET, Gilles (Sous la dir.), Mobilisations citoyennes dans l'espace public, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2013, pp. 141-155.

Ce chapitre présente une réflexion sociopolitique sur les formes d’intervention esthétique réalisées par le mouvement étudiant chilien de l’année 2011, le plus important depuis le retour de la démocratie. Parmi les différentes actions réalisées par les jeunes, les flash-mobs se sont révélées être la forme la plus populaire d’intervention dans l’espace public. Sur la base d’entretiens semi-directifs réalisés auprès d’étudiants mobilisés, ce travail montre comment l’esthétisation des formes de manifestation telles que les flash-mobs représentent pour les étudiants une ressource politique de construction d’opinion publique, en exposant leurs revendications aux citoyens et aux médias de façon ludique et attirante.

When, in 1882, Ernest Renan suggested that national identity is constituted by a daily plebiscite, he was invoking the idea in a largely metaphorical way. In the twenty-first century, the gap between metaphor and reality has narrowed dramatically across much of the world. To be sure, ever since the American and French revolutions, global history has been shaped in part by the tension between the uneven distribution (both within and across societies) of economic, military, and political power, on the one hand, and the formally egalitarian concepts of democracy, popular sovereignty, and self-determination, on the other. Yet, events of the last few years suggest that this systemic crisis is taking on new, reiteratively plebiscitary, forms in the age of instant communication and of popular backlashes against globalization.

Negli ultimi anni la barriera che separa il gioco dalla realtà quotidiana si è fatta via via sempre più sottile e porosa, permettendo al gioco di conquistare una centralità che fino a ora gli era negata. Questo fenomeno, la ludicizzazione, sembra andare incontro alla necessità di risemantizzare, di dare un nuovo significato al tempo e allo spazio destrutturati e resi indifferenti dall'avvento del digitale. Il gioco emerge allora come capace di fornire struttura e dare al tempo e allo spazio un ritmo e una direzione — in altre parole, un senso. La città, ambiente antropico per eccellenza, luogo dell'esperienza e della costruzione delle autobiografie, diventa così soggetta ad azioni di gamification urbana, ovvero a pratiche che mirano a riscrivere la città attraverso l'uso del ludico. Il gioco si rivela un importante strumento per agire sugli spazi urbani: tracciando percorsi, valorizzando luoghi, trasformando i cittadini stessi in giocatori. Dai flash mob agli urban games, passando per gli autovelox che ti iscrivono automaticamente alla lotteria, il gioco invade la città portando con sé nuove strategie, nuovi valori, nuove pratiche di cittadinanza e nuove letture degli spazi urbani. Il volume propone una raccolta di contributi di accademici e professionisti che affrontano la gamification urbana in tutte le sue sfumature, utilizzando gli strumenti della semiotica, della filosofia, della storia dei media e, non da ultimo, del game design.

O projeto “Deseducadores” foi pensado com o objetivo de fazer os alunos com posturas agressivas refletirem sobre suas atitudes. O formato escolhido foi o de flash mobs, que são mobilizações relâmpago. Este formato possui um forte apelo à juventude, pois ele é moderno, ágil e sem imposições.
Como o projeto foi desenvolvido em conjunto com os estudantes, eles criaram toda a parte visual do projeto e se autointitularam “Deseducadores”, porque acreditavam que a educação em geral era pautada no preconceito e na violência. Todos os flash mobs foram pensados e executados pelos alunos envolvidos, juntamente com a professora. O objetivo inicial do projeto não foi alcançado. No entanto, os “Deseducadores” promoveram uma mudança mais significativa: houve um empoderamento dos grupos desvalorizados na escola, uma vez que estes se viram representados nos flash mobs, além de terem descoberto nestes uma forma de serem ouvidos.
Vídeo do projeto: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs-46BNMFUw