The system in the room: play as a tool for exploring the concept of urban systematisation

The System in the Room is an art installation inspired by mathematician Mihai Botez and architect Mariana Celac’s book The Systems of Spatial Planning, published in 1980 in Romania. Developed and presented in the context of the Utopian Cities, Programmed Societies (2019-2020) project, the art installation reinterprets Botez and Celac’s ideas on housing in a contemporary context using playful and participatory methods. It aims to allow the players to experience and reflect on the housing concepts advanced in the book. The practice of urban planning has changed dramatically since the book was published. Still, it fascinates by its attempt to define urban systematisation as a science that deals with the organisation and complex remodelling of territorial structures and cities to ensure the optimal framework necessary for the development of human activities and the mutual relationship between the environment and its inhabitants. It is one of the first of its sort to address systemic thinking and, in the context of a socialist country, the book points to the role of science (mathematics in particular) in the planning and management of urbanism and economy. By performing and representing housing concepts, we sought to bring back a historical perspective, its resurgence into today’s urban studies debates and the role of citizens and urbanists in today’s political decisions regarding the city. By using games and participatory methods we aimed to critically discuss a specialist book in urban studies and to encourage more engaging perspectives in today’s urban planning decision-making contexts. At the intersection of urban studies, cultural studies, STS, game design and artistic research, this paper takes an urban planning book and its contemporary context as a starting point and discusses an original art installation as a form of critical reading and participatory engagement in the urban planning decision-making process.</p

The planning game - for an archeology of cybernetics in economy

Taking as starting point ‘The Planning Game’ developed in the frame of ‘Utopian Cities, Programmed Societies’ project, the paper reunites viewpoints related to cybernetics, socialist industry, AI & cybernetics archaeology within the ex-socialist countries, and looks to offer a platform of reflection related to games as method and tool of analysis and critical intervention. Apart from the historical and theoretical aspects of the intervention, the panel discusses game as a form of reenactment, as performative intervention, as a method to unveil the multi-scalar technological condition of socialist industries and economies. It allows the audience to learn about the organization of socialist industry (and the institutional incentives for generating “precarious data”), but also about the way of functioning and the incidence of the individuals. Our aim is to address aspects related to the symbiosis and dynamics between data and users, between a centralized economy and the citizens of a socialist state, as well as the competitions between states. By doing so, the panel aims to bring into discussion concepts such as quality of data, human-data interaction, ideological, social and data control, and economic competition and shows how some of these concepts might help us to have a better understanding of the digital present.</p