The Code of The City

• What: exhibition
• When: When: 7-9.10 (opening on 7.10, 8:30 p.m., then on 8.10, between 11 a.m.-10 p.m, and on 9.10, between 11 a.m.-8 p.m.)
• Where: Conference centre, level 1

When you walk in the streets of a contemporary metropolis, its digital architecture becomes more and more clear. The algorithms that control traffic lights, blinking detector lights, the internet of things or the applications in our smartphones, which show us the way towards our destination or the people we would like to meet – all of this makes the code of the city tangible, and the line between real and virtual spaces starts to be less and less clear. In the age of omnipresent technology, the proposal to “grow” a sustainable city could also mean its adequate programming. However, do we still have control over the algorithms that organise our lives?

The exhibition The Code of The City was created in collaboration with the Art Department of the Pedagogical University of Krakow. It consists of audiovisual installations, video projections, photographs and graphics, depicting various perceptions of cities. What connects the artists invited to the exhibition is the flâneur attitude, one of a lone stroller and lurker, gazing at the urban scenery as if it was a theatre stage performance. Unlike their 19th-century prototype – wandering within a labyrinth of streets and passages – a flâneur of the post-digital age tries to find their way among the network of algorithms and devices which communicate autonomously (photographs from the IoT series by Kuba Pierzchała). The feelings of technological excess and an overload of data are expressed through traditional collage (works by Witold Winek) or the contemporary glitch effect, which puts our perception to the test (Atoms video by Magdalena Lazar). In the end, the human observer becomes substituted by artificial intelligence – in Jacek Złoczkowski's installation, two bots talk to each other with the use of spacial objects. The city functions not only as the place where we navigate, but also a language with which the space is recorded.

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Curator: Rafał Kosewski

Partaking in the Exhibition: Magdalena Lazar, Kuba Pierzchała, Witold Winek, Jacek Złoczowski.

Partner of the Exhibition: Pedagogical University of Krakow