Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
keep this information from the public. It didn't seem even necessary to see it in
operation, it was enough to know that it had been done. The walking artist Francis
Alÿs speaks of his work as myth making, he sets out to “keep the plot of a project as
simple as possible so that it can be told as a story, an anecdote, something that can
be transmitted orally without the need to have access to images” (Godfrey
2010
).
NAMAland
similarly has a simple narrative that can be told as a story, which means
that even without access to the requisite technology the project still succeeds at some
level. Not only does
NAMAland
recount a story about NAMA and its consequences,
but from the point of view of AR it speaks of the technology and its uses. For this
emergent technology this is significant for it is through practices that functions and
usage modes of technologies come to light and their relative value and importance
are revealed.
At another level it acted as a catalyst, facilitating a range of conversations,
debates and activities as part of a wide ranging critique of NAMA and the sequence
of events which led to it. The project crossed boundaries from art to geography,
urbanism, activism, open data, economics and politics as one would expect from
work which engages critically with the space of the city and international finance. As
the project became known through publicity and word of mouth another side of the
project was revealed from the diversity of the discussions, from the Occupy Dublin
camp one day to city-sponsored seminars on Open Data and the smart economy the
next, this was its ability to function as a conduit which reconnected NAMA with the
space of the city, a connection which had been deliberately severed, to preserve the
idea of the agency as a by-product of obscure international financial dealings. What
NAMAland
contributed was an opening up of previously unavailable data and a re-
connecting of this data with the fabric of the city itself. This served to add specificity
in place of generalisation, fuelling debate through the provision of an infrastructure
on which specific spatial critiques could be structuring. This specificity, that is the
ability to overlay contextual information at the site, enabled an alternative reading of
the city providing a framework for intervention whilst countering the abstraction of
space fostered by the narrative of the financial crisis as collateral damage of complex
international financial transactions.
4.5
Peripatetic Activism
The project was accompanied by a series of walks informed by the mobile
application which took place in Dublin City Centre and in Tallaght, two areas
characterised by a high concentration of NAMA properties. These were public, as
with the
NAMA-Rama
walk in conjunction with Market Studios (Fig.
4.4
), the
In
These Troubled Times
walk with RuaRed Arts Centre and
Ireland after NAMA
with
The Exchange Arts Centre, and private such as the guided walks for RTE News and
