The Institute of Network Cultures, ISBN-13: 978-9492302298, English, 288 pages, 2018, India

This is the second volume of a very specific publication, meant both as research and art project. It is focused on the technological impact on the city of Bangalore, narrated through multiple voices. The sixteen contributors to this volume were asked: “what does it mean to be an app user today – as a worker, a client, or simply an observer?”. Their respective responses form a collection of written and visual stories, providing a collective but distinct view on how the space of the screen affects our innate perception of physical space and life in general. These are all composed through distinct, expressive styles, including: collage, slang, essay, diary, screenshots, diagrams, QR Codes and interviews. “It is the language of people, places and algorithm” says Ghidini in the introduction, perfectly framing this weird literal/visual lingo that we have started to adopt to survive in modern urban territories. “It is about the infrastructures that lie behind what we see on our screens” states Ghidini, and so we can read a privileged selection, providing a curated inside view of a particular territory that is evolving through an accelerated trajectory, where we can see most of the dynamics that are deeply affecting the non western world. We can fairly say that this book is a unique artist-led case study and a diversified investigation.