Abstract:
Fifty years after the publication of Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, the key role of surfaces in constituting alluring spatialities in commercial assemblages has increased from the superficial to the atmospheric, and from the architectural to the hypermediated. This shift has particularly affected urban centres dominated by the new enclosures of integrated consumption: the latest generation of shopping malls. New meta-surfaces of extended interspatial apparatuses now form multiple interlocked sub-systems of enclosures. Their performance hinges on communication forms that embrace the digitally augmented lifestyle and its gamification. This paper discusses findings of an investigation aimed interpret the social agency of the new hybrid/augmented meta-surfaces of the contemporary augmented spectacle. The paper reflects on conditions found in post-consumerist environments in Auckland, New Zealand. It analyses the production of new multidimensional spatial patterns, focusing on embodiments in the digital realm. The discussion concentrates on the effects of de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation found in the new, experientially augmented spectacular” realms. The concluding notes discuss how hypermediated socio-spatial chains of associations produce an unprecedented scalar shift in the emerging topological relations that make the mall a prime node of emerging, digitally pervaded, morethan-consumerist post-civil society.
