Abstract
The Florida Research Ensemble is a creative research group formed at the University of Florida in the late 1980s to explore the possibilities of image technologies. MIAMI MIAUTRE (MM) details the invention of an institutional practice - testimonial - specifically intended to help produce a virtual civic sphere. As a deconstruction of conventional consulting, the FRE established the EmerAgency - an online, virtual, distributed, agency - whose purpose is to add a new voice to the collective pedagogy of consulting. The prototype consultation addresses the Miami River, site of every policy issue in the state of Florida: pollution, tourism, crime, gentrification, historic preservation, drugs, immigration, corruption, and the like. Jo Revelle documented the river scene during a five-week stay in the summer of 1998, motivated by her ‘burning question’ (‘what is my situation with Ron?’). The photographic answer, entitled ‘Crossroads’, attunes the place into a chora, manifesting the ordering principles of the civic sphere. Revelle’s mapping of the zone uses Ulmer’s theories of choragraphy and mystory to extend Situationist psychogeographic mappings based on urban moods. Photographic images become categorical through a singular correspondence of individual/collective mood.
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