This dissertation theorizes the genre of the urban database documentary, a mode of media art practice that uses structural systems to uncover new perspectives on the lived experience of place. While particularly prominent in recent decades, I argue that the genre of the urban database documentary arises at the turn of the 20th century in response to the rise of the metropolis and the widespread adoption of new media technologies such as photography, cinema, and radio. This was a time when the modern city engendered significant disorientation in its inhabitants, dramatically expanding horizontally and vertically. The rampant pace of technological development at this time also spawned feelings of dehumanization and the loss of connection to embodied experience. The urban database documentary emerges as a symptomatic response to the period's new cultural conditions, meeting a collective need to create order from vast quantities of information and re-frame perception of daily experience. The design of structural systems became a creative method for simultaneously addressing these vast new quantities of information, while attending to the particularities of individual experience. For media artists, building a database into the aesthetic design of a work itself offers an avenue for creatively documenting the radical multiplicity of urbanized environments, preserving attention to the sensory experience of details while aspiring to a legible whole. Crucially, I argue that the design of these systems is a vital form of authorial agency. By reading these artists' work in relation to contemporary practice, I aim to make transparent the underlying, non-technical ambitions that fuel this distinctive mode of media art practice.

While both public opinion and scholars around the world are currently pointing out the danger of increasingly popular life-logging devices, this book articulates this debate by distinguishing between automatic and manual life-logging approaches. Since new definitions of life-logging have excluded the latter approach and have been mainly focused on effortless life-logging technologies such as Google Glass and Quantified Self applications in general, the second part of this thesis theoretically frames life-stowing.Through extensive etymological research, I have defined life-stowing as a manual and effortful practice conducted by life-stowers, individuals who devote their life to sampling reality in predefined frameworks. As part of this book, an historical overview introduces life-stowers and distinguishes between Apollonian and Dionysian varieties of these practitioners. Lastly, in order to understand the future reception of life-stowing, particularly in relation to digital media, I have disclosed my ongoing life-stowing project to a small audience. / Den samtida samhälls- och forskningsdebatt, där de allt mer populära teknologierna för life-logging ofta framställs som farliga, vidgas och utvecklas i denna bok genom ett särskiljande av automatiska och manuella tekniker för life-loggning. Eftersom nya definitioner av life-loggning i stor utsträckning har exkluderat manuella tekniker och fokuserat på egenmätning som inte kräver så mycket av användaren, såsom GoogleGlass, innehåller avhandlingen också ett teoretisk utforskande av begreppet lifestowing. Genom omfattande etymologisk forskning definieras life-stowing i avhandlingen som en manuell och ansträngande praktik utförd av life-stowers, personer som vigt sina liv åt att samla och spara bitar av verkligenheten enligt fördefinierade ramar. I den historiska översikten introduceras två typer av life-stowers, den Apollonianska och den Dionysiska. Slutligen, för att förstå det framtida mottagandet av life-stowing i relation till digitala medier, presenteras författarens egna life stowingprojekt för en mindre publik.

Esta dissertação tem como foco central a investigação acerca das narrativas visuais produzidas por câmeras celulares e veiculadas nas redes sociais, particularmente no Instagram. Explora como a tecnologia dos dispositivos móveis, somada ao movimento do corpo e do olho, contribui para uma nova estética de produção de imagens do cotidiano. O estudo tem como contexto a cidade de São Paulo e também explora as novas formas de documentar e de se relacionar com o espaço urbano, a partir da produção e veiculação de imagens na internet. A pesquisa se concentra no viés poético das imagens produzidas, mediadas e veiculadas no Instagram e investigará o contexto e a natureza das imagens das redes sociais, que se apresentam de forma fragmentada, em um processo de publicação contínuo, em um scroll vertical infinito, na tela do usuário do aplicativo. Explorará as possibilidades de construção de linguagem, na chave da artemídia, e seus respectivos atributos tecnológicos e estéticos. Investigará paralelamente como se dá a edição e subjetivação dessas narrativas, construídas em tempo real, indagando qual o papel do autor, do curador e do editor quando o processo se torna colaborativo. A imagem mobile será pensada por meio de imagens, a partir de um ensaio autoral: uma compilação de narrativas reunidas no caderno Imageria urbana, realizadas com imagens mobile a partir de apropriações e edições coletivas ou individuais, organizadas pelos tagueamentos de dados algorítmicos, pelos sinais \"#\" (hashtags precedidas da palavra-chave) e por pins de geolocalização. Essa publicação constitui simultaneamente o objeto de estudo teórico e prático desta pesquisa e representa alguns lugares da cidade de São Paulo por meio da estética de dados. A partir desse material -- e suas imbricações interdisciplinares -- oferecemos os subsídios teóricos para aprofundarmos na linguagem poética das narrativas visuais das redes. / This dissertation aims at investigating visual narratives produced by mobile cameras and posted on social networks, specifically Instagram. Exploring how mobile device technology, coupled with the movement of body and eye, contributes to new aesthetic of production on everyday imaging. The city of São Paulo comes as the study\'s context and explores new ways to register and to relate to the urban space stemming from the production and posting of images online. The research focuses on poetic bias of the produced images mediated and shown on Instagram and investigates the context and nature of the images on social networks, which are presented in a piecemeal fashion, in a continuous process of posting through endless vertical scroll on the app\'s user screen. The work will explore the possibilities of language construction from artmedia point of view, and its respective technological and aesthetic attributes. In addition, it will investigate how editing and subjectivity of these narratives take place, built in real time, inquiring the role of the author, of the curator and of the editor when the process becomes collaborative. The mobile image will have images brought through an authorial essay; a compilation of narratives gathered in the notebook Urban Imagery, made with mobile images from collective or individual publications and appropriations, organized from algorithm data tagging by the \"#\" (hashtag preceded by keyword) and pins of geolocation. Such publication is both the theoretical and practical object of this research study and represents some places of the city of São Paulo through the data aesthetics. From this material -- and its interdisciplinary overlaps -- we provide the theoretical basis to deepen into the poetic language in visual narratives of networks.

Esta dissertação tem como foco central a investigação acerca das narrativas visuais produzidas por câmeras celulares e veiculadas nas redes sociais, particularmente no Instagram. Explora como a tecnologia dos dispositivos móveis, somada ao movimento do corpo e do olho, contribui para uma nova estética de produção de imagens do cotidiano. O estudo tem como contexto a cidade de São Paulo e também explora as novas formas de documentar e de se relacionar com o espaço urbano, a partir da produção e veiculação de imagens na internet. A pesquisa se concentra no viés poético das imagens produzidas, mediadas e veiculadas no Instagram e investigará o contexto e a natureza das imagens das redes sociais, que se apresentam de forma fragmentada, em um processo de publicação contínuo, em um scroll vertical infinito, na tela do usuário do aplicativo. Explorará as possibilidades de construção de linguagem, na chave da artemídia, e seus respectivos atributos tecnológicos e estéticos. Investigará paralelamente como se dá a edição e subjetivação dessas narrativas, construídas em tempo real, indagando qual o papel do autor, do curador e do editor quando o processo se torna colaborativo. A imagem mobile será pensada por meio de imagens, a partir de um ensaio autoral: uma compilação de narrativas reunidas no caderno Imageria urbana, realizadas com imagens mobile a partir de apropriações e edições coletivas ou individuais, organizadas pelos tagueamentos de dados algorítmicos, pelos sinais \"#\" (hashtags precedidas da palavra-chave) e por pins de geolocalização. Essa publicação constitui simultaneamente o objeto de estudo teórico e prático desta pesquisa e representa alguns lugares da cidade de São Paulo por meio da estética de dados. A partir desse material -- e suas imbricações interdisciplinares -- oferecemos os subsídios teóricos para aprofundarmos na linguagem poética das narrativas visuais das redes. / This dissertation aims at investigating visual narratives produced by mobile cameras and posted on social networks, specifically Instagram. Exploring how mobile device technology, coupled with the movement of body and eye, contributes to new aesthetic of production on everyday imaging. The city of São Paulo comes as the study\'s context and explores new ways to register and to relate to the urban space stemming from the production and posting of images online. The research focuses on poetic bias of the produced images mediated and shown on Instagram and investigates the context and nature of the images on social networks, which are presented in a piecemeal fashion, in a continuous process of posting through endless vertical scroll on the app\'s user screen. The work will explore the possibilities of language construction from artmedia point of view, and its respective technological and aesthetic attributes. In addition, it will investigate how editing and subjectivity of these narratives take place, built in real time, inquiring the role of the author, of the curator and of the editor when the process becomes collaborative. The mobile image will have images brought through an authorial essay; a compilation of narratives gathered in the notebook Urban Imagery, made with mobile images from collective or individual publications and appropriations, organized from algorithm data tagging by the \"#\" (hashtag preceded by keyword) and pins of geolocation. Such publication is both the theoretical and practical object of this research study and represents some places of the city of São Paulo through the data aesthetics. From this material -- and its interdisciplinary overlaps -- we provide the theoretical basis to deepen into the poetic language in visual narratives of networks.