Shifting Place 1 Digital technologies have challenged our traditional making and understanding of architectural space. Our modern cities have become transformed by the electronic apparatus, as town centers and gateways cease to carry the typical meaning with which we associate them. One might posture that the idea of place can no longer suggest a singular and unique phenomenon. The idea of place as relating to a specific moment in time and space is increasingly becoming a difficult concept.
Place is grounded in materiality.
The introduction of electronic and other disembodied technologies such as cellular telephones, fax machines, computing technologies and the virtual communities which they foster have begun to break down the significance of the physical realm. The photographs of New York artist Jocko Weyland explore a collapse of physical distance, as visions of vanishing identity are framed to reveal a viewpoint from which all cities begin to become one. The Argentinean artist Guillermo Kuitca maps the ambiguity of place onto the intimate space of the individual through a superimposition of altered city maps onto mattresses. In his Burning Beds series, both physical distance and cultural identity are reconfigured, as fictional cities replace real ones. In one painting, a city called San Juan de la Cruz arbitrarily replaces all of the major cities of Poland.