Mr PIETRO PEZZANI

Research project: Targeting the Digital: Spatialities and Politics of Detection and Classification

Abstract

Using targeting as an original conceptual diagram (Deleuze, 1988) and analytical framework, my research investigates the spatial relationship between contemporary data-driven practices of urban governance and planning, and algorithmic visibility technologies of detection and classification.

How does the current shift of the "field of visibility" (Foucault, 1991) to the mathematical spatialities of digital information impact targeting operations, specifically those of detection and classification presiding over planning operations?

In order to answer to this question, I analyse and compare contemporary and historical case studies representative of targeting technologies of detection and classification of risk, in the context of public health surveillance and interventions in informal urban settlements.

My research contributes to debates on emerging forms of "algorithmic governmentality" (Rouvroy & Berns, 2013) by focusing on the simultaneous construction of space and the tools to measure, calculate and transform it.

  • Research degree: PhD
  • Title of project: Targeting the Digital: Spatialities and Politics of Detection and Classification
  • Research supervisor: Dr Christoph Lueder
  • Other research supervisor: Dr Bill Balaskas

Biography

I am an Italian architect, researcher and educator based in London since 2014.

Areas of research interest

  • Architecture & Planning
  • Philosophy
  • Media theory
  • Science and technology studies
  • Critical geography

Qualifications

  • MA Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University
  • MArch Architecture, Politecnico di Milano
  • BA Architecture, Politecnico di Milano

Conference papers

2017: "Targeting and Modelling: Fragments of a Military Genealogy": paper at the Simulation and Environments seminar, Goldsmiths University, London;

2016: "Drawing Borders: Aesthetics, spatialities and Politics of Digital Targeting": invited guest at the Risking Everithing Seminar, Goldsmiths University, London;

2015: "Surveiller et divertir_ discipline and entertain" presented at Critical Spaces: disorienting the Topological Graudate Conference in the Ciritcal Humanities at Kingston College, London;

2014: "Surveiller et divertir_ discipline and entertain" presented at City Materialities, City Securities one day conference at the Open University, London.