On October 14th, ARC presented the Internet Tour with the Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM), led by Alex Saum-Pascual, Poet and Assoc Professor of Contemporary Spanish Literature and New Media, and created with Mario Santamaría, Visual Artist and Lecturer, BAU, College of Arts and Design of Barcelona. With the participation of Asma Kazmi, Research-Based Artist and Associate Professor of Art Practice, the Fall 2024 Class of Questioning New Media, and the Indigenous Poetics Lab at the Arts Research Center.
The tour was an in-person journey through the physical internet infrastructure, a tourist route of non-touristic places. Beginning the day was a poetry reading from Beth Piatote and Tzintia Montano-Ramirez of ARC’s Indigenous Poetics Lab. Upon filing into a bus, each tourist was given a notebook that featured hand drawn/written notes and depictions that accompanied the tour. While traveling though Berkeley, Emeryville, and Oakland, tour guide Saum-Pascual covered topics such as fiber optic cables, data centers, the Transatlantic Telegraph, virtual properties, and tech-driven gentrification. Below are some photos of the tour and the notebook page contents:
