Alina Nazmeeva is a researcher, architect and artist investigating the relationships between cities and digital games, interfaces and publics, CGI and politics. Alina holds a Master of Science in Urbanism from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was a fellow of the New Normal programme at the Strelka Institute of Media, Architecture and Design (2017). Currently she is a research associate at the future urban collectives lab at MIT where she works on designing spaces and platforms or new forms of collectivity, and a research analyst at the MIT Real Estate Innovation Lab where she focuses her research on understanding the economy and design of virtual worlds and online games. Her writing has been published in PLAT, Media-N and CARTHA Magazine.

CONTENT

animated film produced in collaboration with Helena Hang Rong, Kyle Branchesi, Molly Mason and Quianhui Liang

In a post labor society, CONTENT speculates on future worlds within urban and rural China. Extrapolating trends of absurdity and exhibitionism in talk shows and apps like Kuaishou, this is a world in which entertainment is currency and attention is everything. In exchange for living in these automated cities, citizens adopt jobs of producing social media content, sometimes leading them on inane adventures and ultimately forcing them to construct their worlds in order to develop meaningful lives. The buildings themselves take on the need to share these stories, broadcasting the inhabitants to the streets below through embedded LED systems which ultimately change the atmosphere of the city itself. This is their city symphony.