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The Vicissitudes of Digital Dissent

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Cultural Commons and Urban Dynamics
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Abstract

The paper is inspired by diverse levels of agency in the arts. It covers present uses of communication technologies in the arts and how these intersect with social activism, offering a basis of understanding of content and method of the process of social protest using virtual space. The artworks and the scenarios, in which they are presented, are used to establish “a guide”, or a repertoire of common practice. More sophisticated levels of agency are approached through coupling common electronic marketing practices to the use of new technologies such as Augmented Reality, in order to point out subversive ways of protesting in areas where either physical presence is impossible or where public assembly is repressed. Being controversial in nature, the paper acts as a guide on how to make protesting in virtual domains real and how to be socially disruptive using communication technologies. The paper concludes with the coming to the understanding that a need for change is key to innovation and social renewal, and to conceive possible scenarios for (art) works that use art as an agency to advocate change.

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Correspondence to Arthur Clay .

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Clay, A. (2020). The Vicissitudes of Digital Dissent. In: Macrì, E., Morea, V., Trimarchi, M. (eds) Cultural Commons and Urban Dynamics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54418-8_20

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