ABSTRACT
The rise of the photo-sharing app Instagram has signalled a new phase of digital culture in which the proliferation of mobile digital devices and new relationships to visuality, tactility and screens are forged within the architecture of a closed, corporate platform that would have been antithetical to the earlier ideals of an open Internet. More than simply a popular app that acts as a container for content, the unfolding design of Instagram describes a new logic of urban behaviour and relations. In the Instagram Era, cities are also changing and the meaning and function of walls within cities take on a new character. This chapter explores three domains in which Instagram cultures have transformed the work of walls. It does so with reference to examples of graffiti and street art, arguing that these forms have an exemplary relationship to Instagram’s logic, as demonstrated by the intuitive similarities between the blur of rolling horizontal walls viewed from a train and the experience of fast scrolling through vertical churn of an Instagram feed. The chapter argues that firstly, like film-sets, walls have become a backdrop for the production of digital content. That is, walls are now both activated as momentary settings for performances and just as quickly rendered as redundant as film sets post-shooting. Secondly, as Instagram functions to both amplify and accelerate the production of new walls, the surfaces of walls are being transformed at increasing speeds, making walls akin to a mobile or fleeting surface such as a train. Thirdly, Instagram also expands the notion of a wall’s content, which no longer simply refers to its material structure or visible surface but also its presence within Instagram’s “corrupt archive” and as a networked element of the Internet of Things. In this context, walls can be viewed both as passive targets for photographs or mark-making and, given the scale and pattern of their interactions with urban subjects, as generators of vast amounts of data.
