ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the affective spaces of technology, using the case study of an exhibition of camera phone pictures in Hong Kong and the context of technology consumption in southern China. The work is based on research on the aesthetics of camera phone pictures and the impact that proximity to the global production base of mobile media has on the understanding of technology and aesthetics in this region. The photo-essay reflects on the fragile sites of artistic/new media production, especially the repurposing of industrial buildings for creative use in Hong Kong. To do this it ‘walks through’ some of these areas, reflecting on the appearance and disappearance of assembly processes and of the emergence of ‘assemblage’ as a mode of understanding neo-industrial reality in a city, coming to terms with the fragility of the future itself. The chapter suggests—following the work of Byung Chul Han on the phenomenon of shanzhai—that creativity itself must be rethought beyond the notion of the discontinuity and suddenness of a new creation, completely breaking with the old, toward a more playful pleasure in recombination, modification and variation.
