Infra_MANC - another mini-burst of publicity

We got some more useful press coverage for our Infra_MANC exhibition this week, focused on the unbuilt 1970s Picc-Vic railway tunnel under central Manchester and the possibility of a void under the Arndale shopping for a station. The press release and images were picked up by the Manchester Evening News as a page 3 article in the newspaper and also a nice blog post by Martin Wainwright in the Guardian. Both pieces also attracted an interesting, and sometimes amusing, range of comments from readers.

Hello, just a quick (shameless) promotional and (self)congratulatory note to say that our book Code/Space has recently been awarded a significant academic prize by the Association of American Geographers. Rob and myself were both very surprised and pleased to won the Meridian Book Award for the Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography for 2011.

The AAG awards committee wrote: "We feel it pushed the envelope as it explained the linkages between software and human behavior in a spatial context. This book articulates how space and software have
become so intertwined that they constitute one another in our lives. It
is one of the rare books that link critical social theories with technology and philosophy. Using everyday spaces, it demonstrates how such spaces are transformed by code and how new spaces of interactions are recreated. It is the type of book that can interface with many different disciplines. It is one of the few geography books taking the technology and the potential in reconstituting space seriously."

We submitted the book to the AAG awards committee last autumn. Thanks to the publisher MIT Press for their support with this and, most especially, we are very grateful to the following people who wrote greater letters of support and commendations for us:

• Prof. Paul Adams, Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Texas at Austin
• Prof. Mike Batty, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College
• Prof. Mark Boyle, Department of Geography, National University of Ireland, Maynooth
• Prof. Paul Dourish, Department of Informatics, University of California, Irvine
• Dr Mark Graham, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford
• Prof. Mei-Po Kwan, Department of Geography, The Ohio State University
• Prof. Barney Warf, Department of Geography, University of Kansas
• Dr Matthew W. Wilson, Department of Geography, University of Kentucky

Infra_MANC Exhibition

[Image of the Infra_MANC exhibition: Guardian Underground. Courtesy of Michael England.]

Our exhibition seems to be going well. After a stressful time installing the materials in the CUBE gallery (much praise is due to my co-curator Richard Brook for his design ideas and sterling work), the exhibition officially opened last Monday.

Here are a couple super photographs, kindly taken by Michael England, of parts of the Infra_MANC exhibition and some of the key materials being displayed.

According to the gallery staff we are getting lots of visitors and positive feedback. The exhibition has also been blogged about, including a good posting by Aidan O'Rourke from the 'private view', a lengthy piece on Paul Capewell's blog, and also a mention on the Look Up Manchester blog.

With the help of Mike Addelman, our enthusiastic university media officer, we've managed to get some good press coverage, including good story in the Manchester Evening News and an image slideshow on the BBC News website. Richard and myself were also interviewed about the exhibition for NorthWest Tonight, BBC's flagship regional television new programme.

[Image of the Infra_MANC exhibition: Picc-Vic and Mancunian Way. Courtesy of Michael England.]

Infra_MANC exhibition is only on for a few weeks and is due to close on 17th March. It is open on Monday to Saturday, 12.00-530pm. If you make it along, please let me know what you think.