Publisher's Synopsis
By adapting Freud's notion of "floating attention" to urban systems, Mario Gandelsonas applies a process of visual drift to the plan of Chicago. He uses mechanical eye of the computer in a "de-layering" process to read the plan of the city and to discover the system of urban notions that are specific to the American grid.;Gandelsonas explores the spatial relationships between physical and abstract realities in the Chicago River area, the One-Mile Grid and its subdivisions. By highlighting the anomalies and idiosyncrasies of the grid, the moments where its regularity falters, he establishes a narrative of Chicago's urban text. In separate essays Catherine Ingraham, Joan Copiec and John Whiteman explore the philosophical psychoanalytic, and urbanistic dimension of this provocative analysis.
