public space 2.0

logging

sandrine — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 22:32:50 +0000

first logging

final production

sandrine — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 11:58:11 +0000

wiring electronics

layout soundscape

drawings by Rainer Stadlbauer, student@a-theory
programming of audio/vibration signals by Thomas Grill

public space feedback

sandrine — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:28:10 +0000

1. user/system (i) 2. data collection 3. data clustering 4. data symbolization
5. repressed contents/symbol evaluation) 6. decision making /soundscape
7. user/system (ii)

drawing by Mathias Mitteregger, phd student@a-theory

Can Infrastructure be crowd-sourced?

sandrine — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:25:13 +0000

>>Session 3 / Media Territories and Crowd Sourcing
Can Infrastructure be crowd-sourced? The Role of Representation in Participatory Systems
talk by Dietmar Offenhuber, Project Leader Trash Track at MIT SENSEable City Lab
The title reflects a genuine (rather than rhetorical) question that frequently comes to mind in debates about the possibilities and limitations of mediated self-organization and decentralization. Allegedly, participatory media can facilitate revolutions, but can it also support mundane tasks of maintenance? Can a traditional urban infrastructure such as waste collection be organized in decentralized, voluntary way? Many concerns can be raised: how reliable, homogenous, and scalable can such a system be? What about social justice and inclusion – who prevents that the burdens are carried by the least powerful? Who is accountable if something goes wrong? Ideologies of bottom-up, with the Internet serving as a metaphor for decentralized modes of organization, are anti-modernist and modernist at the same time. On the one hand, they attack central assumptions of modernist planning, such as the belief in efficiency, economies of scale or the role of the expert. On the other hand, ideologies of bottom-up frequently adopt the belief that technology by itself leads to social change and drives history; recently expressed in techno-deterministic readings of the events of the “Arab Spring” as a direct consequence of Social Media. Resulting from this paradox, supporters of self-organization often come from economic and political ideologies that are fundamentally at odds with each other. In my talk, I will discuss three levels of self-organization in the context of a traditional urban infrastructure. The first involves distributed data collection for scrutinizing a system and holding the system provider accountable. A second level involves technologies that facilitate direct peer-to-peer coordination between the actors in the system in order to improve and simplify logistics and service provision. The third – and strongest – form would involve the distribution of actual tasks of maintenance, thus blurring or removing the barrier between service provider and consumer. I argue that the performance of participatory systems depends to a large part on how the socio-technical systems are experienced by its users. This involves parameters such as the legibility of structure and activity of the system as a whole, the representation of other participants in the system, and finally the representation of the consequences of their actions.
> literature > Star, S. L., & Ruhleder, K. (1994). Steps towards an ecology of infrastructure. Proceedings of the 1994 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work - CSCW ’94 (pp. 253-264). Presented at the 1994 ACM conference, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States; Tarr, J. A. (1996). The Search for the Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective (1st ed.). University of Akron Press; Bullard, R. D. (2000). Dumping In Dixie: Race, Class, And Environmental Quality, Third Edition. Westview Press.; Mumford, L. (1964). Authoritarian and democratic technics. Technology and Culture, 5(1), 1–8; Chalmers, M., & Galani, A. (2004). Seamful interweaving: heterogeneity in the theory and design of interactive systems. Proceedings of the 5th conference on Designing interactive systems:processes, practices, methods, and techniques (pp. 243–252); Winner, L. (1980). Do artifacts have politics? Daedalus, 109(1), 121–136; Ben-Joseph, E. (2005). The code of the city: standards and the hidden language of place making. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press; Graham, S., & Marvin, S. (2001). Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition. Routledge.
> links > senseable.mit.edu/trashtrack

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Possibilities of Communication

sandrine — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:20:32 +0000

>>Session 3 / Media Territories and Crowd Sourcing
Possibilities of Communication
talk by Mathias Mitteregger, Junior Researcher@Public Space 2.0, PhD Student, Department for Theory of Architecture, University of Technology Vienna, Austria
Public spaces have been characterized as places of mutual visibility. In other words places that are first of all about communication. This applies at least for the Western ideal, descending form ancient Greece, largely dominating the academic discourse. Much has been written about the stones of Athens, about the structure they provided and on the political effects they have had; the Pnyx or the Agora and the various forms of communication they furnished. Another constraint recognized is the accessibility which is at issue. Returning to ancient Athens, public space was exclusively for man, as woman (with the exception of the Hetaerae) were bound to house and hearth and not allowed to freely move and participate in public life and discussion. The public sphere is where shared believes are created and exchanged. Recognizing the Internet as part of public sphere that connects people at any given moment, structure and accessibility are at issue again. I argue against the idea that the Internet should be conceptualized as a network of a kind, where “every entrance is the correct one, because every point is connected to every other trough … other points. ” Gathering and sorting of information (evaluating it) has always been an elitist occupation. Talking about seventeen century England, the construction of knowledge, the construction of truth has been a task arcane “to women, servants, ‘the poor and the mean in general’, merchants, Catholics, Continental gentry, Italians, and politicians.” Navigating the web, people experience a customized information spaces. The structure of the web and the accessibility of a virtual layer overlapping the city is determined e.g. by actions passed. As a result, the visibility of virtual information, physical locations and social groups depend on the structure a personal profile. In globally networked communication gathering and sorting of information is becoming an increasingly individual task. Possibilities of communication, I will argue, are at issue, as the network is not as flat and seamlessly available as often supposed.
> selected literature > Bachelard, Gaston, ”Epistemologie. Ausgewählte Texte.” Ullstein, 1984; Lefébvre, Henri,”The Social Production of Space.” Wiley-Blackwell, 1991; Darnton, Robert, ”The Business of Enlightenment. A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie 1775-1800.” The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1979; Duguid, Paul, ”The Social Life of Imformation.” Harvard Business School Press (Boston, MA) 2002; Jormakka, Kari. ”Flesh in Stone. Datutop 21/2001.” Dep. of Architecture Tampere University (Tampere), 2001

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Mediatized Decomposition of Public Space

sandrine — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 12:26:54 +0000

>>Session 3 / Media Territories and Crowd Sourcing
The Mediatized Decomposition of Public Space
talk by Oliver Schürer, Senior Researcher@Public Space 2.0, Department for Theory of Architecture, University of Technology Vienna
The cultural idea of public space was driven by a bourgeois value of a homogeneous society with relatively small differences (Jürgen Habermas,1962). But differences in society got made visible by counter cultures like workers movement, women’s liberation, youth movements, social reform, and the development of a consumer-and-leisure-culture. Hence homogeneity as bourgeois connotation to public space got eroded. The idea of public space additionally puts strong emphasis on its duality to the private, which got nearly obsolete. Besides an opposition to the private, public space does not talk about the conditions of dominance and opposition, the possibilities of coherence of a society despite ruptures, and the modes of action allowing for the cross linking of social networks. As a matter of fact today public space is said to shrink away. This development of an ongoing downsize in importance got enhanced by the fact that some of its communicative functions got moved into different kinds of digital media. Architecture communicates its issues of space production, from the first idea to technical realization via all kinds of representations. Also public space in Architecture is conceived, designed, planned and realized by representational means. Any relations that are to become materialized, will get represented among whatever is considered important to a specific architectural object, its surroundings and its context. What fails to be represented is what can’t get materialized in the process. This does not only prevent the full use of contemporary digital technologies for analysis, concept, design and planning but moreover builds up a mere vague basis for Architecture to deal with digital media that mainly serves the purpose of communication. Hence architecture fails to cultivate this process of socio-technological transformation in the social realm still called public space. Are there any common bases or specific ways by which communication is realized by means of architecture and urbanistic methods in public spaces? In my lecture, I will try to re-conceptualize the notion of public space by the notion of “media territory” to develop a basis for a new toolbox of methods in architecture, but also to open up the possibility to gain influence on the development of infrastructures as well as interfaces. It is to show that media territories allow for social mobility and exchange. This would shift the traditional notion of the territory as mere power structure to a new one: From the focus on administerbility of locations and spaces to a focus on concernment, from distancing to being involved, from drawing borders to being referred to.
> selected literature > Habermas, Jürgen (1962): Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft. Neuwied: Luchterhand; Rafael Capurro, Thesen zum Strukturwandel der medialen Öffentlichkeit und zur Medienethik, 2005, http://www.capurro.de/medienethik.html Gissen, David (Hrsg.) (2010): Territory:; Architecture Beyond Environment: Architectural Design. London: Wiley; Picon, Antoine (2010): What has happened to Territory? In: Gissen (2010): 94-99

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data-flow diagrams

sandrine — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 12:01:22 +0000

from sensor input (audio/distance/wifi/subjective) to output (sound/vibration) after symbol generation & evaluation

comparison between symbols representing varying experiences provided to the wearer by the data-logger

diagrams by Adriana Torres Topaga, master student@s&d

data-logger components

sandrine — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:40:43 +0000

final soldering by Ebru Kurbak, phd student@s&d

Which institutional models?

sandrine — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:35:24 +0000

>>Session 2/ Social Space as a System of Regulation and Innovation
Which institutional models? Knowledge problems and problematic context for innovation
talk by Smita Srinivas, Assistant Professor at Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University; Director, Technological Change Lab (TCLab)
Smita Srinivas is currently working on a book on models of innovation and ideas of knowledge in economic development and economic theory. Her talk covers some examples of sector-specific technological innovations with their historical, urban, political and regulatory context. It will focus on how knowledge and innovation have been historically classified, the urban challenge, and alternate ways we might study approaches to knowing, doing, mixing and borrowing. Smita Srinivas’s research and policy areas are comparative economic and industrial development. Her particular interest is in the institutional and cognitive models and different social experiments for technological innovation and social welfare embedded in these plans and policies. Her recent book Market Menagerie: Health and Development in Late Industrial States (Stanford Economics and Finance, Stanford University Press, 2012), analyses how to move beyond market failure approaches in regulating health technologies and industrial capabilities. Industrialising economies have heterogeneous institutions and knowledge requirements which pose important challenges for local adaptability and basic needs.
> literature > Stokes, D. (1997) Pasteur’s Quadrant. Basic Science and Technological Innovation, Brooking Institution Press, Washington DC.; Richard R. Nelson, Ed. (2005) The Limits of Market Organization (New York: Russell Sage); Srinivas, Smita and Judith Sutz (2008).“Developing Countries and Innovation: Searching for a New Analytical Approach.” Technology in Society, Vol. 30: 129-140; Srinivas, Smita (2012) Market Menagerie: Health and Development in Late Industrial States (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, Economics and Finance imprint)
> links > technologicalchangelab.org

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Geographies of Exclusion

sandrine — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:32:46 +0000

>>Session 2/ Social Space as a System of Regulation and Innovation
Geographies of Exclusion and Mechanisms of Social Control
talk by Carla Shedd, Assistant Professor of Sociology and African American Studies, Columbia University
This talk will further interrogate a central position in sociology that individual agency is both shaped and restricted by social institutions and mechanisms of social control. My research extends theories from more frequently studied adults to adolescents, and offers insight into urban adolescents’ negotiation of the public realm, specifically in their school and neighborhood contexts. I will also build on Sibley’s articulation of “geographies of exclusion” (the literal mappings of social relations) as they are manifest in the urban environment along race, class, gender, age, and myriad other categories that define who we are and how we are seen. The adolescent ego is inextricably shaped by place. In fact, I argue high school has become the primary reason for urban adolescents to leave their spatially segregated neighborhoods or schools become the reason for young people to remain ensconced within those places. The confluence of reforms that have shaped the shifts in the populations of urban schools, urban neighborhoods, and wholly, urban lives has wrought unintended consequences: instead of providing a new world of open opportunity, they may lead to knowledge that one’s plight is worse than he thought; instead of providing an escape from a bad area, they may subject one to greater scrutiny, surveillance, and violence (of the physical or symbolic sort). In parsing the physical worlds in which these young people live, and the boundaries they often cross, we gain great insight into their personas, behaviors, and their resultant public identities.

> selected literature > Garland, David. 2001. Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press; Hagan, John, Carla Shedd, and Monique R. Payne. 2005. “Race, Ethnicity, and Youth Perceptions of Criminal Injustice.” American Sociological Review 70:381-407; Shedd, Carla. 2011. “Countering the Carceral Continuum: The Legacy of Mass Incarceration” Journal of Criminology & Public Policy, Vol. 10, Issue 3; Sibley, David. 1995. Geographies of Exclusion: Society & Difference in the West. London and New York: Routledge.
> links > http://sociology.columbia.edu

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Considerable Grounds to the Logics of Use

sandrine — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:23:31 +0000

>>Session 2/ Social Space as a System of Regulation and Innovation
Considerable Grounds to the Logics of Use
talk by Sandrine Klot, Project Lead / Senior Researcher@Public Space 2.0, s&d_research, University of Industrial Design and Arts Linz
Along the course or our research, we all shared a deep curiosity to learn about the wide range of use in the context of public space. New social forms encourage us as designers, urban theorists and engineers to speculate about the retrieval of appreciation for communal space, as well as the recapturing of almost lost abilities to handle, if not even to give shape to spaces we share with others. In my lecture, I want to highlight the complex relationship between user and social space. In reference to psychoanalysis, individual agency becomes shaped as well restricted by forces of the social, a necessary condition for the individual to mature and, following post-structuralist arguments, to develop what may be called constructed identity. As any individual represents a system of meaning on its own eventually surrounding spatial systems experience and absorb implied moments of symbolization and articulation. Therefore, we aim to recognize the single user as potentially counterbalancing instance to encompassing, rigid regulation measures in public space.

Surveillance taken as one of many common, controlling strategies implies specific notions within communal space. Within electronic networks, any knot, observing and gathering information, can easily turn itself into a sending device remitting observed information, or in opposite become object itself of investigation and information survey. As digital technologies are immanently supportive of the reshaping of social organization processes, we have become interested in the concept of the hybridized user profile, as personalized technology takes on attributes of an alter ego. Subjectively motivated moments of interest, concern, conflicting will or desperate need are shared by additional impulses resulting from within technical configurations of the technological aid. Formerly guiding principles in developing location-specific infrastructure now have to be re-evaluated and considerably adapted. Within the ongoing transition of western societies into post-industrial, electrical era, our experiences of body and space undergo fundamental transformations.
> selected literature > Freud, Sigmund: Civilization and its Discontents. W.W. Norton&Company, Inc., New York, 1961; Laclau, Ernesto/ Mouffe, Chantal: Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London-New York, 1985; Madanipour, Ali: Public and Private Spaces of the City. Routledge, New York, 2003; Sassen, Saskia: Informal Knowledge and it´s Enablements: The Role of the new Technologies. 2010

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Ecological Approach in Arts-based Research

sandrine — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:01:59 +0000

>>Session 1/ Arts-Based Research in Relation to User Ecologies
The Data Logger: An Ecological Approach in Arts-based Research
talk by Ebru Kurbak / Junior Researcher@Public Space 2.0, PhD Student, s&d, University for Industrial Design and Arts Linz
In his paper entitled ”The Debate on Research in the Arts”, Henk Borgdorff divides possible manners of making arts-based research into three groups, namely research on the arts, for the arts and in the arts. In the first one, the artifact is something to look at, to be placed in a setting, interpreted and evaluated. In the second one, the artifact is the goal, so the research outcome presents the technical and material means discovered on the way to reach this goal. Obviously, researchers tend to favor these first two approaches. This happens mainly because they make it relatively easy for the researchers to present their work as academically relevant through the appropriation of established scientific methodology. However, not only according to Borgdorff but also according to many others including our research group, it is the third approach that might have the greatest potential in revealing the essential nature of arts-based research in comparison to all other types of research. For researchers then, the challenge becomes favoring questions to answers. In my lecture, I intend to discuss our technical artifact entitled the Data Logger from this perspective.

We tried to shift our attention away from developing a utilitarian artifact that would solve a particular known problem, or answer a previously hypothesized question concerning public space. Instead we suggest a wearable artifact that would perhaps aid us in formulating questions that we are not aware of yet. The premise of the Data Logger is to envision a new relationship between the researcher, the artifact, and the research field. In this respect, it can be said: in our approach the problem has become ecological. In my lecture, I will elaborate on the potential of wearable instruments in shaping new ecologies.
> selected literature > Uexküll, Jakob von. A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2010 // Borgdorff, Henk. The Debate on Research in the Arts. Focus on Artistic Research and Development. no. 02 (2007), Bergen: Bergen National Academy of the Arts // Ryan, Susan Elizabeth. Re-Visioning the Interface: Technological Fashion as Critical Media. Leonardo 42: 4 (August 2009): 307-313

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architecture of processing

sandrine — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:29:34 +0000

diagrams indicate how input values are being transformed into symbols

programming/diagrams by Isabella Hinterleitner, PhD student@ICT

Humunculus Technicus in the Box

sandrine — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:15:37 +0000

>>Session 1/ Arts-Based Research in Relation to User Ecologies
Humunculus Technicus in the Box
talk by Isabella Hinterleitner / Junior Researcher@Public Space 2.0, PhD Student, Institute for Computer Technology, University of Technology Vienna
Giving sense to human behavior is a difficult task. Even in historic times there was a need to understand human’s behavior. Thus, before psychology and neurosciences have developed the so-called humunculus has been created referring to the self in the brain. However, with the development of the nature sciences the humunculus became less mysterious and more transparent for all of those who wanted to grab the essence of the self. Indeed, with the help of imaging methods the miracle of a selfness disappeared but is still there in basic sciences such as psychology and philosophy. The term humunculus technicus refers to a technical installation that mimics the non-adapted self and enables the carrier to experience a certain kind of perception that normally people get used to and are familiar with. The technical installation consists of an internal sensor simulating internal values such as stamina level and metabolism whereas the external sensor perceives information on sound, temperature brightness nearness or wideness of an object, etc. The sensor perceiving near or farness could for example sense people that cross a certain distance to the carrier. Distance sensitiveness and loudness sensitiveness are very subjective due their different variations. The technical aid can be seen as a parrot sitting on our shoulder or a Wünschelroute. It is some manifestation of a humunculus that gives us the possibility to react without adapting to a certain environmental stimulus, such as light. The information when we are not adapted can be used for the establishment of places, where adaption processes, such as adaption to light sources, are important. > selected literature > Bunge, M.: How does it work? The search for explanatory mechanisms. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34, (2004); Pylyshyn, Z.: What’s in the Mind: Constraints on Mental Structures. ESCOP/ECONA Talk, 1995; Bucci, W.: Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Science: A Multiple Code Theory. Denver Institute Adelphi University USA, 1997

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empirical research device: the data-logger

sandrine — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:01:24 +0000

>>Session 4 / The Data Logger as empirical Research Device
Conceptual Outline and Technical Description of Empirical Research Device
production group: Raimund Krenmüller, Ebru Kurbak, Mathias Mitteregger, Isabella Hinterleitner, Rainer Stadlbauer, Adriana Torres Topaga
The Data Logger represents a research tool to follow a subjective approach in public space. Defined by the use of a wearable device, it adds a second layer to our own abilities in sensing, processing and reacting to information we perceive in public space. As our perception of reality turns out not to be neutral, but highly dependent on subjective evaluation, we see the world not as it is, but as it matters to us, and every act of perception is inherently an act of interpretation based on human needs, desires, believes and experiences. What ever occurs in our genes and happens in our lives, eventually provides the framework for how our perception is structured, filtered and evaluated. The Data logger is meant as an empirical tool that gives a certain twist to our perceptual framework by superimposing additional sensing- processing- and actuating facilities. The Data Logger takes conditions of perception as variables of an unstable structure, made of physical and technical states that become symbols. The input of the space and of the wearer together is taken from the Data Logger system with the aim of creating its own vocabulary. This is what we call `subjective´ approach in the sense of a self-contained set up which defines itself through its implementation in time, free of presets opening the possibilities for results. The system is supported by software, hardware and a physical user-space interface.

> software > Raw sensor data enters a processing unit, which consists of a number of different sub-units. The processing unit has the function of generating `meaningful´ symbols. A symbol is constructed from sensor input that is transferred to a uni-modal data set. Several uni-modal sets together form a multi-modal dataset. Then, a form of pattern recognition called clustering takes place, and according to similar features a new symbol is created. In the last processing step the symbol is being evaluated based on rules and sent to the actuator unit. All available sensor data at a given time is stored as a multi-modal dataset or snapshot, like a single frame in a video. As the amount of gathered snapshots increases, patterns emerge of which one pattern that is strong enough will eventually be stored as a symbol. The wearer aids the device in the process of identifying meaningful symbols by adding his subjective evaluation to the dataset via the user input channel already mentioned above. Once a symbol is established and sufficiently appreciated by the wearer, the device will become a guide that communicates the presence of a symbol via its outputs, thus amplifying, highlighting, and emphasizing what has been assigned subjective value by the individual.
> hardware > For our prototype, we start with a rather limited set of sensors (distance and sound), which we believe would be suitable for pointing to the presence of others, as well as certain spatial qualities (like narrow or wide), thus attempting to cover both the social and physical conditions of public space. We also add an extra `input channel´ that allows the wearer to give feedback directly to the system. On the output side, we are going for subtle stimuli, namely vibration to the skin and sound via speakers. We deliberately avoid overly occupying the wearer’s senses, as often happening with portable technology, if one considers the attention-absorbing cell phone screen or acoustically isolating headphones. In other words, we are trying to incorporate ways of feedback that we thought would allow the wearer to stay aware of the immediate surroundings, allowing for engagement with them, as opposed to shielding off from them. In addition to the immediate feedback provided by the vibration motors and speakers, the device also stores the data, so it can be used for further steps of visualization and mapping.
> design considerations > As we wanted to provide a 360° range for distance sensors and microphones, we designed the device to be worn around the neck – this is one of the few places on the body where it’s unlikely to be obstructed, and at the same time it is within a reasonable distance for speakers to reach the ears and sensitive parts of the skin to be stimulated by vibration. Therefore we can place all of the components – input, output and processing – in one compact enclosure, made of molded silicone. This skin garment with an embedded hardware adapts to different user sizes is an interface for data reception, transmission and production of new data. It stands for the embodiment of software and hardware, representing an allegory to the self-contained approach of the Data Logger. The range of input is delivered through ultrasonic rangefinders and microphones, supported by a GPS module that localizes recorded data as well as by the wearers input channel. Processing and routing is provided by an Arduino board, placed in an elongated section of the device at the upper back of the wearer. An SD-card module is used for storage. Arduino allows for the communication occurring between different sensor components and the data processing system.

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data logger: design development

sandrine — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 22:15:34 +0000

The Data logger is meant as an empirical tool that gives a certain twist to our perceptual framework by superimposing additional sensing- processing- and actuating facilities.

drawings and models by Ebru Kurbak, phd student@s&d and Adriana Torres Topaga, master student@s&d

research workshop @ SENSEable City Lab MIT

sandrine — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 22:10:37 +0000

Public Space 2.0 Talks: in collaborating with the MIT SENSEable City Lab, we hope to raise a discussion about potentially new forms public interaction as theoretically anticipated and creatively studied in the course of our current research project.

Data Logger: in a parallel mode, we envision to present, discuss and develop further technical equipment, that mainly serves the purpose to furnish a series of empirical surveys in public space.

research feedback review II/ july 5-6

sandrine — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 15:48:46 +0000

Public space has been extended into electronic networks, typologically it finds itself redefined as multiplicity of public-private couplings. Finally architects had to let go of the modernist dream of public space as the merry, plannable patchwork of given public spheres. Democratic systems provoke the conflict which public spheres are tolerated as politically legitimate, and do not, on the other hand, automatically settle in advance which ones are not. This implies that no particular public sphere, no individual project strategizing space may claim this preconfirmed status for itself. As of today, the place of the public sphere remains void. And if there was the much claimed multiplicity, how does it allow for such structures and provide the possibility for the formation of local or geographically and temporally segmented communities? -> additional information

lectures by researchers as well as by guests will be held as basis for discussion and project feedback / invited guests: Georg Flachbart/mind21; Vasco Granadeiro/PhD student at MIT Portugal; Sabine Knierbein/SKuOR; Mark Shepard/UB Dept. of Media Studies

research workshop at PENN University

sandrine — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 07:21:55 +0000

A social network is conceived of as a multiplicity of social units and its relationships among them. A network also functions as a relational structure. Within formalized networks, the quality of units and relationships is not defined. Singular units or actors are individual people; but of course they can also be subgroups or even institutions. Relationships may have communicative, family like, economic or financial attributes, they may be weak or strong, of individual or collective nature. In terms of power and impact networks prove to produce a broad spectrum of structures reaching from egalitarian to hierarchical or asymmetrical structures. Between the image of the actor him/herself, normative conceptions of networks or its symbolic representations on one hand, and the empirical analysis, quite often there seems to be a big discrepancy.

The workshop addressed genesis and dynamics of social relationships and networks in varying phases of transformation (change of structure): - extension of economic dependencies /- change of cultural identities /- processes of social exclusion, marginalization -> additional information

Lindy Hop in the Burggarten

ebru — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 09:05:08 +0000

Yesterday, I met a bunch of people who were dancing in public. A self-organized group of people who met during “Lindy hop” dance courses started to bring their dance workshops outside. They bring their music and speakers with them and meet Friday evenings in the Burggarten and Saturday evenings in the Volksgarten. The dance floor is open to everyone who can dance the Lindy hop. They told me that they often meet tourists from all over the world who dance with them for a few songs and then leave.

Conference: amberConference’10, Datacity

ebru — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:15:40 +0000

The second international conference of amberConference which will be held in conjunction with the amber’10 Art and Technology Festival. The theme for this year’s event is ‘Datacity’. read more

Istanbul, Turkey, 6th and 7th of November 2010

1 September 2010: Submission deadline (Up to 500 words abstract)

Subject Headings:

The politics of data and contemporary Urban governmentality.
Politics of data circulation and use.
Contemporary security and surveillance discourse.
Legality and legitimacy of data collection and use.
Political economy of data generation.
Value of metadata in a data-driven society.
The notion of Smart cities and urban management.
Datazen: the consumer in a transurban dwelling pattern.
Urban mundane and serendipity in the digital age.
Urban artistic sensibilities in the digito-technological age.
City as a “space of flows”: Networked urban topology as an art material.
Spatial experience and ambient information processes

Urban Pixels

ebru — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 10:32:58 +0000

by William J. Mitchell & Susanne Seitinger, PhD student, Smart Cities Group, MIT Media Lab

“Urban Pixels are wireless, solar-powered lighting units for cities that blur the boundary between digital display technology and traditional urban lighting. By combining a renewable energy source with RF communication it is possible to achieve a self-sustaining, distributed display network that can be attached to any building surface and reconfigured with ease. Depending on their configuration and placement, Urban Pixels can be used to convey place-specific information, respond to environmental conditions or support creative expression in urban public spaces.” Visit Site

Conference: Media Architecture, Urban Context and Social Practices

ebru — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:54:21 +0000

3rd international conference on the interaction of architecture, media and social phenomena

Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany, 29 to 31 October 2010

15 June 2010: Submission deadline (abstract)
15 September 2010: Submission deadline (full article for accepted submissions)

“The 3rd MediaCity conference will investigate how new media re-define social settings and urban spaces and how they influence architecture as well as media art & design in urban contexts, thus constituting new social and cultural practices.” read more

Persona (On Flickr)

mias — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 07:34:48 +0000

Very inspiring project done by John Travis.

Breakout!

ebru — Thu, 27 May 2010 12:12:05 +0000

Another project commissioned by the ‘Toward the Sentient City‘ exhibition.

Creators: Anthony Townsend (Institute for the Future), Georgia Borden, Amanda Kross, Jung Hoon Kim, Antonina Simeti (DEGW), Dana Spiegel (NYCwireless), Laura Forlano (Parsons The New School for Design), Tony Bacigalupo (New Work City), Sean Savage (PariSoMa), Elysse Preposi (Sarah Lawrence College)

“Breakout! is a festival of work in the city, that explores the dynamic possibilities of a single question: what if the entire city was your office? Drawing inspiration from the shared office spaces of the coworking movement, Breakout! creates alternative venues for collaborative work outside of traditional office buildings by injecting lightweight versions of essential office infrastructure into urban public spaces.” Read more about the project here.

Too Smart City

ebru — Thu, 27 May 2010 11:23:29 +0000

“A set of three street furniture pieces that come to life with embedded intelligence and robotic systems” created by designers JooYoun Paek, David Jimison & engineers Daniel Bauen, Aaron Gilbert, Bill Washabaugh. “Too Smart City presents technological solutions to current problems, but as failures, rather than as progress: a future where everyday objects are rendered non-functional by their overly enthusiastic usage of computational intelligence.”

1. The Smart Bench is a two-person seater that recognizes vagrancy and is capable of lifting people up and dumping them off.

2. The Smart Sign displays the latest legal codes on its glossy video monitor, pointing at and addressing people as they walk by.

3. The Smart Trashcan is a metal bin that analyzes what is being discarded. Throw the wrong trash away, and the Smart Trashcan throws it right back at you.

To read more about the project click here. To watch the video click here. The project was commissioned by the ‘Toward the Sentient City‘ exhibition curated by Mark Shepard.

Step into the Sensory Box

mias — Wed, 19 May 2010 07:22:24 +0000

ENVISION : Step into the sensory box from SUPERBIEN on Vimeo.

Done with VVVV and camera mapping. Step into the Sensory Box was programmed and designed by studio Super Bien.

hacked suicide

mias — Mon, 17 May 2010 06:39:21 +0000

The web2.0 suicide machine got hacked.

http://forum.piratenpartei.de/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=19000

http://suicidemachine.org/

it’s a site, where users can get rid of their facebook and myspace profiles, that has been under the attack from facebook on previous occasions

Geek Stuff 2.0

mias — Mon, 17 May 2010 06:29:28 +0000

This montage of AT&T ads came from a 1993 Newsweek CD-ROM that had examples of some of the cool new technologies in the future.

Geek Stuff 1.0

mias — Mon, 17 May 2010 06:24:22 +0000

The use and abuse of mobile phones.