Saturday, October 31, 2009
Martijn de Waal's Blog: The Mobile City - Locative & Mobile Media/Urban Culture/Identity, his post about Towards the Sentient City
I subscribe to Martijn de Waal's blog, The Mobile City: Locative & Mobile Media/Urban Culture/Identity, partly because of my interest in ubiquitous/pervasive computing (specifically how technology can support interaction and collaboration between people across screens of all sizes in public spaces), and partly because I am interested in looking at the ways different disciplines adopt, adapt, and transform emerging interactive technologies.
Martijn is a writer and a researcher who co-founded The Mobile City conference and blog with Michiel de Lange. He is working on a Ph.D. in new media and urban culture, as part of the New Media, Public Sphere and Urban Culture research in Groningen. Martijn spent some time as a visiting scholar at MIT between March and June of this year (2009).
I posted about Towards the Sentient City, an exhibit taking place in NYC from 9/17 through 11/7/09 in NYC, a few weeks ago: Towards the Sentient City: The Intersection of Ubicomp and Architecture, and....? I was planning to write another post about my reflections about the exhibit, but I think Martijn's reflections reach beyond anything I could have imagined.
Below is a link to Martijn's recent post about his reflections about Towards the Sentient City, along with a quote:
Three philosophical questions about the "sentient city" - a response to the exhibition Towards the Sentient City
"At certain points in the history of architecture and urban planning, the internal debate on how to apply new technologies surpasses the boundaries of the discipline. At those times, the hopes and fears found in the disputes between architects, policy makers, engineers and planners are extended to a broader discussion about urban and societal change. Then, the central issue is not merely how to solve a specific spatial problem with the help of new technology. Rather, the debate starts to revolve around its possible impact on urban society at large. What does this new technology mean for urban culture, what impact does it have on how we shape our identities and live together in the city?"
Martijn's three questions form the framework for even more questions, all very important:
Who are we and who is acting?
What can we know?
How should we live together in the City?
At the end of his post, Martijn concludes, "Toward the Sentient City thus doesn't give us any emphatic leads about which way the technology will take us. It succeeds in bringing up many important questions and diverting the discussion on the sentient city from a path of technological determinism to an open ended affair, a concern not just for engineers, planners and architects but for all of us."
Martijn's links at the end of his post are worth a look if this is an area that interests you:
(1) Ann Galloway's PhD thesis A Brief History of the Future of Urban Computing and Locative Media is highly informative in giving insight in different discourses around urban computing
(2) See Manuel de Landa A new Philosophy of Society for a theory of assemblage.
(3) In Smart Mobs, Howard Rheingold has also written about technology and the organization of a commons
Some of Martijn's interesting blog posts:
Picnic 09 Report 2: The City as and Interaction Platform
Storytelling with Locative Media: Michael Epstein's take on "terratives"
Digital Cities 6: urban media/urban informatics and different notions of public space
Mediated Space. Or: How to translate the logic of media into architecture
Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: a matter of "U-City" or "U-Citizens?"
(Refers to the book, Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: The Practice and Promise of the Real-Time City Marcus Foth, Institute for Creative Industries and Innovations, Queensland University of Technology, Australia)
The Mobile City website has additional information and links:
About the Mobile City
About Locative Media
The Mobile City Conference '08
(On the site you'll find links to videos and slides from the keynote speakers and additional resources.)
Conference: Connectivity @ IABR (NAi Rotterdam, November 5-12 2009)
The Mobile City's Recommended Readings:
The Architectural League of New York | Publications / situated_technologies publication urban_computing
e-cultuur weblog» Weblog Archief » report: gRig seminar on research in new media (Oslo)
The ghost in the field – Blog – BERG
Beautiful visualization of the active field in which an RFID chip can be read near a transponder
Digital cities highlights by Anne Galloway / digital_city wired
Wired special: "Digital Cities" / digital_city wired urban_design
Total Immersion and the “Transfigured City:” Shared Augmented Realities, the “Web Squared Era,” and Google Wave | UgoTrade / augmented_reality
jnd: An emergent vocabulary of form for urban screens « Adam Greenfield’s Speedbird / urban_screens
Martijn also is interested in Digital Media Storytelling and New Media Journalism, topics that I hold close to my heart. I use these techniques in my work with young who have special needs, and also incorporate digital media in my blogs.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Interactive Architecture and Transdisciplinary Convergence (and Hand from Above, by Chris O'Shea)
I recently came across the Interactive Architecture blog when I was researching projects such as the Sentient City exhibition in New York City and other exhibits involving the use of large screen displays and building facades, some that interact with mobile devices. There's a lot of convergence going on, as folks from game design, mobile gaming, networking, engineering, industrial design, art, alternative reality, geography, dance, music, architecture, and other disciplines, have embraced new forms of technologies in their work.
According to the website, "Interactive Architecture covers emerging architectural and artistic practices where digital technologies & virtual spaces merge with tangible and physical spatial experiences. An active architecture, sensing, observing, feeling, listening, thinking, reacting, proposing, adapting, learning, even sometimes interacting. It is an architecture in constant flux best suited to prototyping and semi-permanent installations."
A recent post on the Interactive Architecture blog was of artist Chris O'Shea's "Hand from Above" project, a joint co-commission between FACT (Foundation for Art & Creative Technology), Liverpool City Council for BBC Big Screen Liverpool, and the Live Sites Network. The installation premiered during the Abandon Normal Devices Festival.
Hand from Above from Chris O'Shea on Vimeo. (Written using openFrameworks & openCV. Sounds by Owen Lloyd.)
"Just imagine walking through your town or city centre, watching yourself on the Big Screen, when all of a sudden a giant finger appears and starts to play with you!...Hand From Above encourages us to question our normal routine when we often find ourselves rushing from one destination to another. Inspired by Land of the Giants and Goliath, we are reminded of mythical stories by mischievously unleashing a giant hand from the BBC Big Screen. Passers by will be playfully transformed. What if humans weren’t on top of the food chain? Unsuspecting pedestrians will be tickled, stretched, flicked or removed entirely in real-time by a giant deity"
SOMEWHAT RELATED
Here are a few posts from the Interactive Architecture blog archive:
Interfacing Architecture for a Network Society - Adam Somlai-Fischer -- Aether architecture
BBC's BIG SCREENS
CHRIS O'SHEA & HAND FROM ABOVE
Interactive Architecture's Recommendations
Interactive Architecture-Related Websites
Bldgblog
Eyebeam
Hyperexperience
Infosthetics
Luminapolis
Nanoarchitecture
Pixelsumo
Rhizome
Spatial Robots
This Happened
We Make Money Not Art
Interactive Architecture Courses/Programs
Adaptive Architecture and Computation Course Modules (UCL Bartlett School of Graduate Studies)
Unit 14 The Experimental Toy Factory (UCL Bartlett School of Architecture)
Design Interactions (Royal College of Art)
MA: Architecture and Digital Media (School of Architecture and Built Environment: University of Westminster)
Media Lab (MIT)
Monday, October 12, 2009
Towards the Sentient City: The Intersection of Ubicomp and Architecture, and....?
It seems that my recent blog posts have centered around convergence, inter-disciplinary work, and "transdisciplinarity". Towards the Sentient City is a set of exhibits at the Architectural League of New York is a good example of this concept.
The exhibit started on September 17, 2009, and runs until November 7. This post is a collection of quotes, photos, videos, and links.
About
Towards the Sentient City:
"Over the past several years, as the Architectural League has become increasingly involved in exploring the proliferation of various types of ambient, mobile, and ubiquitous computer technologies, we have often been asked, what does this have to do with architecture? "
"...We are now on the cusp of a similarly fundamental reconfiguration of physical space, one in which a vast and mostly invisible layer of technology is being embedded into the world around us. Using a wide range of complex technologies and devices — from microprocessors and electronic identification tags to sensors and networked information systems — buildings and cities are being transformed, imbued with the capacity to sense, record, process, transmit, and respond to information and activity taking place within and around them." -Gregory Wessner, Exhibitions Director, The Architectural League of New York
Excerpt from the curator's statement:
"Today, as computing leaves the desktop and spills out onto the sidewalks, streets and public spaces of the city, we increasingly find information processing capacity embedded within and distributed throughout the material fabric of everyday urban space. Artifacts and systems we interact with daily collect, store and process information about us, or are activated by our movements and transactions. Ubiquitous computing evangelists herald a coming age of urban infrastructure capable of sensing and responding to the events and activities transpiring around them. Imbued with the capacity to remember, correlate and anticipate, this near-future “sentient” [2] city is envisioned as being capable of reflexively monitoring its environment and our behavior within it, becoming an active agent in the organization of everyday life in urban public space." - Mark Shepard, curator
EXHIBITS
Too Smart City
Video of the Too Smart City project proposal, via Katherine R.'s "You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet!" blog
Too Smart City from David Jimison on Vimeo.
"Too Smart City is a set of three street furniture pieces that come to life with embedded intelligence and robotic systems. The Smart Bench is a gorgeous two-person seater that recognizes vagrancy and is capable of lifting people up and dumping them off. The Smart Sign displays the latest legal codes on its glossy video monitor, pointing at and addressing people as they walk by. The Smart Trashcan is a sleek metal bin that analyzes what is being discarded. Throw the wrong trash away, and the Smart Trashcan throws it right back at you."
Amphibious Architecture
The Amphibious Architcture project was created by xClinic Environmental Health Clinic at New York University and the Living Architecture Lab at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
Picture from the Amphiobus Architecture exhibit webpage
"Two networks of floating interactive tubes, installed at sites in the East River and the Bronx River, house a range of sensors below water and an array of lights above water. The sensors monitor water quality, presence of fish, and human interest in the river ecosystem. The lights respond to the sensors and create feedback loops between humans, fish, and their shared environment. An SMS interface allows citizens to text-message the fish, to receive real-time information about the river, and to contribute to a display of collective interest in the environment." You can text the rivers: “EastRiver” or “BronxRiver” to 41411
Video from Chris Woebken's Flickr.
Natural Fuse
Electronically-assisted plants that act as energy-producers and circuit-breakers.
According to information on the Natural Fuse website, "Natural Fuse creates a city-wide network of electronically-assisted plants that act both as energy providers and as circuit breakers...Every seemingly helpful device that a human being uses has its own carbon “footprint” which, in excess, can harm other living beings. “Natural fuse” is a micro scale CO2 monitoring & overload protection framework that works locally and globally, harnessing the carbon-sinking capabilities of plants...Natural fuses allow only a limited amount of energy to be expended in the system; that amount is balanced by the amount of CO2 that can be absorbed by the plants that are growing in the system...In the same way that circuit-breakers are useful for preventing excessive current use, so too can the Natural Fuse plants break the CO2 footprint “circuit”." Related Videos can be found on the Natural Fuse blog.
Trash Track
Electronically talking trash!
"Imagine a future where immense amounts of trash didn’t pile up on the peripheries of our cities: a future where we understand the ‘removal-chain’ as we do the ‘supply-chain’, and where we can use this knowledge to not only build more efficient and sustainable infrastructures but to promote behavioral change. In this future city, the invisible infrastructures of trash removal will become visible and the final journey of our trash will no longer be “out of sight, out of mind”...Elaborated by the SENSEable City Lab and inspired by the NYC Green Initiative, TrashTrack focuses on how pervasive technologies can expose the challenges of waste management and sustainability. Can these same pervasive technologies make 100% recycling a reality?" - TrashTrack, MIT's Senseable City Lab
Deployment example.
inGeo CMA8110 CDMA tracking device by Qualcomm
How the Trash Tracker system works (pdf).
Breakout! Escape from the office:
"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." -The Sentient City
Example of a Breakout! session:
"Using the data gathered at the September 28 "Flash Mob Ethnography" session, the group will collaboratively code and analyze the field notes, sketches, photos and video. The group will employ tools from design research methods to visualize key themes from the data."
What is a Flash Mob Ethnography session?
"Taking a cue from an earlier exploration of Japanese convenience stores, we will be conducting flash-mob style ethnographic research. The session will begin with a short introduction to ethnographic research before heading out into the field. Working in teams of 3, we will explore and document the city using field notes, sketches, photography and video. Finally, we will pool our research together as a group and conduct some collaborative coding though a discussion of key themes. Please bring the following: laptop, digital camera, video camera, sketch book, pens, markers and pencils."
RELATED
Situated Technologies
I'll post my reflections related to this exhibit if I have the chance to get to NYC to see it! The closing reception is Saturday, November 7th.
