Re-posted here form Flavorpill Daily Dose:
"Mapping the shifting landscape of urban America
An interactive website created by sociologist and photographer Camilo José Vergara, Invincible Cities presents "A Visual Encyclopedia of the American Ghetto."
Vergara travels through time. Invincible Cities captures more than three decades of changing streetscapes in Harlem, NY, Richmond, CA, and Camden, NJ. Trace shifting communities via photographs shot from the same vantage point throughout recent history.
The site encompasses multiple journeys. By incorporating ingenious mapping software and thematic tags, Invincible Cities makes it possible to explore many facets of each urban area. Categories include religion, vegetation, people, and junkyards, along with panoramas, artifacts, and census information.
Its interactive potential is just emerging. The ability to post comments beneath each image allows both current and former residents to discuss their neighborhoods. However, the project's future lies in its utility as a tool to inspire community-centered revitalization."
Read a profile on the Richmond project
Showing posts with label architecture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label architecture. Show all posts
Friday, April 17, 2009
Thursday, April 2, 2009
The Zeitgeist Movement: Orientation Presentation
The Zeitgeist Movement is the activist arm of The Venus Project, which constitutes the life long work of industrial designer and social engineer, Jacque Fresco.
The book of the movement: THE ZEITGEIST MOVEMENT - OBSERVATIONS AND RESPONSES - Activist Orientation Guide
Mr. Fresco’s background includes industrial design and social engineering, as well as being a forerunner in the field of Human Factors.
A documentary, titled Future By Design, on the life, designs and philosophy of Jacque Fresco is now available.
The film Zeitgeist Addendum featuring Jacque Fresco and The Venus Project produced by Peter Joseph was recently released. It can be viewed at www.ZeitgeistMovie.com
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/dloads.htm
Is this a nightmare or a joke?
Is this a new-retro recovery of the ever-evolutionary/progressive positive-thinking of monternism or is this a blooming branch of the emerging hypermodernism?
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
"There is nothing in a Caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a Butterfy"
by R. Buckminster Fuller
The Buckminster Fuller Challenge Idea Index
http://challenge.bfi.org/ideaindex
The Whitney's Buckminster Fuller: Starting with Universe
http://www.whitney.org/www/buckminster_fuller/about.jsp
The Buckminster Fuller Challenge Idea Index
http://challenge.bfi.org/ideaindex
The Whitney's Buckminster Fuller: Starting with Universe
http://www.whitney.org/www/buckminster_fuller/about.jsp
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Labyrinth by Misnomer Dance Theatre
http://www.misnomer.org/labyrinth
Tinman by Chris Elman
The piece exemplifies Elam’s pointed use of elongated sculptural shapes to convey emotional states. The angularity draws from Balinese movement and is performed in a manner that is meant to draw an audience into the dancer’s physical experience as he negotiates his own body.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
"Parkfield Interventional EQ Fieldwork" (PIEQF) - Seismic Art
Parkfield Interventional EQ Fieldwork (PIEQF) is a geologically interactive, kinetic earthwork that has been installed in the township of Parkfield, Central California. This machine controlled earthwork is triggered by near real-time reported Californian earthquakes from Magnitude M 0.1 and above.
This machine earthwork is feedback loop between the seismicity of California and a physical and mechanical representation of all Californian seismic events. Each time a Californian earthquake occurs, an array of 5/8 inch steel rods attached to an earthquake shake table oscillate and resonate, reflecting the dynamic nature of the Californian landscape. On average 30-60 seismic events occur throughout California daily.
http://pieqf.allshookup.org
Monday, August 4, 2008
Anamorphic parking garage signage...
...is the kind of thing that wins design award...
...but shouldn’t—for several reasons:
(1) Signage in this kind of environment is most useful to those who are in the wrong place and/or on the wrong path; not only does this signage fail to serve them, but it introduces additional ambiguities and disorientation. (2) It assumes clear lines of sight, but they’re likely to be obscured by other traffic. (3) This signage uses color in arbitrary or counterconventional ways: green for “in” contrasted with red for “out” rather than green for “go” and red for “stop” (and for fire equipment), blue for “up” and yellow for “down” (which conflicts with other use of yellow for stop lines, warning on pylons, etc). (4) It obscures practical geometries (for example, tight turns on ramps) and introduces lots of unresolved factors (red lines that run across walkways into the roadway). The whole idea privileges the distracting satisfaction of watching a discombobulated illusion ‘fall into place’ rather than helping to drivers to find their way while watching out for other traffic as it enters and exits at unexpected angles). 
...but shouldn’t—for several reasons:(1) Signage in this kind of environment is most useful to those who are in the wrong place and/or on the wrong path; not only does this signage fail to serve them, but it introduces additional ambiguities and disorientation. (2) It assumes clear lines of sight, but they’re likely to be obscured by other traffic. (3) This signage uses color in arbitrary or counterconventional ways: green for “in” contrasted with red for “out” rather than green for “go” and red for “stop” (and for fire equipment), blue for “up” and yellow for “down” (which conflicts with other use of yellow for stop lines, warning on pylons, etc). (4) It obscures practical geometries (for example, tight turns on ramps) and introduces lots of unresolved factors (red lines that run across walkways into the roadway). The whole idea privileges the distracting satisfaction of watching a discombobulated illusion ‘fall into place’ rather than helping to drivers to find their way while watching out for other traffic as it enters and exits at unexpected angles).
Thursday, May 15, 2008
EMOTIONAL ARCHITECTURE: AZIMUTH OF FISSURE WORKS BY CĂLIN DAN
Included in the exhibition are several works from the artist’s Emotional Architecture series, each related to a particular place: sony/wmf/pp (1994-2003) to Amsterdam, Sample City (2005) to Bucharest, Romania, Trip (2006) to Tallinn, Estonia, and the new work inspired by Charleston. Using documentary images from the 1886 earthquake preserved in the holdings of the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina, nineteenth and twentieth century photographs from area archives, audio from films such as The Patriot, and video material gathered on-site, Dan focuses our attention on the complex, mixing layers of time and experience left on our buildings, on our city, and on our culture—and what we make of them in our lives today. For Dan, these images contain the ghostly traces of the past that leave fissures on our present—like the post-earthquake fissures left on the landscape, the cracks in the structure of Randolph Hall, and the remnants of history that project into our present. Fissures > are also separating forces, cracks that open between spaces, allowing us to manipulate what we see and understand about our environment.
http://www.context.ro/dan/
http://www.halsey.cofc.edu/homepage.htm
http://www.context.ro/dan/
http://www.halsey.cofc.edu/homepage.htm
Friday, April 25, 2008
MULTIVERSITY, or the Art of Subversion.
In fact, if we concentrate on contemporary art, this undoubted importance can be seen on at least three levels.
The first is the central role which immaterial assets and knowledge, creativity and affections, relational and communicational talents assume for contemporary forms of production: artistic production cannot get away from this centrality.
The second is the relationship between cultural production and the metropolis where the interlacing between town-planning and architecture, fashion and design, art and literature, in that productive social space par excellence – the urban basins – becomes on the one side a crucial element in the process of subjectification through which are built the multiplicity of forms of life which inhabit it, to the other decisive factor for defining the strategic positioning of each metropolitan area in the economic competition between global cities.
The third is the relationship between the art market and the financial capital: at a global level, banks and multinationals are the among the main investors in a sector which today seems to be the only one to have not been even slightly touched by the crisis which has overrun the world system of money circulation.
What we are now seeing is a complex capturing system, which capital has brought into play in the multiple flow of informal cultural production, from the appropriation of the ability to cooperate of individual intelligences and individual ways of life, to ensure the valorisation of what has been defined as the "symbolic collective capital".
The complexity of these dynamics depends on a double mechanism of exploitation, where the first aspect is made up of the barriers of intellectual property and from each further moment of private appropriation of general social knowledge, while the second is the parasitic rapport which is established towards the creative production by those speculative interventions occurring in the body of the metropolis, there where state and private institutions, large events and art fairs, and cultural zones and meta-zones are established.
Here the main question is to understand widespread behaviours and the methods of intervention which could change a social composition, already central in the forms of contemporary production, in a political composition. Examined also will be the core issues of the role of university training on the one side, and the communication network on the other side, played within the most complex organisation of the work of the "culture factory".
An indispensable requisite for this discussion is the comparison around contemporary art understood as a "wider social institution": from the historical-artistic events which drove art in the post-war period from the transcendental space of medial specificity to the social space with its relationships of strength, to the relationships established between art, social movements and cultural activism outside of any avant-garde rhetoric, to the methods of capture by the institutional artistic system and by the financial ciruits of a vast heritage of critical thought and conflicting ways of life.
1. Art and activism
2. Art and the market: between creative freedom and financial capture
3. Art and metropolis
4. Art and multitude: for the enquiry into social composition, conflicts and organisation of live work in the "culture factory"
All this to get to the key point: how to transform this social composition into a political composition?
All this to get to the key point: how to transform this social composition into a political composition?
The first is the central role which immaterial assets and knowledge, creativity and affections, relational and communicational talents assume for contemporary forms of production: artistic production cannot get away from this centrality.
The second is the relationship between cultural production and the metropolis where the interlacing between town-planning and architecture, fashion and design, art and literature, in that productive social space par excellence – the urban basins – becomes on the one side a crucial element in the process of subjectification through which are built the multiplicity of forms of life which inhabit it, to the other decisive factor for defining the strategic positioning of each metropolitan area in the economic competition between global cities.
The third is the relationship between the art market and the financial capital: at a global level, banks and multinationals are the among the main investors in a sector which today seems to be the only one to have not been even slightly touched by the crisis which has overrun the world system of money circulation.
What we are now seeing is a complex capturing system, which capital has brought into play in the multiple flow of informal cultural production, from the appropriation of the ability to cooperate of individual intelligences and individual ways of life, to ensure the valorisation of what has been defined as the "symbolic collective capital".
The complexity of these dynamics depends on a double mechanism of exploitation, where the first aspect is made up of the barriers of intellectual property and from each further moment of private appropriation of general social knowledge, while the second is the parasitic rapport which is established towards the creative production by those speculative interventions occurring in the body of the metropolis, there where state and private institutions, large events and art fairs, and cultural zones and meta-zones are established.
Here the main question is to understand widespread behaviours and the methods of intervention which could change a social composition, already central in the forms of contemporary production, in a political composition. Examined also will be the core issues of the role of university training on the one side, and the communication network on the other side, played within the most complex organisation of the work of the "culture factory".
An indispensable requisite for this discussion is the comparison around contemporary art understood as a "wider social institution": from the historical-artistic events which drove art in the post-war period from the transcendental space of medial specificity to the social space with its relationships of strength, to the relationships established between art, social movements and cultural activism outside of any avant-garde rhetoric, to the methods of capture by the institutional artistic system and by the financial ciruits of a vast heritage of critical thought and conflicting ways of life.
1. Art and activism
2. Art and the market: between creative freedom and financial capture
3. Art and metropolis
4. Art and multitude: for the enquiry into social composition, conflicts and organisation of live work in the "culture factory"
All this to get to the key point: how to transform this social composition into a political composition?
All this to get to the key point: how to transform this social composition into a political composition?
Sunday, April 6, 2008
"Contrapolis; or, Creativity and Enclosure in the Cities"
"Displacement of residents, whether they are gentrifying artists priced out of Soho or the poor and unemployed excluded from New York altogether, is no random by-product of gentrification but its structural condition. Decay, disinvestment, abandonment . . .prepare the way for profitable reinvestment . . . Like all the social relations that art supposedly transcends, housing is one of the historical circumstances of its existence". Rosalyn Deutsche, "Alternative Space"
"And howsoever oppositional we architects may be, as long as we fail to challenge basic elements of society, such as the concept of private property, nothing will improve. This is a great paradox for me". Achim Felz, "IKAS: An Experiment in Extra-Parliamentary Architectural Opposition"
The core question of the event would be "how is art, and cultural production more broadly, at once driving capitalist valorisation in the city and able to project forms of social relations that do not produce value for capital?"
http://www.enoughroomforspace.org/projects/view/15
"And howsoever oppositional we architects may be, as long as we fail to challenge basic elements of society, such as the concept of private property, nothing will improve. This is a great paradox for me". Achim Felz, "IKAS: An Experiment in Extra-Parliamentary Architectural Opposition"
The core question of the event would be "how is art, and cultural production more broadly, at once driving capitalist valorisation in the city and able to project forms of social relations that do not produce value for capital?"
http://www.enoughroomforspace.org/projects/view/15
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Architecture in Metaverse "Archidemo" (Second Life Dance 1)
http://mapping.jp/archi/
"Archidemo" is experimental demonstration and research for the possibility of the architecture and environmental design in Metaverse(=the virtual-world). developed by Hidenori Watanave and project member. All the activities are done on NikkeiBP and NikkeiBP way SIM in Second Life(Aug.01/2007~Jan.09/2008). In addition, "Archidemo" is Pre-event of "Digital design competition 2007" (Nikkei Architecture sponsoring).
To expand the possibility of "Architecture in Metaverse" that was the concept besides "Imitation of the Physical world", various demonstrations that used LSL (Linden Script Language) were developed by a lot of creators.
In "Archidemo", the field crossing collaboration was achieved. Trial of Inworld (=in the virtual-space) photograph exhibition by photographer and metaverse-architect, In-world activity, installation of media art, scientific visualization, trial of realization of world of Sci-Fi novel, chatbot space, workshop by student, and so on.
Contents Oriented Space
"Contents oriented space" is a new concept and design method of space.
In Architecture in Metaverse, the following points are requested - "Contents of architecture" can be recognized visually, and be accessed directly from the outside of architecture. "Wall and ceiling" that obstructs the view and restrains the action is essentially unnecessary.
Instead of wall and ceiling, “Navigation” composes an architectural space. People can do flighting, walking, and teleporting and “landing on the contents”, in Metaverse - Just like in the WEB space.
Translating real space into virtual space
In “Archidemo”, there were a lot of architectural experiments that used photograph and movie of a real-space as a “material” of the construction of a virtual-space.
"Wall and ceiling" is unnecessary in Architecture in Metaverse, as being described in the preceding chapter. In a word, It is not effective reproduction that even if the construction of the real world is reproduced by Realistic 3-D modeling.
As an alternative idea, There is very effective method - composing the space with “Navigation” by using “Material” from the real-world. The program ties the photograph and Movie.
This is a method of reproducing not "Shape" but "Experience". It can be paraphrase of "Translating the real-space into the virtual-space".
Watch the "Dance-Performance in the weightless space"
http://mapping.jp/archi/2008/03/danceperformance_in_the_weight.html
Avant-garde/like "Super-flat"/ Web2.0 media dance performance tool inArchidemo (project page: http://mapping.jp/archi/ ) by "Gekitora Gackt"from "inetdance Japan". Gekitora intends "Dance-performance that can beappreciated from any angle 360 degrees", and does various experiments inArchidemo.Gekitora choreographs both dancers and avators. It is fantastic experiencefor him to choreograph avators, because artist can share only pure movementof motion with many users in Internet. Now, A series of four dances can be tested with the dance-pad.A free body expression act is done in the weightless space. Those expressions reminds users of the space suit of "2001:A SpaceOdyssey".
"Archidemo" is experimental demonstration and research for the possibility of the architecture and environmental design in Metaverse(=the virtual-world). developed by Hidenori Watanave and project member. All the activities are done on NikkeiBP and NikkeiBP way SIM in Second Life(Aug.01/2007~Jan.09/2008). In addition, "Archidemo" is Pre-event of "Digital design competition 2007" (Nikkei Architecture sponsoring).
To expand the possibility of "Architecture in Metaverse" that was the concept besides "Imitation of the Physical world", various demonstrations that used LSL (Linden Script Language) were developed by a lot of creators.
In "Archidemo", the field crossing collaboration was achieved. Trial of Inworld (=in the virtual-space) photograph exhibition by photographer and metaverse-architect, In-world activity, installation of media art, scientific visualization, trial of realization of world of Sci-Fi novel, chatbot space, workshop by student, and so on.
Contents Oriented Space
"Contents oriented space" is a new concept and design method of space.
In Architecture in Metaverse, the following points are requested - "Contents of architecture" can be recognized visually, and be accessed directly from the outside of architecture. "Wall and ceiling" that obstructs the view and restrains the action is essentially unnecessary.
Instead of wall and ceiling, “Navigation” composes an architectural space. People can do flighting, walking, and teleporting and “landing on the contents”, in Metaverse - Just like in the WEB space.
Translating real space into virtual space
In “Archidemo”, there were a lot of architectural experiments that used photograph and movie of a real-space as a “material” of the construction of a virtual-space.
"Wall and ceiling" is unnecessary in Architecture in Metaverse, as being described in the preceding chapter. In a word, It is not effective reproduction that even if the construction of the real world is reproduced by Realistic 3-D modeling.
As an alternative idea, There is very effective method - composing the space with “Navigation” by using “Material” from the real-world. The program ties the photograph and Movie.
This is a method of reproducing not "Shape" but "Experience". It can be paraphrase of "Translating the real-space into the virtual-space".
Watch the "Dance-Performance in the weightless space"
http://mapping.jp/archi/2008/03/danceperformance_in_the_weight.html
Avant-garde/like "Super-flat"/ Web2.0 media dance performance tool inArchidemo (project page: http://mapping.jp/archi/ ) by "Gekitora Gackt"from "inetdance Japan". Gekitora intends "Dance-performance that can beappreciated from any angle 360 degrees", and does various experiments inArchidemo.Gekitora choreographs both dancers and avators. It is fantastic experiencefor him to choreograph avators, because artist can share only pure movementof motion with many users in Internet. Now, A series of four dances can be tested with the dance-pad.A free body expression act is done in the weightless space. Those expressions reminds users of the space suit of "2001:A SpaceOdyssey".
Thursday, March 27, 2008
SOCIETE REALISTE
Société Réaliste is a Paris-based cooperative created by Ferenc Gróf and Jean-Baptiste Naudy in June 2004. This cooperative manages the development of several research and economical structures in fields such as territorial ergonomy, experimental economy, political design or counter-strategy. Société Réaliste is researcher at Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht) and is represented by Galerie Martine Aboucaya (Paris).
http://www.societerealiste.net/
http://multitudes-icones.samizdat.net
http://www.societerealiste.net/
http://multitudes-icones.samizdat.net
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
BAVO
BAVO is an independent research office focused on the political dimension of art, architecture and planning. BAVO is a co-operation between Gideon Boie and Matthias Pauwels, both of whom studied architecture and philosophy. BAVO recently conducted research into creative city development and practices of embedded cultural activism. BAVO’s explicit mission is to enhance public debate by means of publications, symposia and interventions.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
THE INFLUENCERS Festival of media action and radical entertainment
http://www.theinfluencers.org/
The Influencers explores controversial forms of art and communication guerrilla, presenting independent projects that play with global popular culture, infiltrate the mass media, and transform fashions, consumption and technological fetishism.
The Influencers is a project by Eva and Franco Mattes and Bani, started in 2004 with the collaboration of the Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona.
Eva and Franco Mattes - internationally known as 0100101110101101.org - is a couple of restless European con-artists who use non conventional communication tecniques to obtain the largest visibility with the minimal effort.
The Influencers explores controversial forms of art and communication guerrilla, presenting independent projects that play with global popular culture, infiltrate the mass media, and transform fashions, consumption and technological fetishism.
The Influencers is a project by Eva and Franco Mattes and Bani, started in 2004 with the collaboration of the Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona.
Eva and Franco Mattes - internationally known as 0100101110101101.org - is a couple of restless European con-artists who use non conventional communication tecniques to obtain the largest visibility with the minimal effort.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
urbansquares
http://urbansquares.com/
:: italy - 19 squares
:: spain - 7 squares
:: canada - 18 squares
:: serbia & montenegro - 21 squares
:: portugal - 14 squares
:: australia & dominican r. - 2 squares
:: usa - 12 squares
:: croatia & greece - 5 squares
:: cuba - 9 squares
:: england - 12 squares
:: nederland - 13 squares
:: belgium & france - 11 squares
:: 7 special projects
objective of this collection/research initiative is to explore a visual and artistic aspects of public urban squares [plazas] as a nucleus of any neighbourhood. we are interpreting/translating their language about the urban morphology and fundamental values in the overall social integration and sustainability of the urban life.
over time we were inspired to start performing analysis of urban neighbourhoods and produce their "psychogeographical portraits" as a mental reaction to the visited space. see the map of all our [psychogeography performances].
urbansqares project is "walking on a very narrow path" between art and science. intention is to have artistic freedom in interpreting the facts, and provoke some action from interested and influential people. as an integral, and very important part of this project, classification system is developed, consisting of [evaluation method] and [types of city squares]. other even more important parts are our [activities related to urban issues and psychogeography, urbansquares art projects and documentation].
:: italy - 19 squares
:: spain - 7 squares
:: canada - 18 squares
:: serbia & montenegro - 21 squares
:: portugal - 14 squares
:: australia & dominican r. - 2 squares
:: usa - 12 squares
:: croatia & greece - 5 squares
:: cuba - 9 squares
:: england - 12 squares
:: nederland - 13 squares
:: belgium & france - 11 squares
:: 7 special projects
objective of this collection/research initiative is to explore a visual and artistic aspects of public urban squares [plazas] as a nucleus of any neighbourhood. we are interpreting/translating their language about the urban morphology and fundamental values in the overall social integration and sustainability of the urban life.
over time we were inspired to start performing analysis of urban neighbourhoods and produce their "psychogeographical portraits" as a mental reaction to the visited space. see the map of all our [psychogeography performances].
urbansqares project is "walking on a very narrow path" between art and science. intention is to have artistic freedom in interpreting the facts, and provoke some action from interested and influential people. as an integral, and very important part of this project, classification system is developed, consisting of [evaluation method] and [types of city squares]. other even more important parts are our [activities related to urban issues and psychogeography, urbansquares art projects and documentation].
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Otto Neurath (1882-1945)
The American philosopher and architectural theorist Nader Vossoughian investigates in this presentation the possibilities for a democratic and participatory approach top urban and social planning. He will devote specific attention to the work of the Austrian philosopher, sociologist and economist Otto Neurath (1882-1945).Nader Vossoughian: Otto Neurath - Information and the Global PolisAbstract of the lecture (De Balie, Amsterdam, February 8, 2008).
Urban and military planning have been virtually indistinguishable for most of history. Ancient Roman towns such as Timgad and London were first conceived as military encampments. In the nineteenth century, Georges-Eugène Haussmann constructed his boulevards in Paris with the aim of stemming civil unrest. Given this past, are participatory or democratic approaches to urban and social planning possible? They are, at least in principle, and this lecture explores one such example.This presentation looks specifically at the ideas and achievements of the Austrian sociologist and planner Otto Neurath (1882-1945), a long- neglected giant in the history of the Information Age. A founder of the Vienna Circle and the Unity of Science movement, a collaborator of figures as varied as Paul Otlet, Cornelis van Eesteren, Gerd Arntz, and Le Corbusier, he had an indelible impact on discussions about the modern metropolis. He advocated informal or participatory approaches to urban and social planning and attempted to find ways of democratizing public space in the contemporary city. In this lecture, he is presented as a theorist of the global polis – as someone who attempted to reconcile the tangibility and intimacy of the ancient Greek city-state, a place that according to Aristotle fostered community and democratic exchange, with the anonymity and heterogeneity of the global metropolis.
More information and links:
www.debalie.nl/artikel.jsp?podiumid=media&articleid=208232
Website of the exhibition After Neurath – The Global Polis at Stroom, The Hague:
www.stroom.nl/activiteiten/manifestatie.php?m_id=8710842
Website of the exhibition After Neurath – The Global Polis at Stroom, The Hague:
www.stroom.nl/activiteiten/manifestatie.php?m_id=8710842
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Dictionary of war
Dictionary of war is a collaborative platform for creating concepts on the issue of war, to be invented, arranged and presented by scientists, artists, theorists and activists at public, two-day events. The aim is to create key concepts that either play a significant role in current discussions of war, have so far been neglected, or have yet to be created. The first 100 concepts have been produced in four editions in Frankfurt, Munich, Graz and Berlin over the past two years. All video-recordings, manuscripts, related material are available on this website.
http://dictionaryofwar.org/
http://v2v.cc/
http://dictionaryofwar.org/
http://v2v.cc/
Friday, January 25, 2008
Intelligent Environments conference
Special Session on Social and Psychological Dimensions of Designing and Experiencing Intelligent Environments in the Urban Context.
session organizers:Dr. Dimitris Charitos, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Everyday urban environments can be seen as complex spatial systems, which function as contexts for supporting communication. In the beginning of the 21st century, these environments are radically being re-ordered by technological systems and networks. These environments may also incorporate systems, which capture visual, auditory and other types of information regarding human activity and consequently utilize this input to affect the process of generating digital representations. Very recent advances in mobile, wireless, pervasive and ubiquitous computing technologies have begun to transform the potential for social interaction taking place within urban public space. We can therefore put forward the hypothesis that the incorporation of ICT systems results in an electronic enhancement of our everyday urban environment since our communication with these environments and with other individuals who exist and act within them is mediated by these systems. The most advanced form of these mediated spaces incorporate intelligence thus affording a novel type of mediation. These intelligent environments could be regarded as spatial interfaces that expand in physical space and integrate with it, thus affording a hybrid (physical and mediated) spatial experience, in the context of which a novel form of social interaction may occur. Thus, the experience of interacting with/within an intelligent environment may affect the way that users perceive the relation between the physical world and the technologically mediated environment and consequently the way that they experience and conceive of urban public space and everyday life within it. The significance of these changes for social life in a 21st century city is the main motivation for proposing this special session. The focus of the session is on investigating the emergence of intelligent environments and the impact that the implementation and use of such systems has on their users, from a social and psychological perspective and ultimately on mediated communication taking place within the context of these spaces. Particular emphasis is given to investigating the manner in which the urban spatial context, where situated communication occurs, is transformed by the introduction of these technologies. Indeed, when we refer to multi-user intelligent environment systems, these could be seen as communication environments, which function as systems supporting interpersonal computer-mediated communication; within the context of these environments, communication amongst locally or remotely located, networked individuals is mediated. Intelligent environments are systems of situated, context-aware communication.They bring human-computer communication and human-computer-human communication back into the context of our physical world, instead of expecting humans to adapt to the needs of a computer environment. In order to understand the social ramifications of these mediated spaces, it is important to: investigate the impact that the kind of interpersonal communication they support has on our everyday experience within the urban context; propose conceptual models for understanding the use and impact of such systems; study the use and impact of these systems from a user perspective, regarding either the personal or the interpersonal aspect of this use. The proposed special session welcomes contributions that will spark discussions on the personal and social implications and effects of using urban intelligent systems, which may consequently be useful for informing the design of such interactive environmental experiences.
For more information please contact: Dr. Dimitris Charitos, vedesign@otenet.gr, UOA, Greece.
www.media.uoa.gr/~charitos
See: http://conferences.theiet.org/ie08/cfp.htm for more info
session organizers:Dr. Dimitris Charitos, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Everyday urban environments can be seen as complex spatial systems, which function as contexts for supporting communication. In the beginning of the 21st century, these environments are radically being re-ordered by technological systems and networks. These environments may also incorporate systems, which capture visual, auditory and other types of information regarding human activity and consequently utilize this input to affect the process of generating digital representations. Very recent advances in mobile, wireless, pervasive and ubiquitous computing technologies have begun to transform the potential for social interaction taking place within urban public space. We can therefore put forward the hypothesis that the incorporation of ICT systems results in an electronic enhancement of our everyday urban environment since our communication with these environments and with other individuals who exist and act within them is mediated by these systems. The most advanced form of these mediated spaces incorporate intelligence thus affording a novel type of mediation. These intelligent environments could be regarded as spatial interfaces that expand in physical space and integrate with it, thus affording a hybrid (physical and mediated) spatial experience, in the context of which a novel form of social interaction may occur. Thus, the experience of interacting with/within an intelligent environment may affect the way that users perceive the relation between the physical world and the technologically mediated environment and consequently the way that they experience and conceive of urban public space and everyday life within it. The significance of these changes for social life in a 21st century city is the main motivation for proposing this special session. The focus of the session is on investigating the emergence of intelligent environments and the impact that the implementation and use of such systems has on their users, from a social and psychological perspective and ultimately on mediated communication taking place within the context of these spaces. Particular emphasis is given to investigating the manner in which the urban spatial context, where situated communication occurs, is transformed by the introduction of these technologies. Indeed, when we refer to multi-user intelligent environment systems, these could be seen as communication environments, which function as systems supporting interpersonal computer-mediated communication; within the context of these environments, communication amongst locally or remotely located, networked individuals is mediated. Intelligent environments are systems of situated, context-aware communication.They bring human-computer communication and human-computer-human communication back into the context of our physical world, instead of expecting humans to adapt to the needs of a computer environment. In order to understand the social ramifications of these mediated spaces, it is important to: investigate the impact that the kind of interpersonal communication they support has on our everyday experience within the urban context; propose conceptual models for understanding the use and impact of such systems; study the use and impact of these systems from a user perspective, regarding either the personal or the interpersonal aspect of this use. The proposed special session welcomes contributions that will spark discussions on the personal and social implications and effects of using urban intelligent systems, which may consequently be useful for informing the design of such interactive environmental experiences.
For more information please contact: Dr. Dimitris Charitos, vedesign@otenet.gr, UOA, Greece.
www.media.uoa.gr/~charitos
See: http://conferences.theiet.org/ie08/cfp.htm for more info
Monday, January 21, 2008
Performance?
Place In Place Of: Alexandria‘Place In Place Of: Alexandria’ is a work in progress by Jeremy Beaudry that manifests itself as a set of site-specific interventions, performances, and documents based in Alexandria, Egypt. Equally important and essential, this project will be co-created as a collaboration with local art and architecture university students and recent graduates. The research and documentation will be collected, reconstituted, and recontextualized on the Web at alexandria.placeinplaceof.net
‘Place In Place Of: Alexandria’ is the first project in the series of events, workshops, exhibitions, and lectures collectively titled CLEOTRONICA: Festival for Media, Art, and Socio-Culture organized by Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF), more information will be available on CLEOTRONICA in February.
Posted on Jan 11, 2008
In what sense does my presence in Alexandria constitute a performance? (And if it does, what does that mean? Is it even all that significant?)
I think I’m wrestling with a definition of performance here. Admittedly, as a discipline with a unique history, my knowledge of performance is weak. Is performance dependent on some degree of intentionality? Or can performances be staged unknowingly by actors in the course of everyday actions and movements? What is the frame that is drawn around a particular body (or bodies) in a particular space and during a particular time to distinguish a performance? Must there be a receptive audience in order to legitimize the action(s) as a performance? What role does documentation fulfill in the reception and validation of a performance? Must a performance be made public?
I know this is happening: My movement through the city is conspicuous; it is noticed by the inhabitants of Alexandria. I can’t remember the last time I have been so aware of my own visibility in public spaces. Merely walking down the street elicits curious stares, smiles from children, excited greetings in English. (”Hello! Welcome! How are you?”) If I happen to be taking photographs of the funny things that I take photographs of, or walk through the market pointing a microphone in every direction, then I sometimes achieve the status of spectacle. It is this attention that I’m not used to and that has me considering my stay here as a performance.
Back to (dictionary) definitions. Perform is somewhat ambiguous, oscillating between “carry out, accomplish, or fulfill” and “present to an audience.” Similarly, performance: “action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function” and “act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment.” Well, these aren’t very helpful at all actually…
Precedents come to mind: Mierle Ukeles washing the steps of the museum or shaking hands with every sanitation worker in NYC, Ulay and Marina Abramovic walking towards each other and the end of their relationship on the Great Wall of China, Gordan Matta-Clark and friends running the Food restaurant, Vito Acconci following strangers on the street, Alan Kaprow’s downtown happenings, Sophie Callie having her mother hire a private investogator to take surveillance photos of her, Situationist drifting in Paris, Francis Alys carrying a gun through Mexico City or a leaky can of paint, Joseph Beuys living in a NYC gallery with a coyote for a week, Alex Villar occupying public niche spaces, Bas Jan Ader sailing out to sea and never coming back, Buddhist monks setting themselves on fire in protest, terrorists flying planes into buildings… There are countless others.
That I would consider my presence in Alexandria as a performance has, essentially, to do with my body in space, and how the presence of my body changes that space, changes the people in that space. And what that presence might mean. My otherness here produces a kind of emanation that people visibly sense. My otherness stems from my appearance as a white western-looking male which, as Bassam (ACAF curator) notes, carries with it a degree of cultural power: my body is draped in the garments of western (mostly American) hegemony. If I do acknowledge the effect that my body has on the spaces I move through, I wish to do so without placing too much importance on these small changes. But they have significance in their own right that I am trying to come to terms with.
Finally, relating to the more modest sense of performance, I have thought about the pedestrian histories of the city as being performed by its inhabitants. My mundane performances in Alexandria—my own pedestrian histories—are compiled alongside theirs as we live out so many routines, paths, stories, etc each day.
Related Links:
http://meaning.boxwith.com/
http://thinktank.boxwith.com/
http://alexandria.placeinplaceof.net/
Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF)
http://www.acafspace.org/
‘Place In Place Of: Alexandria’ is the first project in the series of events, workshops, exhibitions, and lectures collectively titled CLEOTRONICA: Festival for Media, Art, and Socio-Culture organized by Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF), more information will be available on CLEOTRONICA in February.
Posted on Jan 11, 2008
In what sense does my presence in Alexandria constitute a performance? (And if it does, what does that mean? Is it even all that significant?)
I think I’m wrestling with a definition of performance here. Admittedly, as a discipline with a unique history, my knowledge of performance is weak. Is performance dependent on some degree of intentionality? Or can performances be staged unknowingly by actors in the course of everyday actions and movements? What is the frame that is drawn around a particular body (or bodies) in a particular space and during a particular time to distinguish a performance? Must there be a receptive audience in order to legitimize the action(s) as a performance? What role does documentation fulfill in the reception and validation of a performance? Must a performance be made public?
I know this is happening: My movement through the city is conspicuous; it is noticed by the inhabitants of Alexandria. I can’t remember the last time I have been so aware of my own visibility in public spaces. Merely walking down the street elicits curious stares, smiles from children, excited greetings in English. (”Hello! Welcome! How are you?”) If I happen to be taking photographs of the funny things that I take photographs of, or walk through the market pointing a microphone in every direction, then I sometimes achieve the status of spectacle. It is this attention that I’m not used to and that has me considering my stay here as a performance.
Back to (dictionary) definitions. Perform is somewhat ambiguous, oscillating between “carry out, accomplish, or fulfill” and “present to an audience.” Similarly, performance: “action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function” and “act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment.” Well, these aren’t very helpful at all actually…
Precedents come to mind: Mierle Ukeles washing the steps of the museum or shaking hands with every sanitation worker in NYC, Ulay and Marina Abramovic walking towards each other and the end of their relationship on the Great Wall of China, Gordan Matta-Clark and friends running the Food restaurant, Vito Acconci following strangers on the street, Alan Kaprow’s downtown happenings, Sophie Callie having her mother hire a private investogator to take surveillance photos of her, Situationist drifting in Paris, Francis Alys carrying a gun through Mexico City or a leaky can of paint, Joseph Beuys living in a NYC gallery with a coyote for a week, Alex Villar occupying public niche spaces, Bas Jan Ader sailing out to sea and never coming back, Buddhist monks setting themselves on fire in protest, terrorists flying planes into buildings… There are countless others.
That I would consider my presence in Alexandria as a performance has, essentially, to do with my body in space, and how the presence of my body changes that space, changes the people in that space. And what that presence might mean. My otherness here produces a kind of emanation that people visibly sense. My otherness stems from my appearance as a white western-looking male which, as Bassam (ACAF curator) notes, carries with it a degree of cultural power: my body is draped in the garments of western (mostly American) hegemony. If I do acknowledge the effect that my body has on the spaces I move through, I wish to do so without placing too much importance on these small changes. But they have significance in their own right that I am trying to come to terms with.
Finally, relating to the more modest sense of performance, I have thought about the pedestrian histories of the city as being performed by its inhabitants. My mundane performances in Alexandria—my own pedestrian histories—are compiled alongside theirs as we live out so many routines, paths, stories, etc each day.
Related Links:
http://meaning.boxwith.com/
http://thinktank.boxwith.com/
http://alexandria.placeinplaceof.net/
Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF)
http://www.acafspace.org/
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