Conference Programme 2008
Conference Programme 2008 [PDF-Document]
Session 1: Situations
Our interactions with others can be considered as situated in that they are shaped by both the physical setting, as well as being guided by an implicit background of our own social experiences and circumstances. Situations are the settings in which people interact, and in order for this to be meaningful they must work on two levels; they must be present an imageable concept of physical space which is complimented by an awareness of how social interactions can take place in it. But communications media have affected the definition of situations so that they are no longer defined only by physical spaces with their corresponding meanings. The use of these technologies is becoming a part of everyday life, and the spaces of the city are becoming increasingly densely interwoven with mobile and wireless devices and networks. In the process, the often dominant cliche of the digital world; that networks enable people to communicate with 'anyone, anywhere, at any time and in any place', is starting to be replaced with a more subtle understanding of the types of places and spaces that provide the settings for our interactions. This session will seek to explore the characteristics of situations and how they create possibilities for interaction in urban space. We will investigate this on three levels; through the spaces themselves, the interactions in urban space, and also the technologies that mediate these interactions.
Session 2: Practices
Locative media, collaborative mapping and cartographies, digital multimedia narrative, participatory video making have become more widespread thanks to more affordable/omnipresent technology and to the success of open source tools. In the process they’ve opened up new possibilities for participatory practices affecting many disciplines surrounding urban studies through theoretical research, action research and activism. In particular, new media tools offer new perspectives for representing contemporary complex and heterogeneous urban dynamics, cultural and social phenomena, collective form of re-appropriation of public space. And for improving, fostering and assisting participatory practices in urban planning, including collective and individual narratives of the inhabited space.
This use of technology gives rise to open and non-conventional descriptions of contemporary cities, becoming instruments for voicing socio-political issues of marginalized or underrepresented groups, establishing active tools for community organizing. These tech options not only open possibilities for participatory practice, but also invite theoretical questions about the power of representation. On one hand urban planning as well as geography are today radically challenged in their history of serving elite political-economic power; on the other hand the role of those who market new technological innovations may do the same - using the rhetoric of participative urban lives to fuel the everyday business of the symbolic economy.
Session 3: Encounters
The connectivity of communities can be reinforced through new situated computing technologies, which lend themselves to shared experiences, such as content sharing and collaborative interaction. For example, interplay between large-scale shared displays and small-scale personal mobile terminals, or physical spaces connected to online worlds. We aim to explore how locative media systems contribute towards enhancing shared experiences in everyday places, such as the streets, parks, cafes, malls, etc.
The main research question is whether and how content sharing and collaborative use of locative media could facilitate social communication in physical space. In terms of scientific theory and methods, this session explores the relationship between architecture of physical space and media communication science. Additionally the session investigates how the use of locative media translates into business opportunity. If situated technologies are to achieve business advantage, they must capture the attention of the passer-by and motivate individual and collaborative interaction.
Workshop "Exploring MEDIACITY"
The workshop “Exploring MEDIACITY” will be based on partly the results of research within the MEDIACITY Project as presenting the accepted papers. According to the disciplines involved in the project such as media studies, architecture, urban studies, cultural and urban geography and sociology, the workshop will be organized in an interdisciplinary session where we would like also to look a little bit forward to future research opportunities. Here the participants will discuss perspectives stemming from the papers presented. Main questions will be brought forward with regard to the social, cultural, economical and political embedding of new media in the urban context. Beyond a discourse of technological innovation, within this workshop the mediacity will be explored with regard to its interwoven relationship with the existing urban structure. Key topic will be how the contradictional developments in a city can be theoretically interpreted within the frame of innovation dynamics. Taking into account the present vastness of technological processes, the changes in communication and information are regarded as evident but not necessarily important phenomena. How does it then come, that certain cities are creating a mode of informational developments while in others the ICT revolution is not taking off? The discussion will identify opportunities of cross-disciplinary research to link the existing literature and empirical evidence to the major field of urban studies. Exploring Mediacity means in this context that medialized urban developments have to been in the overall patterns of the general development of the city.
Additional activities:
Poster presentations
Hee-Tai Choi_Bench for You (Bench for Ubiquitous or You). Taina Rajanti_Urban Wormholes project. Sigrid Hintersteininger_Defragmented Dwelling – Creative Class Housing in the Media Age. Martijn de Waal_Greetings from Pendrecht. Urban culture as interface culture. Philippe Fayeton_VICA, ANA and SL or the vanishing (urban) public space. Hendrik Weiner_Situational Spaces. Media Based Architecture in Public Spaces. Ruturaj Mody, Sebastian Hübschmann_Augmented City: Economy of Space and Comercialization of Life. Meltem Senturk_Transformation of Public Places and Public Relations by the Effect of Mobile Technologies. Geoffrey Shea, Paula Gardner_PORTAGE: A Locative Streetscape Theatre. Felicity Colman_Practices of Mobile Democracy and Tyranny. Ana Catarina Antunes_Urban regeneration in the scope of mediacity. Aristotelis Dimitrakopoulos_Content > Discontent: MediaCity, an Unpolitical Polis
Hands-On workshop “Situations”
How can we capture and study everyday situations in the city? The moments when exchanges happen and the places in which they occur can be transient and therefore difficult to predict and record. This suggests interesting methodological questions: how do we research and represent these experiences; of being in place momentarily, of passing through, a fleeting encounter with another person, or of our presence within some digital space? And how can we observe and meaningfully study them without losing sight of some of the fluid and temporary qualities of such experiences? This session will look at some of the ways in which mobile and wireless technologies may be both used and studied in order to understand the nature of situated interactions. In particular we will focus on technologies such as Bluetooth, GPS and WiFi in the city, to study how patterns of interaction can be revealed in order to offer insights to what is happening in these moments. We will also consider how these traces can be documented and represented to more fully inform our understanding of people's experience of situations and help us design from them. The last stage of the session will involve live testing and experimentation with some of the methods in the city of Weimar. Participants are encouraged to bring their own experiences to this 'hand's on' workshop, and also any devices or methods they may been working with; mobile phones, GPS devices or applications such as netstumbler or kismet.
Hands-On workshop "Tangible Computing"
The workshop "Tangible Computing" will consist of two parts, both related to recent interface design projects at Bauhaus-University Weimar. At first we will try to find out answers to some daily questions of our modern life: Can I turn my old house into a playstation, the pavement into a gamecontroller? What is the sociopsychological impact of building a bowling alley inside my neighbour's kitchen and using the carpet of my friend's living room as my tennis court?
After exploring sense and nonsense of exertion interfaces in urban space and at home, we will have a closer look at our future furniture and inventory: This second part of the hands-and-feet-on session wants to show the possibilities of tangible interfaces on specific examples based on reacTIVision – "the open source, cross-platform computer vision framework for the fast and robust marker and multi-touch finger tracking". We'll gain insight into using the framework in combination with the Python programming language (pyTuio) and simple hardware configurations.
Exhibition and Discussion:
“MediaArchitecture - a postgraduate masters course at the Bauhaus-University Weimar”
The interdisciplinary, post-graduate masters course, MediaArchitecture reacts to the continuing structural change in society and the increasing importance of the reciprocal influence of media and architecture. The aim is to open up the growing cross-section between the architectonic and medial space for study and research, as well as new professional fields. Based on the increasing medialisation of public space and everyday culture the master’s course is not lastly a reaction to the ever higher demand for highly-qualified university graduates in the interdisciplinary area between media and architecture.
For more information please visit: http://www.uni-weimar.de/mediaarchitecture/