2 Workshop

from Virtual Art Spaces: Munich´s Burning

1 Research

Starting into the workshop phase oft he project, we started to adapt our research and first thoughts to the project theme of Urban Participation in Neuperlach. First our lighting demos should show projects which focused on the use of AR-Tools and Voxel-Based Gamification Projects, like the participatory planning of an urban playground with the help of Minecraft or geo-location based apps like Pokemon-Go. Also we looked into the use of social-network filters for even less technical boundaries fort he users.

Going further to the panel of four, we looked into the common basis, our project should be developed from. Especially democratic access and thereby democratic participation played a key role in the first round. From there on, we looked into the technicalities of AR or Gamebased applications and figured, that our further process should look into the possibilities of content that lays beyond the visual. Here we mostly started digging into the possibility of creating participatory designs from sound. Sound, Smell and Sense are playing key roles in design project, but are yet hardly adaptable to technical participation tools, such as AR, VR or Games. In the last parts of the workshop phase, we adopted those thoughts to a project idea, in which our participants would here sounds from the city, paired with materials, environmental sounds, etc. Blindfolded they would choose from a palette of sounds. Those sounds would feed an AI to paint an urban image of sounds from the chosen elements. Those pictures could then inform further design strategies in the planning process.

Looking into the qualities of our idea, we figured, that sound could be a broadening element in a participartory process. Also it could be used on the spot as AR-Application and thereby really connect to a place in Neuperlach. Since we planned to further use the sound to create visuals from it, the technical hurdles were really high and to be overcome to make the experience valuable.

Also the UX/UI-Design oft he platform would play a crucial role. To minimize biases produced through the use of AI-Tools and our choice of Sounds and their interpretation in the backend process, we were planning to integrate multiple step AI-Tools or Filters to randomize biased outputs as much as possible. With all those thoughts in mind we went on to develop a time-frame and Gantt-Diagramm from which we could forsee the upcoming challenges and key-dates in our further development.