Mediacity part 1

Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena Jens Geelhaar 路 Frank Eckardt 路 Bernd Rudolf Sabine Zierold 路 Michael Markert (Eds.)

PART 1

Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena Jens Geelhaar 路 Frank Eckardt 路 Bernd Rudolf Sabine Zierold 路 Michael Markert (Eds.)

MediaCity Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

MediaCity Conference 2010 Bauhaus-Universität Weimar http://www.mediacityproject.org/2010 Coverdesign by Michael Markert All articles Š 2010 by their respective authors All rights reserved.

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Contents E-City: From Researching the Virtual Towards Understanding the Real Urban Life

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Frank Eckardt The Practice of Cybernetic Urbanism

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Raoul Bunschoten Daniel Wedler Sentient City Survival Kit: Archaeology of the Near Future

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Mark Shepard Digital Metropolis: The Implications of Information Densification for Spatial Society

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Noah Ives Interface Design for Shared Spaces

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Nina Valkanova Media Architecture as Social Catalyst in Urban Public Spaces

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Hendrik Weiner

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Cidadania

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Rolf Kruse Pedro Aibéo Where the Action Should Be Learning from MicroPublicPlaces

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Marc Böhlen Sound as Interface

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Petros Kataras Ermis Adamantidis Alaa Alfakara Sonic Activation Spectral Architectural Memories

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Eva Sjuve Fernfühler – Intelligent Furniture for the Architecture of Tomorrow

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Matthias Weber Sebastian Hundertmark Ursula Damm Large Screens and Small Screens: Public and Private Engagement with Urban Projections Geoffrey Shea Michael Longford

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Creativity, Knowledge, Engagement: Keys to Finding the Right Governance Model for a Regional Community Precinct

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Kirralie Houghton Marcus Foth Greg Hearn Urban Overlay

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Martin Kohler Kai von Luck Jens Wille Boulevard of Production: A Future Talents Attractor

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Georg Flachbart Ivan Redi New Media as a Catalyst for Integration in Cross-Border Regions?

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Jan-Philipp Exner Guido Kebbedies The Mythological City

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Peter Wendl MediaCity’s Atmospheric Commons

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Jordan Geiger

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Sensing Digital Identity and Stimulating Digital Co-Presence

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Eleni Sotiriou, Marco Krechel, Hugo Loureiro, Madhav Kidao, Paul Goodship Public Space 2.0

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Sandrine von Klot Drawing Circles Search on Mobile Devices

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Mathias Mitteregger “Small Texts”?: Text Messages, Art and Public Spheres

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Frauke Behrendt Social Media Platforms as Strategic Models for Local Community Development

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Tanya Søndergaard Toft Infrastructure: An Instrument Of Urban Morphology

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Seung Ra C@rchitecture: The Architecture-Infrastructure Synergy Marthijn N. Pool

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Lift@Weimar: Sustainable Interaction with Food, Technology, and the City

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Jaz Hee-jeong Choi Marcus Foth Mobile Applications in Urban Planning

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Karsten M. Drohsel Peter Fey Stefan Höffken Stephan Landau Dr. Peter Zeile Adaptive Architecture – A Conceptual Framework

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Holger Schnädelbach Mobile Node: Open Portable Infrastructure Overlapping Digital Paths

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Efraín Foglia Cyberspace as a Locus for the Sustainability of Urban Collective Memory

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Segah Sak Burcu Şenyapılı

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Interactive Spaces Reactivating Architectural and Urban Space by Tracing the NonVisual

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Katja Knecht RAINBOWS 601 Kyd Campbell The Facadeprinter – A Distance Printing Device for Communication in Urban Contexts Julian Adenauer Michael Haas, Martin Fussenegger Adrienne Gispen

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E-City: From Researching the Virtual Towards Understanding the Real Urban Life Frank Eckardt Bauhaus-Universität Weimar Urban life has its own meaning as it is framing our social, political, cultural, and economical activities within space. If the city in its built “reality” is not seen as a mere synchronous description and urban life is recognized in its dynamics, then the question about the “material” side of the city becomes interesting. The city as a physical and imagined process then becomes a reality which cannot be captured with a binary understanding, in which all non-visible is banished. (Davis, 1999) The city is more than an accumulation of built places. The question about rank and the meaning of the “virtual” and “imagination” arises. As a consequence, the relation between the city as “a state of mind”, referring here to the famous quotation of Robert Park, and empirical urban research requires a complex analysis. This means that research on the “E-City” is dedicated to sociopsychological aspects of urban studies which can be easily trapped within too much seeking for signification and too much speculation, and this would leave a lot of space for critizism due to the simplified attitude. The major attempt of researching the “E-City” should stress, however, the refusal of any theoretical conception, in which ideas, discourses and pictures of a city are linked in a direct and causal line to and the appearance of the physical environment of the city. (Borden/Friedland, 1993) MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

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Cities are no direct manifestation of imagination. At the same time, it cannot be argued that the imaginary side of urban life is just an accessory or a cover page for the urban social fabric. Empirical research cannot directly receive an insight on the dreams and longings of the urban population, if the logic of the virtual is recognized with having its own independent existence and way of development. The dilemma of past urban research was caused by a narrow-minded sight on imagination and virtuality, which did not open up for a more fundamental, non linear arranged virtual layer of the city. What remained were escapist dreams into the fantastic world of unearthly technological promises. Since the sixties, special attention has been paid for the hypothesis of an increase of virtual processes in cities.

Generally spoken, these debates have to be looked at with a radicalized modernity as the background, in which the society looks for imaginations to forecast the effects of innovations in technical/technological progress.

At that time, emphasis was put on the assumed shrinking difference between “physis” and imagination. In particular, the Cyborg theorem of the physical space is prominently maintained: The embodiment of space passes on a problematic form of space itself and wipes away the clear borders between the organic and the inorganic. (Villani, 1995)

Re-arranging the urban discourse In urban studies, the well-established terms and analytical concepts have not been re-arranged to face the difficulty of conceptualizing „virtuality“.

On the contrary, the assumed contradiction between the “real” and the “virtual real“ has many lives and can be found in one or another way throughout literature. It seems hard to imagine that reality is to some extent fictional and that virtualities are not mere products of fiction, but real.

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Learning from the development of the Cyborg discourse, urban studies should re-conceptualize their basic attempt to understand urban life by shaping analytical tools to overcome these stereotype distinctions between the real and the imagined, the built and the human, the geographical and the social. Hybridity is a key concept that derives from the Cyborg theories and which might be capable of showing a way beyond dual concepts.

Hybridity became a key concept to understand the interwoven relation between the virtual and the real: „A cyborg is a hybrid creature composed of organism and machine (…) Cyborgs are post-Second World War hybrid entities made of, first, ourselves and other organic creatures in our unchosen „high-technological“ guise as information systems, texts, and ergonomically controlled labouring, desiring, and reproducing systems.

The second essential ingredient in cyborgs is machines in their guise, also, as communications systems, texts, and self-acting, ergonomically designed apparatuses.“ (Haraway, 1991, 1) In this hybridizing relationship between virtuality and the “real” reality, a wider configuration of the urban is anticipated, with which any kind of essentialist or ontological understanding of cities is excluded. In particular, the problem of the machine-people contradiction is exposed and qualified as being untenable. At the same time, with the “Cyber” perspective a metaphor, which gives the virtual no literal place has been widely spread.

Exemplarily for the debate of the nineties, Forer and Huisman (2000) stated that the “virtual” would lead us to new experiences of spaces, and that “virtual” would immerse “into” the picture. The interaction between the virtual space and the “real time” is made possible through global crossings within Cyberspace and through characteristic figures of the “age of the virtual” producing new space metaphors (Quéau, 1993, 63).

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Understanding the virtual The consequence of the metaphorical understanding of the virtual has led to an urban discourse with the basic assumption of an autonomous sphere of the virtual, not being critically reviewed yet. For the further analytical and empirical research on the “virtual city” we have to acknowledge that this has been a dead end of thinking. This is the reason for a certain unease which can be observed when the term “Cybercity” is taken up again. However, the still lasting talk about a new time period appears to be a perspective that does not include the necessary historic dimension of technological development (Lacochée/Wakeford/Pearson, 2004; Tarr, 1987). New attempts to re-conceptionalize the research on virtual urbanity address the “virtual” in a way that underlines the necessity to see the “it” in a process relationship with reality. (Žižek, 2002). The overemphasis of the virtual in the debates around Cyberspace is comprehensible in the sense that this happens every time when technological innovations in the information and communication media became observable. The debate was coined considerably by the focus on the interaction between humans and technological networks, in which indeed apparent changes in the behaviour of the city dwellers seemed to be of significance (Mitchell, 2003). From these first theorizing attempts two different conclusions can be drawn: On the one hand, an empirically oriented research agenda appears, where it is considered to keep close track on the observation of the technological innovations. On the other hand, it remains the conceptional difficulty to understand “virtuality” and “space” in a way without both overlapping themselves by mutual metaphorics. (Gandy, 2005) Latter difficulty was addressed by a widening of the concept of space by progressing from “cyborg” to the “cyberspace” (Turkle, 1995; Bingham,

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1996; Ludlow, 1996; Woods, 1996; Kitchen, 1998; Lunenfeld, 1999).

In this discussion on the city, space was included into a neo-organic perspective, where the city was understood as a neurological information and communication organization. However created vaguely, space was connected with different parts of the “urban” (realm), where human interactions can be observed (Leach, 2002). By the intensive diffusion of the new information and communication technologies, the city transforms into an urban center like into a nerve system, designed to generate information and control the movements and actions of its inhabitants.

Existing functional and hierarchical orders are supplemented by vertical, vague and nonlinear communication lines (Gille, 1986). In this way the metaphor of the body is waived partly and is reduced to being the place for the processing of information. (Kurokawa, 2001). To what extent this still concerns an understanding of “body” in a biological sense is at least questionable against the influential reading to the “body without organs” by Deleuze and Guattari. In this discourse, however, the focus on “information” can be understood as the conceptional progress, which overcomes the simplistic dualism “virtual/real” (Boundas, 1996; Massumi, 2001). Urban indicators such as size, structure or order are less stressed, while movements and interactions are emphasized instead as characteristics of urban life. (Amin/Thrift, 2002) The focus on “information” was influential for urban research, which particularly leads to the expression in the work of Castells, who emphasizes the creation of flexibility within functional urban structures (Castells, 2003; Steinbicker, 2001). The “net” as a metaphor reflects the innovations in the information and communication technology in the eighties and their influence on the fundamental dimensions of human life: on the structure of time and space. With his approach, the “Informational Cities”,

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Manuel Castells attempts to analyze the effects of the new technologies within the frame of the special economic, social, political and cultural contexts of regions and cities (Castells, 1989). IT innovations step into interaction with historical changes, where the restructuring of capitalism expresses itself within its matrix of economical and institutional settings of organization. The qualitative and quantitative changes of communication and information are not only a component of this restructuring; on the contrary, they shape the logic of social development. We are experiencing a phase of capitalism, which is characterized by the mode of “informational development”. This development mode describes a new relationship between production, space and society. (Armitage/Roberts, 2002) Information is no longer only the carrier of knowledge for the production process, the generation and acquisition of information becomes crucial for economic processes. Information becomes a resource and this changes the status it has had before. It becomes important as the basis in innovation processes and it is no longer only a product of industry.

Before the informational revolution, the factor of energy for innovations was decisive. Now information takes this place, as transport costs have become insignificant. In this way, the mode of informational development influences the human approach to production and consumption. In particular, the socio-cultural symbolism of society is coupled more closely to its production sphere. This is expressed in a transmission of the logic of the informational process. The flexibility of informational production has been made possible through IT technologies and through the flexible organization of consumption and management. With the new flexibility a change of production size occurs, i.e. the mass production is given up in favour of tailor made production based on the principle of “just in time” deliverance. Fast adjustment to the diversifying and innovating market is the key for economic success. As a consequence, the economy approaches 18

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the symbolic world of the society more strongly and thus the sharp dividing line between both society and economy - keyword: 24/7-economy becomes penetrated (Lash/Urry, 1994).

The Virtual and the Space Referring to the relation of space and society, the informational age is assumed to make a crucial turn: The space of the information flows is overlaying the space of the places. The new service industry looks for places of synergies. The international manager class occupies places, reserving certain parts of the city exclusively for itself. The networks of the informational economies organize themselves autonomously, to a large extent independently from the “urban”, whereby they free themselves from control from cities and states, but both still justifying their power through a territorial binding of their citizens. Time and space are increasingly condensed. Castells progresses the discussion about “time space compression” (Harvey, 1989). Cities and regions must find their own role in the spreading network society. In regard to culture, they are forced to use their historical roots for the production of a local identity which differs from others. Economically, cities can find their place in the world-wide networks, if they are able to organize a specific form of social control of their urban society, which in turn creates special offers on work, knowledge and information potentials. The urban environments offer the general conditions for the reproduction of the informational economics.

In the network societies, cities are confronted with the requirements of a capitalistic crisis, which are in search of new ways of profit maximization by establishing the informational development path (Laguerre, 2005).

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Castells offers an extensive basis for the analysis of the restructuring processes in economy and society in the informationyl age. According to his analysis, the capitalistic restructuring is evoking a new synchronisation of time which is depending on a more virtual perception of space, generated in particularly by the internet. (Garsten/Wulff, 2003) Urban research in the “informational mode of capitalism” represents a program aligned to the problem of individualization versus localisation. The urban dimension of social integration rises in importance again, while the discourse on the social is shaped by spatial arrangements. Urban semiotic gets the most attention, when new symbolic cathedrals and agora can be observed in cities again. Semiotic analyses should take place as a contextualisation of communication matrices. Traditional requests to urban research remain virulent, must, however, again be re-linked to the city of the informational age: Castells calls attention for forms of urban poverty, racism, social exclusion and above all, the new social movements. (Castells, 2000) However, Castells’ network approach does not convince in many aspects.

Certainly, the networks he focusses on are existing and unfolding their effects and power. The network metaphor seems to stress a new developing trend in the complex interaction net between territorial economy and the global flows. Nevertheless, there should be caution to what extent these flow economies have an input on the national economy (Storper, 1997, 239). The conception of urban complexity on the basis of the network metaphor appears to be insufficient, because it does not consider sufficiently the complexity of movement and fixation (Brenner, 2000). The critical question concerns in the first place the significance of agency which has to be seen as framing “virtuality”, whereby these are to be seen primarily as mental structures (Hayles, 1999). From a sociological view on cognition, the theorizing of virtuality has to be guided by questions, which to date usually have derived from singular studies only and lack more general re20

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conceptualisation (Zerubavel, 1999). In acceptance of this starting point for research, it remains only the narrow analytic derivation of the question regarding the organization of virtual space/spatial virtuality for the Cyborg debate: not space as such became insignificantly, the space concept has been virtualised and can take place only there. Space implies imagination and place, information and physis; the consideration on space transforms into its own analysis (Bukataman, 1993).

Beyond information Intensive research has already at an early stage underlined the correlation between information and communication technologies and social inequality in cities (Graham/Aurigi, 1997). It has been thus recognized that technological progress does not eliminate or minor social inequalities automatically. On the contrary, the question about newly developing injustice, in the sense of access equality, has become important (Negroponte, 1995). Meanwhile, this concern motivates a wider scientific community, which operates with the concept of “digital divide” and which has thereby been influential on the formulation of European policies (Stewart, 2006).

From a normative and analytical point, the research on accessibility to information and communication technologies has produced rich results ( Janelle/Hodge, 2000). However, (comparative) work has only rarely enclosed the urban dimension explicitly, but for many authors it seems to be natural that this concept concerns an urban topic in particular. Therefore, the “digital divide” is often seen as a rural-urban problem (Kvasny, 2006).

Research on the social consequences has particularly looked at the change of work conditions and environments (telework, telecommuting) (Moss/ Carey, 1995). Although the positive effects of these work forms have

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dominated the discourse for a long time, the research findings in the middle of the nineties have presented a more differentiated view of the new deriving work circumstances (Wresch, 1996). Accessibility is a precondition for participating actively in informational economics, but the information and communication industries are also generating their own hierarchies and architectures of inequality, between for example simple work as data organizers and creative users (Resnick/Rusk, 1996). Social inequalities like those following the lines of gender, income, culture and ethnicity were reproduced on the tele-work job markets ( Jones, 1995).

“Cybertariat” may be a description for the developing subclass of teleworkers. (Huws, 2003) At the same time, another research field developed, which tries to understand the virtualised city particularly as a (new) form of industrialization (Markusen/Hall/Glasmeier, 1986). Research on settlement strategies of companies in these sectors led to various results, with partially very different beginnings. In particular, the dependence on infrastructural conditions for this “New Economy” became relevant (Hackler, 2003). The issue of location factors finally drew attention on the more soft aspects of urban life (Florida, 2005; Musterd, 2006; Scott, 2006; Hospers, 2003). In geography, attempts were undertaken to locate and to map these companies and their service offers (Zook, 2005; Dodge/Kitchen, 2001). A connection between economic development and the geographical organization of urban life has been examined (and stated) in wider concepts (Graham, 2001). Here, geography is primarily based on the term of distance. In the knowledge economics, distance is assumed to be reduced in its significance (Krugman, 1992). Later analyses have questioned the somewhat simple acceptance of the decrease of mobility costs by pointing out the fact that accelerated mobility does necessarily mean higher degrees of connectivity.

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In particular, the higher and faster overcoming of distances (a hypothesis maintained with the internet development in background) and the assumed (automatic) loss of significance of the cities, can up to now not be observed empirically (Aadey/Bevan, 2006; Pons-Novell/Viladencans-Marsal, 2006). However, more complex mobility definitions have underlined the connection between communication technologies, physical mobility and regional structures (Mackenzie, 2006). Logics of mobility as such are becoming apparently crucial (Shen, 2000). On the basis of analysing economic restructuring through telecommunication innovations, many studies have tried to explain urban transformation and its logic in terms of infrastructural innovations. Hereby the shift from office-work to tele-work in the private sphere receives its explanation (Moss/Townsend, 2000). In the same way innovations in the urban morphology are regarded to be relevant (Crang, 2000). Even more attention has been paid to the sociopsychological imbedding of the Internet (DĂśring, 2003). In this research area extensive work has been concerned with the increasing isolation and dependence of intensive internet users, which has been supported so far by empirical research. (Amichai-Hamburger, 2005)

Inhabiting E-City A rather complex relationship results from these studies with regard to the integration of the virtual internet world into the biographic continuity of the individual. In a socio-psychological perspective, the characteristic of internet-supported communication strives for an understanding, which stresses the anonymity and the uncoupling of proximity from the interaction logics of face-to-face communication (Hulme/Truch, 2006). The character of on-line communication is contradictory: „ Our

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emotional system is not yet structured to deal with opposing features: The contradictions and uncertainty associated with online relationships make them less stable and more intense. Emotions play a much greater role in these relationships.” (Ben-Ze’ev, 2005, 134) The accepted higher emotionality of online communication is caused by the greater necessity to achieving integration into personal life, which at the same time requires the contradiction of proximity and absence. However, referring to social embeddedness in group processes and situations, interpersonal “on-line” communication does not differ from “off-line” communication. This frame must be regarded as being of substantial influence, weakening or waiving the peculiarity of interpersonal communication in the web (McKenna/Seidman, 2005). In terms of online friendships we can assume the following: „First of all, the friendships formed in Cybertown are informal, personal, and private. Secondly, they are chosen rather than enforced. Third, they are also produced and maintained in similar ways to those in offline life.” (Carter, 2004, 123) Initially, online friendships are “free floating”, then they are built upon mechanisms in order to develop confidence: „As a result, it is no longer distinct and separate from the real world. Cyberspace has become part of everyday life.“ (Carter, 2004, 123). The available research results assume that online socialisation is to be regarded as an additional, supplementing layer of intra-group communication (Matei/Ball-Rokeach, 2002; Hampton/Wellman, 2001; Wellman, 2001; Thiedecke, 2000). The first sociological study about weblogs found out that “the long arm of real life” does not allow revolutionary changes (Schmidt, 2006, 171).

Referring to these findings, it becomes questionable whether it still can be justified to award an own conceptual quality to the Cyberspace/Cyborg

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theorem. The assumption seems to be likely that many approaches remain technology-dominated and the configuration of social communication seems not to have been the starting point of the subsequent observations ( Jackson/Poole/Kuhn, 2002). From a sociological point of view, the question about the logic and order of virtuality appears to be substantially more promising to investigate than this would be within the framework of the Cyber-discourse, which pays lip service to the term “space” (however defined) in its name, but rarely conceptionally reflects the term and usually means (a-historically, three-dimensional, a-sociologically) “place” (Thiedecke, 2004). Virtuality opens up a research perspective on the city, which focuses primarily on the structures of expectations, emotions and memories. To what extent then – this might be the question arising from the analysis of online technologies – do they extend, narrow or transform the spaces of action and emotion for the individual; in what kind of relation do they stand with “more real” spaces: in agreement or conflict? (Becker, 2004; Paetau, 1997) One logical assumption could be that urban virtuality could be understood as following an own logic of densification and territorialization. Virtual spaces were not split up by their technological sense of being a medium, but they look for adequate configurations where hybridizing into on- and off-line become possible. The absence of such spaces of transition leads to a process, where, if conflicts like forms of virtualisation are not intermediated, urban anomie is produced, which binds the single individual to its virtual life. These correlations, more than only regarding the internet, become obvious with reference to the wide spread mobile telephone. Their omnipresence and ubiquity, meaning all-time accessibility and de-privatisation through constant use in public places, points out that communication in its exclusive interpersonal form only develops as an extended communication, where the presence of a material or potential “third” is permanently present (Döring, 2004;Gergen, MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

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2002). Ubiquitous communication, as it can already be observed nowadays in terms of the mobile phone, develops a persisting tension between the private and the public, the accessible and the exclusive, and the common and the interpersonal (Höflich, 2006). These borders are complexly restructured in a process which can be characterised as being “culturedependent” (Vincent, 2006). In the western societies and in the way the mobile phone is used there, it reproduces already existing distinctions within the social field, and does not create autonomous social dynamics, which would be able to question the inequalities (Geser, 2006). Studies of the social effects of the internet cafés are coming to a comparable result.

(Lee, 1999)

Resisting techno-determinism Obviously, it is difficult to consider the empirical findings appropriately with the existing research strategies and the general experience of the new communication worlds. Most conceptional and methodological approaches circle around three main topics and hardly find common ground: Substitution, technology and medium of the urban. The topic of substitution is present in main parts of the debate. This covers a wide theoretical field with inconsistent and contradictory conclusions, but one approach seems to dominate with narration as the most important form of theorizing. Narration means mostly romanticising, in a negative mood for instance in the writings of Virilio (Morisch, 2002; Redhead, 2004)), working with a ”plot” based on the time “before” and “after” technological innovations (Coyne, 1999). With this temporal dualism a further narrative structure of the research logic is implicitly set: the world “outside” and “inside”. Cities are affected, formed, shaped, transformed,

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arranged, changed etc., i.e. they are subject to a power from the outside, which approaches them like asteroids from the universe, chanceless against the almighty impact of the technologies. Research on the virtual city follows therefore a discourse over urban development, which describes the city as a target of technological planning (Aibar/Bijker, 1997). This kind of viewing the city refers to technological planning developments as - to a large extent - deterministic and decouples it from their local developing circumstances: „The pervasive reliance on technological determinism and cartoonish end of city visions has actually worked to obscure the complex relationships between new communication and information technologies and cities and urban life that have emerged as ICTs have diffused to be embedded in real everyday lives and practices.“ (Graham, 2004, 11).

The technological view of the virtual city prevents the empirical study of correlating the technological with the urban development, because it maintains the assumption of causality in one direction (technology→city).

This is theoretically not convincing and neglects the complexity of the relationship between city and communication. This way, theorists are victims of their omnipotence fantasies of technological power.

Technodeterminsm is a scientific escape to flee the challenge of multicausal interferences in the urban fabric. The pitfall of “substitution” (space and physicality can be replaced virtually), believing that information and communication technologies have a de-materialising effect, is the extreme of this technology debate. Robins summarizes this as follows: “Through the development of new technologies, we are, indeed, more and more open to experiences of de-realization and de-localization. But we continue to have physical and localized existences.“ (Robins, 1995, 153).

From this statement about the predominance of the banal reality over the virtual realities, it is a long way to the formulation of an appropriate theory

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of the electronic city, which would also have to argue with the second axiom of technological determinism: the concept of the media. A similar approach can be outlined regarding this vagabonding term: “If one seeks a common horizon in newer positions of media theory, then one could say that media are not regarded as only being procedures for storage and processing of information, for the spatial and temporal transmission of data, rather media win their status as scientific, i.e. systematizable objects in this way, and it is the question what they store, function and mediate in each case under conditions, they create and represent.” (Engell/Vogl, 1999, 10) In this limited understanding, media are no more the McLuhan “message” and technological history is no longer written with the focus (only) on technical progress. Yet, the terminology of the medium allows the theoretization of self-dynamics and an autonomous sphere, which generates (in a more subtle manner) effects, effects on society. Can the research on the “E-city” in general profit from theorizing the media in this way? Or does a the term medium remain as an explosive device, with having the various theoretical cross-overs as a background, which urban research has already addressed enough with the concepts along the factors size, density, mobility, structuring, hybridizing, conflict lines, anomia, control and metabolism? The question arises, which research surplus could be aimed at, if “media” were to be introduced as a special research perspective within the urban research. The characteristics of the autodynamics of media - which can be defined differently - are opened not evidently inevitably, since “auto-organization” as such is a characteristic of many urban processes. Thus, the request for a workable and distinctive understanding of “media” becomes more urgent. It does not appear to be very helpful, in the first place, to call everything which would correspond to this all-comprehensive criterion of self-regulation and having a transmissive function at the same time a media. The most important objection against 28

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considering media as a category for urban research is, however, the lack of sensitive theorizing of the media in terms of complexity, which itself contributes so far to the wider understanding of urban life as such. So the “E-city” has to be seen as a cognitive concept on the one hand. On the other hand, empirical work pragmatically uses the term medium as it is applied in specific situations. It remains to be discussed critically whether approaches working with constructivist theories are really able to discuss their results of research beyond causality relations. So far, the existing research is still conceptualized in a way that it cannot easily contribute to the general discourse on media. The fundamental difficulty lies in the fact that constructivist theories are often taken too “literally” and not as a guiding analytic question and thereby with the objective to work towards own theoretical implications. For the understanding of the “E-city” a discourse has to be built up with starting beyond a transmission of the prevalent concepts of the media. It needs to, not only simply translate or learn from the existing disciplinary approaches referring to the “virtual” and the “real”, but it should enfold the logic of the “Electronic city” as an urban science and thus analyze and, since it is bringing in the “urban” in its complexity again, reformulate some of the main starting points of the recent debates. (Eckardt/Zschocke, 2006)

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References Aadey, P./Bevan, P. (2006) Between the Physical and the Virtual: Connected Mobilities? In: Sheller, M./Urry, J. (eds) Mobile technologies of the City, New York.

Aibar, E./Bijker, W. (1997) Constructing a city: the Cerdà plan for the extension of Barcelona. In: Science, Technology and Human Values, 22/1, 3-30.

Amichai-Hamburger, Y. (2005) Personality and the Internet. In: Amichai-Hamburger, Y. (ed) The Social Net. Understanding human behaviour in cyberspace, Oxford.

Amin, A./Thrift, N. (2002) Cities: re-imagining the urban, Cambridge.

Armitage, J. /Roberts, J. (eds) (2002) Living with Cyberspace.

Technology and society in the 21st century, New York.

Becker, B. (2004) Zwischen Allmacht und Ohnmacht. Spielräume des „Ich“ im Cyberspace. In: Thiedecke, U. (Hg.) Cyberspace: Die Matrix der Erwartungen.

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The Practice of Cybernetic Urbanism Raoul Bunschoten Daniel Wedler CHORA, architecture and urbanism http://www.chora.org

In March 2006 I arrived with a group of students from the London Metropolitan University in Xiamen, China. The aim was to do a workshop with local students, and to explore the relationship between the Taiwan Strait and a local city. At the end of the short stay we presented a series of cooperative urban prototypes to a group of urban planners; this moment was a crucial turning point in a long warm-up towards the Taiwan Strait Atlas publication, Before we go further into the actual processes of negotiation I want to step back into 1996, when I was invited to do a workshop in TungHai University, in Taichung, Taiwan. I arrived on the day of the first presidential election in Taiwan. The People’s Republic of China does not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state. The Taiwan Strait remains a geopolitical hotspot, despite the intense commercial, personal, linguistic and various other relationships across the Strait. When I arrived there, I was placed on a discussion panel in a conference on traditional Chinese architecture straight away. When asked to contribute, a dog wandered into the conference space, and this dog gave me the chance to speak on a theme that linked the traditional debate to a more generic theme: The theme of the threshold or Liminal Body in architecture. Was the dog allowed into the conference space? Did he know

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he shouldn’t cross the threshold? How did he experience the threshold, as the door was open? I drew this dilemma as a diagram on the blackboard, essentially a line separating the room and us from the outside space with the straying dog. Somehow, from this discussion I shifted the significance of the line into a representation of the Taiwan Strait as border territory, a truly complex Liminal Body. A space that many people share through a common history and culture but that is also divided by the historical events, and of course also by the sea. But across this space increasingly new links are appearing as well, a process continuing today with many industries in Fujian Province owned and run by Taiwanese businesses, and the first direct flights between mainland China and Taiwan in 2008 .

Image: Taiwan Strait Atlas Cover (Raoul Bunschoten/Joost Grootens)

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Sample Page TSA (Raoul Bunschoten/Joost Grootens)

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Back in Europe I discussed the project with the graphic designer Joost Grootens, and he suggested turning the project into an Atlas Project. The Taiwan Strait Atlas would become the first in a series of Liminal Body Atlases. These Atlases would describe the emergent dynamics of territories that straddle boundaries and are undergoing rapid and complex change.

The territories are not merely growing, but displaying new forms of dynamic behaviour, potentially leading to new urban forms. The project is to describe six regions: 1. The Taiwan Strait; 2. The Bi-Oceanic Corridor between Valparaiso, in Chile, and Buenos Aires, in Argentina; 3. The Rotterdam- Ruhr region (Sector E); and 4. The Thames Gateway in the UK. (Earlier concepts included the Mexico-USA border; and the central mining seam, bisecting Johannesburg, as well).

Then I met a young man from the Netherlands on a plane who turned out to be working in a small firm specialized in brokering carbon exchanges, and working with the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) process set up in the Kyoto Protocol. His explanation of that process made me realize that this mechanism could be highly relevant for urban design. Once we started doing research on the topic we noticed that newer concepts, allowing a large number of smaller projects to be bundled together, (programmatic CDM) had been approved. After several false starts, the idea of applying to the UN with programmatic CDM methodologies became clearer: The financial tool CDM could potentially be used as an Urban Planning Instrument: Creating cluster of projects that could adopt specific prototypical technologies or design principles, and apply with these clusters for CDM money to reduce the CO2 Emissions of Cities on a overall scale. This could be compared to an urban choreography of a large amount of projects, huge single structures for example power plants, and tiny interventions multiplied in thousands, linked together by one mana-

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Image: Carbon Monitoring (Chora)

gement Instrument. A live monitoring process where the C02 reductions of each project and of all projects combined becomes visible.

Such an Urban Choreography and the need to manage its complexity have always been at the focus of our attention and the resulting discourse had led to the development of the Urban Gallery some years back.

The Urban Gallery is a planning tool that links an interactive management of knowledge with negotiation methods for prototypical urban projects.

It has four methodological layers: a database, prototypes, scenario games, and action plans. The Urban Gallery is run or managed by Urban Curators, a practice of managing urban processes without necessarily fixing them through buildings or other design practices. The Urban Curator designs the linking of processes, or in other words, designs the organizational form of the dynamics or behaviour of an urban environment.

The CDM concept in a way was the missing link, creating enough complexity for a serious test run of the Urban Gallery. While we 40

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also progressed on the Taiwan Strait Atlas, we started developing the components of what we call the Taiwan Strait Incubator: A simultaneous evolutionary implementation of Prototypes on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, driven by CDM. Eventually we where able to use commissioned studies to develop the concept further. In Xiamen the City asked us to represent them on the “First Energy Efficiency in Buildings Expo” and we proposed to the City officials the design of an Interactive Model to experience our Concept, this was accepted.

Image: Concept Taiwan Strait Incubator Diagram of the model A Co-Evolution of Pilot projects on both sides of the Taiwan Strait (Chora)

The model was designed to both educate the public and act as a planning tool for developers, designers, and city officials. The city was 3d modelled in 1:10.000 and printed as 122 rapid prototype SLS prints. The tiles are stitched together by metal wires to an overall size of four by four meters.

Four Consoles with push buttons control 620 LED’s via Arduino boards.

(Interactive Design: Nick Puckett) Each of the Inputs triggers a “Score”of MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

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LED responses and each push button represents a potential Prototype. The Light of the coloured LED shines through the translucent STL material, Clusters of prototypes appear, and spheres, technical or cultural, overlap, appear and vanish again. The city is a Canvas, the Planner a Painter. This Urban Theatre illustrates in our understanding a new form of urban design, art and practice: The message is not simple, the medium not sexy, the means complex.

Urbanism must turn a corner and become, if not sexy, at least creative, artistic like the choreography of a dance, or like the cybernetic concept of co-evolution. Urbanism is really a cybernetic practice, or a form of cybernetic art. Cybernetic urbanism - it is not yet a good title, but it describes where the profession has to go: choreography and co-evolution.

Image: Setting Up the Model in Stuttgart IFA-Gallery 2010 42

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Exhibition Post-Oil-Cities, IFA Gallery Stuttgart, 2010

Wires underneath STL Tiles

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Wiring Diagram

All these relationships and actions have created a web that in itself forms simultaneously a model and the product of the Taiwan Strait Incubator. It is research by doing, action through design. The project allowed student teams from both cities to come to the opening of the Shenzhen Biennale and to install an exhibition about the work together. They also played out potential scenarios for the Taiwan Strait; a first link is created how the next generation will tackle climate change across the Taiwan Strait.

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Sentient City Survival Kit: Archaeology of the Near Future Mark Shepard University at Buffalo 231 Center for the Arts, Buffalo, NY 14260 +1 (716) 645-0934, shepard6@buffalo.edu

Abstract In this paper, I discuss the Sentient City Survival Kit, a design research project that probes the social, cultural and political implications of ubiquitous computing for urban environments. Following a discussion of the philosophical and cultural problems of attributing sentience to nonhuman actors, I present a brief cross-section of historical and contemporary constructions of non-human sentient beings in the fields of science fiction literature, computer science research, and applied technology. The paper concludes by introducing the notion of an archaeology of the near future as a conceptual framework for designing and fabricating a series of artifacts, spaces and media for ‘survival’ in the near future ‘sentient’ city.

Introduction The Sentient City Survival Kit is a design research project that probes the social, cultural and political implications of ubiquitous computing for urban environments. Conceived as an archaeology of the near future, the project consists of designing, fabricating and public presenting a collection

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of artifacts for ‘survival’ in the near-future ‘sentient’ city. Less invested in the business of predicting future trends in mobile media, pervasive computing or embedded information systems, the project focuses more on prototyping concrete artifacts in the present based on current research and development in urban computing and ambient informatics in order to facilitate a discussion around just what kind of future we might want.

As computing leaves the desktop and spills out onto the sidewalks, streets and public spaces of the city, information processing becomes embedded in and distributed throughout the material fabric of everyday urban space.

Pervasive/ubiquitous computing evangelists herald a coming age of urban information systems capable of sensing and responding to the events and activities transpiring around them. Imbued with the capacity to remember, correlate and anticipate, this ‘sentient’ city is envisioned as being capable of reflexively monitoring our behavior within it and becoming an active agent in the organization of our daily lives.

Few may quibble about ‘smart’ traffic light control systems that more efficiently manage the ebbs and flows of trucks, cars and busses on our city streets. Some may be irritated when discount coupons for their favorite espresso drink are beamed to their mobile phone as they pass by Starbucks.

Many are likely to protest when they are denied passage through a subway turnstile because the system ‘senses’ that their purchasing habits, mobility patterns and current galvanic skin response (GSR) reading happens to match the profile of a terrorist.

The project investigates the darker side of this near future urban imaginary and posits a set of playful and ironic techno-social artifacts that explore the implications for privacy, autonomy, trust and serendipity of this highly observant, ever-more efficient and over-coded city. In the passages that

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follow, I trace the primary theoretical threads from which the project is woven. I begin by discussing the difference between the attribute ‘sentience’ and the act of ‘sensing,’ which leads us to the philosophical problems of Cartesian dualism and non-human sentience. I then introduce related concepts of the Pathetic Fallacy and the Category Mistake as markers by which to unpack historical and cultural biases regarding the application of human-like attributes to non-human actors. Here, Latour’s observations regarding the lack of an accepted vocabulary concerning agency in the absence of anthropomorphic characters is central.

Having established a set of theoretical tensions at the core of the project, I then briefly map the so-called Sentient City in terms of the persistent and pervasive meme of non-human sentience along three vectors. The first concerns the Sentient City as technological fantasy depicted in science fiction literature. The second addresses the Sentient City as technical challenge defined by corporate research initiatives in computer science and engineering. The third addresses the Sentient City as operative reality in the form of existing and emergent urban computing applications and their claims toward ‘smart’ or ‘intelligent’ urban infrastructure.

I conclude by presenting a preliminary set of items included in the Survival Kit and discussing how critical design practice offers an alternative to artistic projects focused on strategies for ‘re-enchanting’ the urban environment. Suggesting that we might both sharpen and broaden the questions we ask when evaluating speculative projections for near future urban technologies, I introduce Greg Stevenson’s notion of archeology as “the design history of the everyday” (Stevenson, 2001) as a way of refocusing artistic production on provoking public discussion about the shape of future cities.

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Pathetic Fallacies & Category Mistakes: Making Sense and Non-Sense of the (Near Future) Sentient City “And supposing there were a machine, so constructed as to think, feel, and have perception... we should, on examining its interior, find only parts which work one upon another, and never anything by which to explain a perception.” (Leibniz, 1714/1965) [1]

What does it mean to call a city ‘sentient’? The word ‘sentience’ refers to the ability to feel or perceive subjectively, and does not necessarily include the faculty of self-awareness. Which is to say, the possession of ‘sapience’ is not a necessity. Sapience can connote knowledge, consciousness, or apperception. Looking at the Latin roots of the two words can be instructive. The word ‘sentience,’ derived from sentīre, present active infinitive of sentiō, means ‘to feel’ or ‘to hear.’ Sapience comes from sapere, present active infinitive of sapiō, meaning ‘to know.’ So a Sentient City, then, is one that is able to hear and feel things happening within it, yet doesn’t necessarily know anything in particular about them. It feels you, but doesn’t necessarily know you.

Wherein lies this perception? How do we account for it? In the passage quoted from above, Leibniz goes on to claim “it is in a simple substance, and not in a compound or in a machine, that perception must be sought for.” His belief that the gap between the physical and the subjective is unbridgeable, that we cannot explain subjective experience though an accounting of physical processes, can be traced to Descartes and his theory of dualism (Descartes, 1641/1996) [2]. Cartesian dualism, commonly known as the ‘mind-body problem,’ asserts that mind and matter are

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fundamentally different kinds of substances, and argues that mental processes are immaterial and that material organisms don’t think. In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes attempted to account for animal behavior by purely physical processes as a means to distinguish living things that merely sense from those that are sentient. In doing so, he claims that this distinction marks an essential metaphysical difference: human beings are those that are sentient, all others are merely capable of sensing.

Sensing, the thinking goes, is something animals, some plants, and some machines can do. Sensing involves a sensing organ or device that enables the organic or inorganic system of which it is a part to actively respond to things happening around it. An organism or system may sense heat, light, sound, or the presence of rain, for example. Yet having a sensation or a feeling is something which goes beyond mere sensing, for it involves an internal state in which information about the environment is processed by that organism or system so that it comes to have a subjective character.

‘Qualia’ is the philosophical term for this, which Dennett (1988) [3] defines “an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us.”

Non-human sentience has long been a flash point of controversy between the humanities and sciences. In Modern Painters (Ruskin, 1864) [4], Ruskin coined the term “Pathetic Fallacy” to signify any description of inanimate things that attributes to them human capabilities, sensations, and emotions. His translation of the Latin phrase “natura abhorret a vacuo” (nature abhors a vacuum) is widely known and has become part of common, everyday language – as evidenced, for instance, by its contemporary usage by a U.S. military general in a New York Times article describing reasons for NATO’s swift entry into Kosovo following the withdraw of Serbian Forces in 1999 (Becker and Rhode, 1990) [5].

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Within literature, anthropomorphism is by now an accepted literary device, yet within the natural sciences, for example, it is still considered a serious error in scientific reasoning if taken literally. Bruno Latour suggests that the difficulty lies in describing agency in the absence of anthropomorphic actors, that there is a lack of accepted vocabulary to address the nonhuman agency of “things,” technological or otherwise. “[E]very time you do that,” he states, “immediately people say… ‘Oh, you anthropomorphize the nonhuman.’ Because they have such a narrow definition of what is human, that whenever a nonhuman does something, it looks human, as if it’s sort of a Disney type of animation” (Latour, 2008) [6].

As Keller Easterling notes (Easterling, 2008) [7], the term Category Mistake – introduced as the fundamental mistake of Cartesian dualism

by Glibert Ryle in The Concept of Mind (1949) [8] – describes a seemingly nonsensical mixture of logics. For Ryle, Cartesian dualism mistakenly assumes it is sensible to ask of a given cause, process, or event, whether it is mental or physical, implying that it cannot be both. He argues that saying “there occur mental processes” does not mean the same type of thing as saying “there occur physical processes,” and, therefore, that it makes no sense to conjoin or disjoin the two. Easterling elaborates on the category mistake: “For instance, one mistakes a part for a whole, or inverts levels in a hierarchy. Or a child thinks a division is a smaller part commensurate with a battalion or a squadron, when it is the overarching category for those of smaller divisions.” She goes on to show how beginning with Jesus and extending to messianic characters in general, category mistakes are markers for dominant logics with universal claims, yet also suggests how they can serve as an escape hatch out of the monotheisms of logic and discipline.

“In order to find the trapdoor into another habit of mind, one would not quarrel with, but gather evidence in excess of ” these dominant logics.

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The Sentient City thus becomes a contested site: a theoretical construct within which longstanding claims of essential human qualities, capabilities and characteristics are critically destabilized through their attribution to non-human actors. This destabilization is understood to work actively, as a tactical maneuver enabling other ways of thinking that not so much confront dominant ideologies but elide common wisdoms about not only what it means to be human but also what it might mean to be a city.

In gathering archaeological ‘evidence’ of near future urban conditions, the Survival Kit enters the debate on non-human sentience through the trapdoor in the floor.

This method is, of course, by no means new. In the next section I briefly review a cross-section of representations of the Sentient City culled from the fantasies of science fiction writers, the research agendas of computer scientists, and the claims accompanying recent applications deployed by corporate interests, governmental agencies, and the military. The intent here is less to provide a comprehensive overview but rather a selection of examples that point to the historical persistence and cultural pervasiveness of the sentient non-human meme.

The Sentient City as Technological Fantasy, Technical Challenge and Operative Reality Non-human sentience is no stranger to the science fiction community.

From Arthur C. Clarke’s Diaspar, the computer controlled city described in The City and the Stars, to his work with Kubrick on HAL (sentient machine); from Stanislaw Lem – and Tarkovsky’s – Solaris (sentient planet) to DC Comics’ Ranx the Sentient City created by Alan Moore;

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from Gibson’s sentient cyberspace as portrayed in Neuromancer, to the sentient programs of the Matrix, or Bruce Sterling’s spime (to name but a few), science fiction has imbued a range of inanimate “things” of all scales with forms of sentience that do not map neatly to those of ordinary humans.

These technological fantasies of non-human sentience exhibit no consensus regarding the place or nature of sentience, however. Sentience is at times centralized (Clarke, Kubrick, Moore), at times distributed (Lem, Gibson, Sterling). While Clarke and Kubrick attempt to anthropomorphize HAL, as symbolized by his iconic and omnipresent red eye and reinforced by his conversational acuity, Lem persistently portrays Solaris’ otherness: the planet’s sentience is evidenced through the manipulation of a simple substance constituting its oceans that has nothing in common with anthropomorphic figuration or behavior.

Addressing sentience as a technical challenge, the Economist published an article five years ago titled “The sentient office is coming” (2003) [9] that described then current research in augmenting computers and communication devices with sensors to enable them to take into account their environment and adapt to the changing conditions of their use. Here the aim was to create “convivial technologies that are easy to live with.” Yet as the article points out, cohabitation with sentient things is not without dilemmas. What happens when we the toaster in your home gets bored of always making toast, or the fax machine in the office thinks the tone of your fax doesn’t jive with that of the firm?

Achieving “sentience” in the domain of Artificial Intelligence (AI) research is a serious research agenda with a long history. ATT/Cambridge University’s Sentient Computing project (1999) [10] attempted to

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“combine sensors and computers to monitor resources, maintain a computational model of the world, and act appropriately.” Combining sensors and computers was at the time nothing new, but the broad attempt to “maintain a computational model of the world” proved daunting. As of 2006, the project was re-focused on tracking and location systems for “sentient” vehicles and sports.

Today the emphasis is less on trying to maintain a proprietary computational model of the world, and more on using the world itself as “model” and letting ordinary people contribute to its making. More than a few early Urban Computing and Locative Media projects focused on crowdsourcing metadata about a place by enabling people to markup and annotate digital maps with notes, images and media objects geocoded to specific locations (Urban Tapestries [11], Yellow Arrow [12], Semapedia [13], to name but a few). Google Maps and Google Earth have further catalyzed the collective production of these geospatial datasets. With the introduction of the GPS enabled iPhone 3G in 2008, location-based services building on these datasets are being mainlined to the masses.

Context-awareness plays a significant role in current research in sentient systems. In addition to knowing where someone is, factors such as whom they are with and what time of day it is reduces the possibility space within which inferences and predictions are made. This real-time information is correlated with historical data of someone’s mobility patterns, purchasing history, personal interests and preferences (as reflected by user-generated profiles) in order to make more accurate predictions about what his or her wants and needs may currently be, or what actions s/he is likely to take next. MIT’s Serendipity project [14], for example, draws on the real-time

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sensing of proximate others using Bluetooth technologies built into mobile phones to search for matching patterns in profiles of people’s interests.

Developed by the Human Dynamics Group at the Media Lab, the project’s goal is to facilitate corporate productivity by providing a matchmaking service for workers with shared interests or complimentary needs and skills who otherwise might not encounter each other within spaces organized around the office cubicle. A typical design scenario involves one worker needing the skills of another and the system facilitating their meeting: “When we were passing each other in the hallway, my phone would sense the presence of his phone. It would then connect to our server, which would recognize that Tom has extensive expertise in a specific area that I was currently struggling with. If both of our phones had been set to “available” mode, two picture messages would have been sent to alert us of our common interests, and we might have stopped to talk instead of walking by each other.” (Eagle, 2004: 12) [15]

This project presents at least two assumptions that are worth exploring further. The first is that “matchmaking” should be based on comparing profiles and looking for “synergies” between two people. If the term “serendipity” is understood to mean the process of finding something by looking for something else, the Serendipity project does precisely the opposite: it simply outsources the problem of finding something we are already looking for (that “expertise in a specific area that I was currently struggling with” that I have somehow indicated in my profile). Secondly, while the introduction of “available” mode suggests that some attempt has been made to address privacy issues, there is no consideration of who has access to your profile data and how they use it.

Profile data considered private in one context can be publicly revealing in another. Another MIT project, code-named Gaydar, mined Facebook 54

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profile information to see if people were revealing more than they realized by using the social networking site. By looking at a person’s online friends, they found that they could predict whether the person was gay. They did this with a software program that looked at the gender and sexuality of a person’s friends and, using statistical analysis, made a prediction. While the project lacked scientific rigor – they verified their results using their personal knowledge of 10 people in the network who were gay but did not declare it on their Facebook page – it does point to the possibility that information disclosed in one context may be used to interpret information in another.

Looking upstream, Crang and Graham’s recent paper “Sentient Cities: Ambient intelligence and the politics of urban space” (2007) [16] does a great job at outlining how corporate and military agendas are currently driving these technological ecosystems we’re likely to cohabit with in the near-future. Mapping the Sentient City as operative reality, they point to location-based search results and target-marketing databases storing finely grained purchasing histories as steps toward “data-driven mass customization based on continuous, real-time monitoring of consumers.”

Further, citing a study by the US Defense Science Board calling for a ‘New Manhattan Project’ based on Ambient Intelligence for “Tracking, Targeting and Locating” they outline an Orwellian future that is in fact currently in operation in lower Manhattan.

The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, as the plan is called, resembles London’s so-called Ring of Steel, an extensive web of cameras and roadblocks designed to detect, track and deter terrorists. The system went live in November of 2008 with 156 surveillance cameras and 30 mobile license plate readers. Designed for 3,000 public and private security cameras below Canal Street, this system will include not only license plate MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

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readers but also movable roadblocks. Pivoting gates would be installed at critical intersections and would swing out to block traffic or a suspect car at the push of a button.

While the implications of projects like Serendipity occupy a relatively benign problem space, The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative points toward possibly more serious outcomes from the false positives (or false negatives) inevitably generated by the pattern matching and data mining algorithms at the core of the system. What happens when Facebook profile data is added to the mix? How do we ensure the privacy of data about us that is collected through inference engines? What are the mechanisms by which these systems will gain our trust? In what ways does our autonomy become compromised?

Toward an Archaeology of the Near Future While it may be intriguing to attempt to seek answers to these speculative questions about potential futures, a more pressing challenge is to identify concrete examples in the present around which we might organize a public debate that aims to both sharpen and broaden the questions we ask ourselves about what kind of future we want. In the wake of a massive, global financial crisis and increasingly grim environmental forecasts, the general public is finally beginning to register that as a planet we need to negotiate our way of life with those of the various actants and ecosystems with which we cohabitate, be they environmental, political, economic, social or technological. While Crang and Graham do help understand current corporate and military agendas, their analysis of the role of artists working with Urban Computing and Locative Media as one of “reenchanting urban space�–of making visible the invisible traces of things 56

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past, a “haunting of place with absent others”–renders artistic practice in relatively conservative and familiar terms, casting art in a reactionary role vis-a-vis technological development. What other roles might artists, architects and designers play in shaping how we inhabit the near-future Sentient City?

The Sentient City Survival Kit takes as its method a critical design practice (Dunne, 2006) [17] that looks toward archaeology for guidance.

Archaeology involves the (re)construction of a world through fragments of artifacts, where past cultures are reconstituted in the present through specific socializing and spatializing practices involving mapping, classifying, collecting and curating (Galloway and Ward, 2006) [18]. Cultural knowledge is reproduced through relating in space and time the traces and remains of people, places, things, activities and events. Collections of archaeological artifacts serve to reveal the everyday social and spatial relations of societies not contemporary with ours, yet recontextualized within the present. Stevenson (2001) [19] refers to an archaeology of the contemporary past as “the design history of the everyday,” where common objects drawn from daily life do not simply (passively) reflect cultural forces (trends in taste and fashion, for example) but also actively participate in shaping the evolving social and spatial relations between people and their environment.

Positing an archaeology not of the contemporary past but of the proximate future, the project takes the practice of designing everyday artifacts as a vehicle for shaping tomorrow’s cities. The aim here is to attempt to instigate the process of imagining a future city and its inhabitants through fragments and traces of a society yet to exist. Collectively, the artifacts, spaces and media that constitute the Survival Kit ask: in what kind of city would I be viable, useful, necessary, or even popular? Who made me, and MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

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for what purpose? What relations between people and their environment do I suggest? In what places, circumstances and situations would I be found?

Ultimately the project is less invested in forecasting future trends in technology than focused on provoking public discussion in the present about just what kind of future we might want. This involves a design process based on looking at what’s happening just upstream in the computer science and engineering R&D labs and teasing out some of the more absurd assumptions, latent biases and hidden agendas at play. The production of physical working prototypes for items in the Survival Kit subsequently involves playing out the design implications these assumptions, biases and agendas.

Sentient City Survival Kit The Survival Kit currently consists of four items (with this number expected to grow to between 6 and 8 in total).

The public can engage with the project in three ways: 1) Public presentations of a set of working prototypes for items in the Survival Kit in the form of museum/gallery exhibitions and performances at arts festivals and related events. When exhibited in a museum/gallery, the Kit will be accompanied by video documentation demonstrating the use of its items together with a verbal and visual description of the project concept. When performed at an arts festival, festival attendees will be able to take items from the Kit out into the city to experience how they perform.

2) Online access to a dedicated project website containing text and images

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describing the project, video documentation of the performance of items in the Survival Kit, together with a set of DIY “tutorials� and design documents that describe how to make the items in the Kit. 3) A series of public lectures at international architecture, art and technology related panels, events, conferences and festivals.

Very much a work-in-progress, the following concept sketches and preliminary prototypes of the Survival Kit have been presented to date at conferences (Subtle Technologies, Toronto; ISEA 2009, Belfast), exhibited in galleries (The Center for Architecture, New York; The Rotterdam International Architectural Biennial, The Netherlands) and documented online via a dedicated project website: http://survival.sentientcity.net

Figure 1 - GPS Serendipitor

In the near future, finding our way from point A to point B will not be the problem. Maintaining consciousness of what happens along the way might be more difficult. The GPS Serendipitor is an alternative GPS MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

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navigation software application for mobile phones that determines a route to a destination that the user has not previously taken, designed to facilitate finding something by looking for something else. What are the implications of a society that needs to download an application for serendipity?

Figure 2 - RFID under(a)ware

In the near future sentient shopping center, item-level tagging and discrete data-sniffing are both common corporate culture and popular criminal activities. This popular product line consists of his and hers underwear designed to sense hidden Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Tag readers and alert the wearer to their presence by activating small vibrators sewn into bras and boxer shorts.

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Figure 3 - Ad-hoc Dark (roast) Travel Mug

In an environment where all network traffic is monitored via “smart” filters, where access privileges are dynamically granted and denied on the fly based on your credit card transaction history, and where bandwidth is a function of your market capitalization, standard commuter gear includes this travel mug designed for creating ad-hoc “dark” networks for communication along a morning commute becomes. Consisting of a mobile phone screen embedded in the lid of the mug together with a small wireless mesh networking radio and microcontroller, commuters share short messages tapped out on the side of the mug and picked up by a capacitance sensor.

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Figure 4 - CCD-me-not Umbrella

When human vision is no longer the only game in town, don’t leave home without this umbrella studded with infrared LEDs visible only to CCD surveillance cameras, designed to frustrate object detection algorithms used in computer vision surveillance systems.

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References [1] Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. (1714/1965). Monadology, and other philosophical essays. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.

[2] Descartes, René. (1641/1996). Meditations on First Philosophy.

Cottingham, J., trans., Cambridge University Press.

[3] Dennett, Daniel. (1988). Quining Qualia in A. Marcel and E. Bisiach, eds, Consciousness in Modern Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[4] Ruskin, John. (1864). Modern Painters. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

[5] Becker, Elizabeth and Rhode, David. (1999, June 6). Crisis In The Balkans: The Military; Pullout Talks Start, but Pact is Delayed. The New York Times, p. A1 [6] Latour, Bruno. (2008). Where Constant Experiments Have Been Provided. http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~archword/interviews/latour/interview.htm [7] Easterling, Keller. (2008). Only the Many. Log, 11, winter.

[8] Ryle, Gilbert. (1949). The Concept of Mind, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

[9] The Economist. (2003, June 21). The sentient office is coming. The Economist.

[10] Sentient Computing Project. AT&T Laboratories, Cambridge. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/dtg/attarchive/spirit/ [11] Urban Tapestries. http://urbantapestries.net/ [12] Yellow Arrow. http://yellowarrow.net/ [13] Semapedia. http://semapedia.org/ [14] Serendipity. http://reality.media.mit.edu/serendipity.php [15] Eagle, Nathan. (2004), “Can Serendipity Be Planned?”, MIT Sloan Management Review, Vol. 46, No. 1, pp 10-14.

[16] Crang, Mike and Graham, Stephen. (2007). Sentient Cities: Ambient intelligence and the politics of urban space. Information, Communication & Society, 10:6, 789 – 817 [17] Dunne, Anthony. (2006). Hertzian Tales: Electronic Products, Aesthetic Experience, and Critical Design. Cambridge: MIT Press.

[18] Galloway, Anne and Ward, Matt. (2006). “Locative Media as Socialising and Spatialising Practice: Learning from Archaeology” Leonardo Electronic Almanac 14(3), [19] Stevenson, Greg. (2001). Archaeology as the design history of the everyday in V. Buchli and G. Lucas (eds.) Archaeology of the Contemporary Past, London: Routledge. p. 53.

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Digital Metropolis: The Implications of Information Densification for Spatial Society Noah Ives Cornell University www.noahives.com

Introduction With the spatialization of digital media, interaction design has become an architectural concern. The performative nature of digital information alters the user’s physical environment, in turn generating distinct patterns of user behavior. Since the organization of the human body in space is the domain of architecture, changes in behavioral patterns call for corresponding changes in architectural typologies. Architecture ceases to act as a landmark or a background. Instead, it becomes a highly responsive interface at the center of human activity.

Bits and Buildings Digital information saves people time. Coded data can be less massive (e.g. electronic or quantum bits), and less massive signals allow users to process and communicate information at a lower resource cost. Given infinite resources, the same results could be achieved at the same rate at any scale.

In reality, however, energy efficiency translates to time efficiency. The less that information is bound to physical space, the greater its rate of change.

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To the user, this means that digital information can be highly performative.

Conversely, physically massive artifacts like architecture are ill-suited for performativity. Building design is the attempt to accommodate varying conditions within a static spatial organization. Fixed to the earth, buildings revolve into and out of the line of sight of the sun, catching light as they spin. They house various systems within their floors, roofs and walls that allow inhabitants to heat up, cool down, open and close spaces as they perform their daily activities. Historically, people have considered architecture itself too heavy to be worth re-arranging on a routine basis.

The proliferation of the built environment is evidence of the proliferation of humanity. Like the coral reefs of polyps, architecture is one sign of our ability to transform matter into forms that sustain us. Digital information is another sign. However, the two operate at opposite ends of the scale of our sensory experience. Architecture orchestrates our movements through varied physical spaces; digital technology provides the convenience of varied information at a single location. Architecture is predicated on bodily motion, digital information enables us to experience more while moving less.

As per capita physical resources diminish and information technology advances, digital media generates an increasing proportion of human experience. Hans Moravec predicts a future where Òphysical activity will gradually transform itself into a web of increasingly pure thoughtÓ (1997). The responsiveness of digital technology compared to the inertia of the senses is making the human body itself obsolete. In Moravec’s vision, information technology is rapidly co-opting the material domain of architecture. However, people continue to design for themselves, and the human senses have a determinate structure. This means that no matter how

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efficiently information is coded it is only useful to us when it is translated into our scale. Digital information cannot completely replace physical information as long as it is directed towards human users.

The evolution of both architecture and information technology demonstrate increasing sensitivity to the complexity of the user’s senses.

In architecture, early 20th century approaches designed for a highly prescribed and proscribed set of human needs. The sterility of the resulting environments and their failure to effect their stated social goals continue to haunt attempts at so-called rational design. (McCullough, 2004; Venturi, 1996) Information technology has likewise grown toward a more holistic approach. While the earliest paradigms of interface design prioritized content over form, subsequent models have focused to a greater extent on user experience. The intricacies of sight, sound and touch have all become integral to interface design, and there is ongoing investigation into digital manipulations of taste and smell. Further, digital output frequently mimics forms found in the physical world, even when the technology itself has rendered them anachronistic. This trajectory represents the attempt to create a more convincing cyberspace. However, as “the illusion only got as far as the inner ear,� (McCullough, 2004) interaction design has necessarily expanded into physical space.

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Spatially Interactive Typologies People are not designed for stillness and do not respond well to forced immobility. The human body must be active to be healthy and the senses especially the kinesthetic -are not fully engaged when the body is stationary (Fleishman and Rich, 1963; McCloskey, 1978). For the user, the historical separation between information technology and architecture represents an unnatural condition. Digital technology’s broad progression from stationary to mobile to environmental illustrates designers’ recognition of this principle. Fixed devices force users to abandon spatial behavior. There is no architecture for such devices - they exist in stillness. Autonomous mobile devices are more adaptable to patterns of human behavior. Still these represent an alternative, rather than a contribution to the physical environment. The one can only inform the other referentially, and users must divide their attention between the two. Within this paradigm, “we live between two realms: our physical environment and cyberspace.

Despite our dual citizenship, the absence of seamless couplings between these parallel existences leaves a great divide between the world of bits and atoms” (Ishii, 1997). Architecture remains relatively non-performative and digital information remains aspatial. The integration of digital information within the built environment, however, creates a unique spatial condition.

It is possible to produce a unitary experience of physical space and digital information in one of two ways. First, inhabitable surfaces and spaces can themselves become output devices. Taken to its conclusion, this approach would “turn each state of physical matter - not only solid matter, but also liquids and gases - within everyday architectural spaces into ÒinterfacesÓ between people and digital information” (Ishii 1997). In other words, the physical fabric of the built environment acts as a scaffold for digital information. The user is mobile relative to the digitally-informed physical 68

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environment, and this environment responds to the user’s spatial behavior.

Second, mobile digital devices can mediate the pathway of information from the spatial world to the user. These devices move with the user through space, enhancing incoming information with digital output before passing it on to the user. For digital media to be spatial, output devices must be proximal or distal, but not in between. Spatial media is thus the incorporation of computation devices either “i) onto our skins/ bodies, [or] ii) into the physical environments we inhabit� (Ishii 1997).

Digital technology alters the roles of the different human senses in producing experience. The sensory organs have evolved around the information patterns encountered in a world not informed by digital processes. They react to input from different areas of the body, with different signals, at different speeds. The distinguishing characteristic of digital information is its relatively performativity, so it tends to privilege the more responsive senses. As counterparts to the senses, output devices also impose constraints on interactive media. Different devices engage different senses, and each device comes with its own material costs. Further, such devices may respond to patterns of interaction different from those that people have historically exhibited. The structural constraints of the senses and the environmental limitations of interface devices mean that the human body behaves differently in a digitally informed world.

This in turn affects the behavior of architecture. Engaging the kinesthetic sense with digital media involves transforming architecture into a digital interface. Rather than a static background, comparable to a stage for human activity, architectural elements take part in the sensing, processing and communicating of highly responsive and concentrated information.

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Performative Habitats There is an inherent tension between architecture’s dual role as digital interface and material system since, for designers, “the essential fact about [the] locus of attention is that there is but one of them “Raskin, 2000). The more architecture is endowed with responsive information, the less it acts as a static object. The large scale and fixedness of buildings have historically helped people orient themselves in space and have declared the cultural values associated with spatially defined regions (Rowe and Koetter, 1984).

As the elements of architecture become more fluid, these social functions diminish. The characteristics of certain locations change more rapidly, material history matters less, and inhabitants’ ability to adapt and respond becomes more important relative to memory. Responsive technology promotes responsive behaviors.

As a communicative device, such technology represents a powerful social tool. Digitally informed space has greater visceral impact than aspatial media, and is more programmable and performative than purely material spaces. Proximal devices create highly individualized experiences, while environmentally embedded devices capture the attention of masses of users at once. Under hegemonic control, they enforce persuasion, while open source projects fuel subversion. Like any communicative media performative habitats are tools that can be used in many ways. What makes these unique is how extensively they influence our daily activities.

The realized effects of technological progress differ from the theoretical possibilities. In the case of spatial media, one dream of progress is to get the most out of digital technology without altering human behavior. As Mark Weiser, the father of ubiquitous computing put it: “Ubiquitous computers will help overcome the problem of information overload. There is more

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information available at our fingertips during a walk in the woods than in any computer system, yet people find a walk among trees relaxing and computers frustrating. Machines that fit the human environment instead of forcing humans to enter theirs will make using a computer as refreshing as taking a walk in the woods” (Weiser, 1991). The competing dream (Weisner’s nightmare) is to get the most out of the human user as possible without sacrificing digital efficiency. However, when digital technology enters the world, the reality it produces will always fall between the two.

References Fleishman, E. and Rich, S. 1963. Role of Kinesthetic and Spatial-Visual Abilities in Perceptual-Motor Learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 66(1), pp. 6-11.

Ishii, H. 1997. Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits and Atoms. Chi ’97. Atlanta, GA: ACM. McCullough, M. 2004. Digital Ground. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

McCloskey, D. 1978. Kinesthetic Sensibility. Physiological Reviews, 58(4), pp. 763-816.

Moravec, H. 1997. The Senses have No Future. In: J. Beckman, ed.

1998. The Virtual Dimension: Architecture, Representation, and Crash Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, pp. 84-95.

Raskin, J. 2000. The Human Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley.

Rowe, C. and Koetter, F. 1984. Collage City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Venturi, R. 1966. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture.

New York, NY: The Museum of Modern Art Press.

Weiser, M. 1991. The Computer for the 21st Century.

Scientific American, 265(3), pp. 66-75.

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Interface Design for Shared Spaces Towards a More Affective Relationship Between People, Places and Information Nina Valkanova Interactive Technologies Group Universitat Pompeu Fabra Carrer Tanger 122-140 08018 Barcelona, Spain nina.valkanova@upf.edu

Abstract In this paper, we describe the doctoral research on urban media interface design. The objective of this work is to explore and eventually conceptualize principles and guidelines for the design of urban screens in shared spaces, which can increase the communicative potential of the media landscape through affective and engaging experience. We believe that by considering an interdisciplinary approach drawing on both scientific and artistic design knowledge and practices, we can develop meaningful and engaging interfaces, which can sustain a more affective relationship between the spaces, the people inhabiting them, and related information.

In particular, we are interested in exploring and expanding the notion of information aesthetics onto the domain of urban media interface design.

By considering the environment with its architectural and situational aspects as a key entity in informing the design, we focus on studying and understanding the experience of aesthetics, information interpretation, and interaction with media interfaces in shared spaces. The long-term goal

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of this research is to unify the key findings in a conceptual framework for design recommendation for urban media interfaces. Our approach strongly relies on research through design method by addressing different real life challenges through several design cases and framing them by the overarching research question. As an example, we present two design cases AmbientNEWS and theVisitors and discuss the implications of our initial key findings.

1 Introduction Nowadays digital information is becoming more pervasive and intertwined with our daily activities. The constant evolvement of ubiquitous technologies has enabled the expanding use of digital technologies as part of numerous aspects of human life beyond the workplace, including schools, museums, airports, etc. In our research we focus on the media interfaces that are constantly being integrated in various kinds of shared places. These dynamic digital displays vary from LED screens, plasma screens, and information terminals, to projection surfaces as well as intelligent architectural surfaces and media facades.

For quite a long time, these have been dominated by commercially motivated digital imagery, like advertisement of consumer goods or mass sports and music events, or by highly task-oriented activities (fig. 1). These media interfaces play a vital role in our perception of the spaces around us and our understanding of the public realm that embraces them. The predominance of these types of interfaces also determines the attitude of people inhabiting the shared spaces and their behavior towards each other and the environment. It is marked by passivity and alienation and nonreflected consumption (McQuire, 2007; Huhtamo, 2009).

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Figure 1: Current urban screen situation is marked by functionalism and / or commercialization

There is a need to develop strategies of articulating the new public domains that connect physical urban spaces and the potential spaces created by the new media technologies and foster their positive potential (Broeckman, 2004; Struppek, 2007). Therefore, we ask if there is a more meaningful way of using ubiquitous technologies for our shared spaces. In particular, how can the shared spaces augmented by technology become mediators of interaction among people, enhance awareness, encourage playfulness,

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provide consciousness, provoke reflection or create an emotional connection between people and the environment? In the following, we are going to address these issues by making a review of related works and positioning our research within the field of HCI and interaction design.

Later on we will exemplify our approach with two design cases we have developed in the course of our research and present their preliminary findings.

2 Related Work On a theoretical basis, commentaries and essays from new-media, urban and social theorists have considerably explored the general question “how to support goals which the urban mediascape would like (or should) to achieve: instead of being the subject of privatization (commercialization), rationalization and functionalism, it can be the mediator to achieve the following goals (among others): increase awareness, reflection, consciousness and enhance the emotional relationships between people and places?” (Goffman, 1966; Virilio, 1997; Manovich, 2006; Struppek, 2006; Lester, 2006). In recent years, numerous organizations have begun to undertake initiatives to explore and promote the communicative potential of urban displays throughout experimental public participation (among others – Urban Screens, 2010; Media Façade Festival 2010). In the pursue of affective and engaging experience in the shared environment, quite a large amount of collectives from different genres, like games, architecture, and arts have embraced the creative possibilities that digital interactive technologies offer. Their motivation centered on the procreation of artistically and/or culturally related content on urban media interfaces integrated in the environment. The Project Blinkenlights (2010) is a

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classical example of such an installation where artists placed lamps behind each window in a building in Berlin and used the resulting pixel matrix as a screen for playing pong and displaying low- resolution animations.

Architecture has throughout history been constantly on the lookout for new ways of renewing itself with use of new materials and new expressions.

The technology enhancements make it possible to create dynamically changing faรงade expressions by trespassing the use of mechanical devices (Institut du monde arabe a Paris, 2010) and overlay buildings with digital information layers. Along with the proliferation of media facades and intelligent surfaces in recent years, media architects have started to explore their communication advantages of media facades as interfaces situated on the periphery of human attention, but yet advantageous in their prominent position and size (Media Architecture Institute, 2010). In essence, a successful staged display has to harmonize with its hosting building since the architecture and the presented content influence each other and are perceived as a living organism of interlaced digital and physical artifacts (ag4 media faรงade GmbH, 2010). Body Movies (Media Art Net, 2010) an installation by artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (2002), and Hehe: Nuage Verte (2010), a project by the art collective HeHe, exploring the potentials of projections technologies on increasing the awareness about air pollution in urban environments - are some of the most prominent examples of urban media displays motivated by Art. Beyond artistic or purely aesthetic qualities, artistically inspired works have a high communication potential because of their ability to provoke emotional response, social interaction and to stimulate meditation (Bounegru, 2009). However, the majority of them remain sole realizations of the artistic expression of a person, or design inquiries into new forms and materials of architectural expression. Although quite valuable on

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experimental, experiential, and technological levels, they fail to achieve significance from an HCI research perspective because there is still a lack of conceptualization of their design principals. Only few research investigations have tried to conceptually validate the potential impact of such applications of creative design knowledge without easily labeling it as “art�. We first present few works that have tried to combine scientific and artistic design knowledge, and which form the bulk of such research to the best of our knowledge. Then, we introduce the state-of-the-art in research on urban screens.

In the intersection field of information visualization and interaction design, Lau and Moere (2007) introduced a model of information aesthetics, which focuses on the experience of aesthetics, information interpretation, and interaction. It considers the way in which information is represented, basing on both intrinsic and extrinsic data meaning, and the use of artistically-enhanced but effective mapping techniques. In this model, aesthetics considers the context in which the information should be interpreted rather than the subjective judgment. Snibbe and Raffle (2009) outlined design principles and guidelines for creating engaging and emotionally affective interactive experiences based on cinematic narrative models, and argued how to use them in design interactions with high communication potential. However this work is extensively focused on full-body experiences in exhibition halls and museums and does not study open urban life settings like urban space or shared public institutions.

Urban life, with its social and cultural practices, differs from other aspects of human life, and has different kinds of spatial and situational circumstances. Several HCI researchers and practitioners are exploring the challenges and potential this domain represents (Dalsgaard and Halskov, 2010). Significant efforts have been invested in understanding 78

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the people’s relations with situated urban interfaces, building a corpus of studies that unpack the particular social and interaction mechanics of different types of urban screen applications (Brignull and Rogers, 2003; Vogel and Balakrishnan, 2004; Peltonen, et al., 2009, O’Hara, et al., 2009).

The relationships between the characteristics of these interfaces, the environment, and types of audience in different setups has been observed and analyzed in detail by Fatah Gen. Schieck, et al. (2007), Huang, et al.

(2007, 2009) and Jurmu, et al. (2009). These works contribute significantly to gaining a better understanding of the emergent social interactions and behaviors when situated interfaces are integrated in real-world settings, but they do not provide a comprehensive framework for centering the design of these interfaces on increasing the communicative potential of the media landscape through affective and engaging experience.

We believe that by considering an interdisciplinary approach drawing on both scientific and artistic design practices, we can develop meaningful and engaging interfaces with a high communicative potential. As Dalsgaard and Halskov (2010) mention, it is a challenging task to bring known design techniques onto the design of urban media interfaces, since these should be adapted and altered to address the specific issues of the domain and they may need to be supplemented with new techniques and approaches.

3 Research goals In the scope of our work, we are particularly interested in exploring and expanding the notion of information aesthetics onto the domain of urban media interface design. By considering the environment with its architectural and situational aspects as a key entity in informing the design,

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we focus on studying and understanding the experience of aesthetics, information interpretation, and interaction with media interfaces in shared spaces. We align our investigation on the topic with the concept of human information interaction (Gherson, 1995) and its three fundamental entities: environment, information and person as defined by Moghnieh, et al. (2010) (fig. 2). As discussed by Lau and Moere (2007) we should look at aesthetics as an artistic influence on the implementation of design requirements and intended purpose of an interface, rather than subjective aesthetic judgment. It possesses the capacity to convey patterns and meanings, leaving for open interpretation, which can be especially beneficial in the field of urban media interfaces – appeal to audience, attract attention, encourage personal involvement, allow serendipitous discoveries, and more profound long-terms impressions (Foster and Ford, 2003; Moghnieh, et al., 2008).Â

Figure 2: Placing information aesthetics as a layer for design principles over the three fundamental entities of HII

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Hence, in the context of urban media interface design, we treat information aesthetics as a layer, which potentially allows for the better integration among the people, the environment, and the information in the design.

Within the frame of the overarching research question “What are the guidelines for urban media interface design, which increase their communicative potential through affective and engaging experience?� we will tackle our research goals from the following perspectives, which are naturally interconnected in the desired outcome for design principles: + What kind of information related to people inhabiting public spaces can be used to support the underlying communication goals? Which are its levels of complexity, granularity, and resolution of representation? + How should we utilize and incorporate in the design the inherent qualities of the public space in accordance to the needs and interests of the people inhabiting it? How do those relate to presentation of information? + What are the possible implicit and explicit interaction scenarios that can support the underlying communication goals?

4 Design Cases As part of identifying key aspects for affective and engaging communication through urban media interfaces, our research focus revolves around understanding the experience of aesthetics, information interpretation, and interaction with media interfaces in shared spaces. The research approach we adopt is based upon practice-based engagement in cases of experimental design. The process of engagement with the design cases is largely (but not solely) influenced by the research through design method laid out

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by Zimmerman, et al. (2007) as it involves “grounding—investigation to gain multiple perspectives on a problem; ideation— generation of many possible different solutions; iteration— cyclical process of refining concept with increasing fidelity; and reflection.”

So far, we have investigated and conducted two experimental design cases of media interfaces integrated in different shared environments to come to grip with the research aspects of interests in real-life situations.

4.1 AmbientNEWS This design case is a large-scale display, which aims to augment the awareness of people in its proximity on news topics of their interest.

Originally, the display is designed for the large open newsroom space of a broadcasting company. Professional journalists create and edit broadcasting materials inside the newsroom - a shared space characterized by an intense and multivariate flux of information and social activity, dominated by corporate overtones, and hosting a large number of desktop screens.

Despite the disposition of a large number of information systems, a detailed contextual inquiry conducted with a team of journalists (Moghnieh, et al., 2009) revealed that they still find challenging to maintain awareness of the geopolitical picture of events developing in the areas they cover.

Figure 3: Prototypical deployment of AmbientNEWS

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AmbientNEWS responds to these needs by mining recent news and developing stories from the web and visualizing the online news landscape related to topics of interest in the vicinity of the display. The temporal evolution of information is shown by a dangling flowers animation, which represents the continuous flow and development of the topics by causing the flowers to emerge, grow, proliferate petals, or vanish subtly in responseto changes in the online news landscape. In its first version, the display was auto-reactive: it did not incorporate interactive means to engage with the user, but was a dynamic, constantly evolving generative animation, reacting and changing on the input constantly mined by its web engine. The auto-reactive display was designed to be deployed both as a large-scale projection or a large display integrated in the upper part of a faรงade of the inner architectural space of the shared space (fig. 3 illustrates a prototypical deployment in a newsroom) - depending on the technical and lighting conditions available in the space - and thus visible from various viewing angles in the space. Considering the interface design in such an information-overloaded environment, we rely on the peripheral attention of people as an alternative medium of communication, which can be explored by integrating of the display the upper part of inner faรงade (Tomitsch, et al., 2008). Since dynamics forms an important part of the aesthetic concept, readers are encouraged to view a short video clip of the display that is available on the web at: http://thinktank.upf.edu/ ambientnews/visuals.html.

AmbientNEWS was designed to reflect the use of integrated peripheral displays in shared spaces to augment serendipitous information discovery.

Hence the aims of AmbientNEWS are many-fold: 1) to catch the glance of people in its vicinity without being obtrusive, 2) to communicate in an artistically enhanced but effective way the relationships among topics

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of interest, 3) to foster personal reflection on the information and 4) to enhance the relationship between people and environment through affective experience.

The lack of natural settings in the large newsroom would incite people to glance frequently at the organically shaped colored flowers, and connect with the visualized information space not only because of its aesthetical appeal, but also because of the unusual visual representation of information in these settings. Such visual metaphor capitalizes on ambiguity as a resource for design (Gagver, et al., 2003). Furthermore, we are interested to evaluate the display in terms sense-making (information interpretation) of the visual metaphor and the dynamics animation, and hence validate the communication potential of its design.

We have developed an evaluation plan of 4 phases; the last one of those (the long-term evaluation) is still in the process of planning. Figure 4 depicts schematically the evaluation plan, what and how has been evaluation in which phase. The preliminary results of the first 3 phases created noticeably positive and affective response in the users. The broadcasting experts interviewed were able to correctly identify the meaning and purpose of the visual elements and the animation dynamics. They have expressed an affirmative opinion on its potential to augment the information discovery in the environment of their newsroom. Other users, which were not broadcasting experts, expressed curiosity and the opinion that the display can be also re-used in the context of their working environment (archiving specialist, owners of bookstores).

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Figure 4: Subsequent evaluation phases of design case

Figure 5 : TheVisitors Prototype deployed in an exhibition hall

Some people even started to discuss and interpret the meaning of bigger flowers vs. smaller once making more abstract assumptions about the overall geopolitical picture or the internal relationships among news departments (“there is too much news about football” or “local cultural events have a rather large ratio in the broadcasting agenda”). Generally, the users who informally reviewed the display were highly intrigued by its contents and positively affected by its presence in the space.

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4.2 TheVISITORS The design case theVisitors is a large-scale projection, seamlessly integrated in the architectural space of an environment, characterized by a high human flow. Through subtle natural sounds people are notified upon entering and leaving the space. Furthermore, their presence and interactions with the space is reflected in the animation of an aesthetical visual metaphor (in one of the walls of the space there was a seamlessly integrated projections of an stylized subtly moving tree, populated by birds flying in and away upon passengers’ entering and leaving).

The objective of this design case is to create emotional links between spaces of intense human traffic and their visitors. Its conceptual aim of theVisitors is to explore the interaction among the architectural spaces and the passers-by and how this can be communicated by abstract visual representations of people’s presence and activity. We deliberately chose to integrate the display as seamless as possible in the space by carefully taking into consideration the architectural form of the façade and mapping the projection onto it, so it does not look like a common rectangular projection surface. Lots of information aesthetic works use visualization techniques to convey patterns, but leaving their interpretation open to the user. We believe “open interpretation” is a valuable resource for successful communication design and can be supported by better integration and interplay between display and architecture. From this work we expected to collect some observations and empirical evidence of on how this kind of (multimodal) visualization design is perceived by inhabitants and users of shared places, and how it changes and enhances the way passers-by perceive their environment and consequently change the way they move in and live and sense the space.

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The first version of the prototype was presented in an exhibition hall (fig. 5) during an open-doors event freely accessible to different kinds of audience. We studied peoples’ behavior and reactions with respect to the installation through walk-through sessions, observations and informal interviews. Generally, it was very well perceived by the visitors, which were intrigued by the subtle sound response to their entering/leaving the space and could easily relate it to their “abstract” representation on the tree. Their comments and reactions showed amusement and curiosity, and they were eagerly showing and explaining the meaning of the installation to their companions. Some visitors were repeatedly entering and leaving or exaggeratedly passing through the hallway thus trying to interact with the different modes of the installation.

In addition we have also talked to participants in the exhibition, who were actually space inhabitants (exhibitors or staff of the building) and not directly interested in interacting with the installation because of lack of time due to their own exhibitions responsibilities. They were usually walking in and out of the space, carrying out material for their own installations or standing around their stands and talking to other people. Those visitors also expressed an affective relationship through the installation by saying that with time “it has turned out to be a delightful greeting for visitors” and a “unobtrusive but playful way to represent human flow and activity”. One of them said “I am glad that I am not constantly engaged with interacting with it, because I don’t have time for that, but I appreciate it being there – it gives me the sense of being connected to the other visitors through the space”.

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4.3 Findings And Perspectives Based on the initial findings gathered from the observations and interviews from both design cases, we feel encouraged by the positive evidence supporting the underlying research themes and assumptions. On a conceptual level, we explored how information aesthetic principles can be grounded in requirements for the displays (which goals it has to achieve and what are the restrictions), and be subsequently engaged in design taking into consideration the situational and architectural circumstances in the shared space. We will leave out the details on the design process and the concrete design decisions resulting in the current version of AmbientNEWS as they go out of the scope of this paper. A detailed discussion can be found in (Valkanova, et al. 2010).

On an experimental level, what is very important for us as researchers is to provide empirical evidence on the impact or power of urban media displays to achieve their communication goal(s).

We showed that AmbientNEWS was definitely successful in three of the four aims, which the design cases had anticipated: 1) to catch the glance of people its vicinity without being obtrusive, 2) to communicate in an artistically enhanced but effective way relationships among topics of interest, 3) to foster personal reflection on the information. The fourth aim - to enhance the relationship between people and environment through affective experience can be supported by some comments from the participants of the evaluation sessions and by the overall affective reactions and acceptance of the display, but this needs to be further explored by a prolonged on-site deployment.

Similar conclusions can be drawn in the case of theVisitors. The initial

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empirical findings showed that the multimodal dynamic visualization (abstract visual metaphor combined with sound) was positively perceived and successfully interpreted as human presence and activity, thus enhancing the awareness of the visitors of the shared space. For quite a number of visitors, the display attracted attention and incited short-term interactions by playing around with the notification and presentation schemes. People expressed affective responses of curiosity and joy. More importantly, evidence from visitors and inhabitants of the space shows that they were able to emotionally link to the display and thus enhance their affective experience in the space. This is an important motivation for us, as we are interested in exploring the information aesthetic principles in various areas of urban life, which are often characterized by uninformed, spontaneous or open-ended situations and activities.

We plan to stage the installation in another more open public space (like a busy waiting hall in the train station, or the open hallways between different university buildings) in order to fully validate the design case in terms of the underlying communication goals. We will aim to measure the attention and awareness and sense of place of inhabitants in the proximity of the installation.

5 Conclusions And Future Work In this paper we have described our research on design of urban media interfaces, guided by the overarching research question “What are the design guidelines that increase their communicative potential of urban media interfaces through affective and engaging experience?�.

Drawing upon the prolific discussion by media practitioners, artists and

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social theorists, as well as the current state-of-the-art of HCI and IxD research on urban media interface design, we emphasize the still lacking explorative, conceptual, and empirical findings in terms of affective and engaging communication. We address these issues in our research in the domain of urban screens, treating the notion of information aesthetics as a layer, which potentially allows for the better integration of the people, the environment, and the information in the design. Based on a research through design approach, we have conducted two experimental design cases dealing with real-life challenges in different shared settings, the first one characterized by an dense and multivariate flux of information (AmbientNEWS) and the second one marked by intense and spontaneous human traffic (theVisitors) and discussed the preliminary findings. In the next phase of our investigation, we plan to conduct long-term deployments on the developed scenarios and account for more long-lasting effects and engagements. In addition to that, we plan to study their contextual applicability to other environments, especially more context-free open urban spaces. We will focus on how the information aesthetic principles taken into account in the initial design cases should be transformed or adjusted to a different shared setting, both in terms of architectural as well as situational differences. We also recognize that our conceptual base will need further informed refinements, especially in relation to studies from the domain of urbanism ( Jacobs, 1961), architecture (i.e. Rudofsky, 1987; Alexander, et al., 1777) and studies of experience of place (Tuan, 1977). In order to test the feasibility of our conceptual findings, we will experiment with further design interventions in urban settings. We will be led by our strong belief that informing a better urban media design has a potential beyond the immediate fascination of and interaction with the installation in terms of relating to, reflecting upon and communicating information.

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Acknowledgements The author would like to acknowledge the valued contribution of Ayman Moghnieh and to thank Roger Tarrago Bonfil, Andrea Rosalez, David Peñuela, Piero Sacco, Stiliana Mitzeva and Gil Casadevall for being irreplaceable members in the creation the two design cases. The authors would also like to thank the members of the Interactive Technologies Group at the Pompeu Fabra University for their support and ideas.

References 1. ag4 media façade GmbH, 2010 [online] http://www.medienfassade.com/ (accessed on Sept 2010) 2. Alexander, C., Ishikawa, S. and Silverstein, M. A. pattern language: towns, buildings, construction. Oxford University Press, New York, 1977.

3. Bounegru, L., 2009. Interactive Media Artworks for Public Space: The Potential of Art to Influence Consciousness and Behaviour in Relation to Public Spaces. In: Mcquire, S., Martin, M. and Niederer, S. (Eds.). Urban Screens Reader. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, pp. 199-216 4. Brignull, H. and Rogers, Y., 2003. Enticing People to Interact with Large Public Displays in Public Spaces. In Proceedings of the 2003 INTERACT Conference, pp. 17-24.

5. Broeckmann, A., 2004. Public Spheres and Network Interfaces, In: Stephen Graham, ed. The Cybercities Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 378-383.

6. Dalsgaard, P. and Halskov, K., 2010. Designing Urban Media Façades: Cases and Challenges. In Proceedings of CHI 2010, pp. 2277-2286 7. Fatah Gen. Schieck, A., Briones, C. and Mottram, C., 2007. A sense of place and the pervasive computing within the urban landscape. In Proceedings, 6th International Space Syntax Symposium.

8. Fatah Gen. Schieck, A., Briones, C. and Mottram, C., 2008. The Urban Screen as a Socialising Platform: Exploring the Role of Place within the Urban Space. In: F. Eckardt, J. Geelhaar, L. Colini, K.S. Willis, K. Chorianopoulos and R. Hennig (Eds.). MediaCity: Situations, Practices and Encounters, Frank & Timme GmbH, Berlin, pp. 285-305.

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9. Foster, A. and Ford, N. 2003. Serendipity and information seeking: an empirical study. Journal of Documentation. Volume 59, Issue 3, 2003, pp. 321 – 340.

10. Gaver, W. W., Beaver, J., and Benford, S. 2003. Ambiguity as a resource for design. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI ‘03, pp. 233 – 240.

11. Gershon, N. Human Information Interaction, Proceedings of WWW4 Conference, 1995.

12. Goffman, E. 1966 Behaviour in Public Spaces. NY: Free Press 13. Hallnäs, L. and Redström, J. 2001. Slow Technology – Designing for Reflection. Personal Ubiquitous Comput, 2001, pp. 201-212.

14. HeHe: Nuage Vert (Green Cloud), 2010 [online] http://hehe.org2.free.fr (accessed Sept 2010) 15. Huang, E. M., Koster, A. and Borchers, J., 2009. Overcoming Assumptions and Uncovering Practices: When Does the Public Really Look at Public Displays? In International Conference on Pervasive Computing Springer, Sydney, Australia, pp. 228-243.

16. Huang, E. M., Mynatt, E. D., and Trimble, J. P. 2007. When design just isn’t enough: the unanticipated challenges of the real world for large collaborative displays. Personal Ubiquitous Comput. 11, 7 (2007), pp. 537-547.

17. Huhtamo, E. 2009. Messages On The Wall: An Archaelogy Of The Public Media Displays. In Urban Screens Reader, Mcquire, S, Martin, M. and Niederer, S. (Eds.) Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, pp. 15-28 18. Institut du monde arabe a Paris 2010 [online] http://www.imarabe.org/ (accessed Sept 2010) 19. Jacobs, J. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Random House, New York, 1961.

20. Jurmu, M., Kukka, H., Ojala, T., Hosio, S., Heikkinen, T., Lindén, T. and Riekki, J. 2009. UBI-Pilot 2009: Longitudinal Living-Lab Deployment of a Network of Interactive Large Public Displays. In Street Computing Workshop, Co-Located with OZCHI’09, Melbourne, Australia.

21. Lau, A. and Moere, A. V. 2007. Towards a Model of Information Aesthetics in Information Visualization, In Proceedings of IV ‘07, pp. 87-92 22. Lester, P. M. 2006 Urban Screens: The beginning of a universal visual culture. In First Monday, Special Issue #4: Urban Screens: Discovering the potential of outdoor screens for urban society 23. Lozano-Hemmer, R., 2002. Alien Relationships with Public

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26. Media Architecture Institute 2010 [online] http://www.mediaarchitecture.org/ (accessed Sept 2010) 27. Media Art Net, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Body Movies, 2010 [online] http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/body-movies/ (accessed Sept 2010) 28. Media façades festival 2010 [online] http://www. mediafacades.eu/ (accessed Sept 2010) 29. Michelis D. 2009. Interactive Displays in Public Space – A theoretical analysis of intrinsically motivating design elements (in German), Gabler Edition Wissenschaft, 2009 30. Moere, A.V., Offenhuber, D. 2009. Beyond Ambient Display: A Contextual Taxonomy of Alternative Information Display. International Journal of Ambient Computing and Intelligence, 1(2), pp. 39-46.

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45. Virilio, P. 1997 Open Sky. NY: Versio 46. Vogel, D. and Balakrishnan, R. 2004. Interactive public ambient displays: transitioning from implicit to explicit, public to personal, interaction with multiple users. In Proceedings of UIST ‘04, pp. 137-146.

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Media Architecture as Social Catalyst in Urban Public Spaces Hendrik Weiner Dipl. Ing. Arch. www.raumdialog.com

„Buildings will become computer interfaces and computer interfaces will become buildings.“ William Mitchell, City of Bits, 1995

Abstract This paper explores the potentials and possibilities of Media Architecture to improve the spatial quality and communicative functions of public

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spaces. It formulates a specific viewpoint of the architecture and planning theory about the subject of medialization of public spaces.

Starting from the effects on society of the mechanization of our environment, just thinking of the electrification in the 19th Century or the light architecture of the 1920s, one needs to ask, which substantial contributions of the spatial implementation of technology can lead to a sustainable and liveable public environment today.

How can Media Architecture support the social and communicative functions of urban public spaces?

To find answers to this question, first it is needed to clarify the requirements of today’s urban public spaces and the needs of their users. This will be done by discussing the term “quality of public space” in general and in contrast to branding spaces, by discussing research results about the user behavior in urban public spaces and by the focus on opportunities to appropriate urban spaces.

By pointing out several examples of Media Architecture and art projects, the potentials of interactive opportunities in urban public spaces gets outlined multifaceted.

The paper will present one test project in detail: The Interactive Parasite for the cultural center “Schlachthof ” in Bremen. In this example, the functions of representation and interaction are combined. The project tries to connect the questions of getting attention, representing the institution, caring about the user participation and dealing with the quality of space to create a special type of Media Architecture.

The paper shows how little has been done to research the real effects of Media Architecture to urban public spaces and their users. For this 96

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research to be done it suggests the use of qualitative and empirical methods in combination with attended experiments and test projects to develop an contextual knowledge to planners and designers.

Introduction 2002: The film “Minority Report” by Steven Spielberg takes the short story by Philip K. Dick from 1956 to draw a complete media controlled public environment by eye-scans with the effect of personalized advertisement in the public space.

At the same time, the project „urban diary “ by Friedrich von Borries uses the subway station U2, Alexanderplatz in Berlin to reanimate the desensualized public space. The intention was realized by an interactive screen to support an open communication process in the public space.

Passers-by could read messages, send there own message or just ignore the project. With time, a kind of city diary was written. This project asks for new interactive interfaces to attract and develop the public spaces in an participative way (Borries, 2002).

Since 2006: „A Brand Environment as an Adventure Landscape: more than 1000 square meters of an advertising space in the most frequented subway station of Austria, the Karlsplatz with up to 200.000 passengers per day, the GEWISTA stages the first station branding of Austria for the new Sony Walkmanphone. An Innovation that has plenty to offer: high contact density and length, enormous impact and highest attention

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value, especially for the young and mobile target audience.” (Out of home Austria, 2010) “The station branding unites many advantages: high frequency, …, intensive and sustained eye contact, high attraction and with this an increased attention, and possibilities of interaction up to face to face contacts to sales promoters” says the advertisement company enthusiastically (Out of home Austria, 2010).

Also the public player is happy about the „more friendly and bright stations with more light”, the ”confrontation with new worlds of images”, the “diversion” and the “better subjective feeling of safety” (Out of home Austria, 2010).

The concept of station branding or total branding is a new dimension of out of home-advertisement and promises an omnipresence with high range, a massive contact density and a high number of recalls (Hochschule Luzern, 2010). And it completely occupies the public space. The passersby are totally surrounded and involved by the advertisement.

2010: In order to observe the passers-by in Tokyo cameras were installed in 20 subway stations. These cameras gather information about sex and age to develop target group profiles. Through this one can find out which advertisement is viewed by whom and when (Out of home Austria, 2010).

These activities lead to pervasive advertising.

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Urban Public Spaces – Characteristic today Urban public spaces today are differentiated. In these spaces, we find parallel acting and different levels of behavioral norms happening at the same time.

Urban public spaces are not consistent, but complex, multilayered and contradictory. Public spaces can be described as variable occupied places with a permanent change of their meanings. (Sennett, 1998, p.48) Different interests and stakeholders compete strongly over the urban public spaces. Examples for this are: private Investors (shopping malls), the security interests of people (video control, security services, gated communities), demonstrations of individual or political opinions, traffic and so one. This continuous negotiation of different interests and values is effecting and finally constituting the public space. In this way, the public spaces are the central characteristic and the assumption of urbanity.

(Wilder, 2003, p.2) Public space today is seen as a dynamic relation to the rules of society, individual and group interests, power, proximity and displacement, inclusion and exclusion. It is the physical construction of the social space (Riege, Schubert 2005, p.251). In addition to this, public space creates a physical memory of the city by preserving meanings and stories.

Thereby, the public is a social phenomenon and is dominated by social developments. The public can not be created merely by physical designing (Schubert, 1999, p.19).

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Quality of Public Space Urban public spaces are the daily world of experiences of people living in the cities. Therefore public spaces are the real references and identity areas of a city. Particular for the contact and understanding of inhabitants with their different opinions and ways of life, public spaces are the essential physical framework to negotiate the values of a democratic society. This functionality and usability can be called the quality of urban public spaces.

To create this quality there are some simple rules to consider: Public spaces has to be free, open and accessible without any physical, social or economical restrictions at any time. Any public spaces need to be flexible and open to use without predefinitions. They have to be adaptable for unpredictable uses. The central social function of the public space is to be a place of open exchange, communication and to offer a free space for appropriation. In being so, the personal feeling of safeness plays an important role. Public spaces also need to be defined and separated into other spaces, cross-linked with each other and they need to have a certain character and an aesthetic value (ReiĂ&#x;-Schmidt, pp.7-8). Opportunities to have experiences, to test behavior, to practice interaction, to withdrawal, to rest or to re-interpret should shape the urban public spaces. This can support their quality.

Therefore urban public spaces should offer a wide range of possibilities to experience, to express opinion and to have interaction. But there is no causal connection between design and the public. Open ground plans and areas with low spatial limits are of no use if political, social or economical exclusions exists. The social structure determines the limiting factor (Kaltenbrunner, 2003, p.35).

The Introduction of this paper refers to total branded spaces. This branding occupies the public spaces with the promise of entertainment

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and a world full of experiences. This intervention is well accepted by the people, because it is activating the space. But by winning this “world of experience” these spaces become predefined and loose their function of openness. The high acceptance of these branded areas can be explained by the contrast to the low aesthetical and spatial quality of many public areas. Often, the low level of positive experiences, of dark areas or dull, functional corridors and streets make people feel lost and support unsafe feelings. These areas are uncared for and their potentials are forgotten. The loss of sensual-aesthetical qualities of the space is producing a want, which gets satisfied by an “industry of fictions”. Public spaces get reinvented and fictional restaged (Kaltenbrunner, 2003. p.35). Sometimes it looks like branding and other commercial activities are the only power to redesign public spaces. If more and more public spaces are effected by branding and pervasive advertising, the question “Who owns the public space?” points out the basic conflict of use of the urban public spaces.

The forefront of this development was the shopping mall. Today, this typology is an integral part of the city. The private space inside has adopted many attributes of the urban space. In doing this, all annoying factors are eliminated to create a kind of perfect world. In these spaces the density of experiences and influences are high. Being in a shopping mall is comfortable, but it is a highly controlled space without any possibility of self-representation except for shopping. In order to fulfill this illusion of a perfect world, many public spaces in the inner cities are adapting the aesthetics as well as the concepts of social control, for example site security ( Jonas, Schumacher, pp.3-5). Nevertheless the problems like vandalism move into other areas and cannot be solved just by designing aesthetical entertainments.

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These examples show the power of an important parameter of space: the atmosphere. Schmitz (1993) defines atmosphere as spatial expanded feelings. So atmosphere can be understood as a space of feelings and by this, atmosphere can touch and animate people to sympathize with an offered environment. (Hasse, 2006, p.12). The restaging of the public spaces by branding is consciously using this effect.

The alternative way is to understand public space as a public matter and to think about an integrated concept of a more cohesive society. So what about supporting atmospheres to make experiences and to practice interaction in public spaces without predefined messages? How can concepts of development be created by strengthening the open and communicative function of urban space? How can a higher quality level of public spaces be designed, other then by offering events? And which part does Media Architecture play in designing open and atmospheric public spaces?

Appropriation of Public Space The interplay of users and urban spaces became a stronger focus within the last decades: As people are influenced by space, the space itself becomes influenced by the daily use of people. Space is lived individually, is thought and interpreted subjectively and can be actively produced by people. (Litscher, 2009, p.5). This concept describes the idea of “spacing”, of creating spaces by an active appropriation of the public spaces. It means more then just the use of the space (usage). By usage, the content and form of the use is not questioned. To appropriate the space is to expand a personal sphere of human action, which means one changes the given situations and arrangements (Deinet, 2006). So in this “spacing” process

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the public spaces and their elements become tested, reframed and adapted to the needs of the user (Nissen, 1998, p.154). The space and its purpose of use gets newly interpreted. Thereby the appropriation of public spaces can support the participation and can lead to an emancipation of the user.

Unfortunately, planning mechanisms, the ways of space production and the appearance of public spaces have little reacted to this knowledge as of yet.

Relevant to understanding the daily use of spaces is the focus of the situation. Situations are defined by the physical space and all the influences in it, including all objects, the people present and there actions, their social and biographical background, their relations, the valid social rules and codes, the time, climate and weather conditions (after Segern, Werner 2003; Segern 1992). Through this viewpoint the complexity of public spaces becomes visible. With the concept of situation the quality of a place can be described in a detailed way. This helps to clarify the complex circumstances in public spaces.

So how can public spaces appear as a world full of open experiences, of open interactions as well as of rest, recreation and as inviting spaces of participation and emancipation? The paper is suggesting to use Media Architecture approaches to improve the communicative functions of urban public spaces and to design new levels of public interaction.

Use of Public Spaces In the last decades the believe was a formed, that the public spaces are devaluated by the increasing medialization of the communication processes. The new medias (print, broadcast, TV, internet) took over

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the spreading and communication of news, but to manifest political opinion the public space is still in use through speeches, concerts, festivals, demonstrations and so on. It is the stage of the social condition and society conflicts. (Kaltenbrunner, 2003, p.28) Against all prophecies, in the daily life the public spaces are still strongly used, sometimes even overused, but resilient empirical research about the real development of urban public spaces in detail is missing. So nobody has prove of the changing use of public spaces. (Kuklinski, 2003, pp.3-4).

One open question is the character of the user and his needs in the public spaces. The alienation and the decoupling between the people and public spaces has often been pointed out. In order to reconnect the people with the space new possibilities of use and new atmospheres should be created.

In a more user-centered design process the unclear users needs can be clarified in a participation process. In general, more empirical research is needed to define the relevant requirements of the space and to develop founded advices for the planning.

So the users needs of public spaces have to be characterized. In the last years, at least the needs and interests of young people (teenager and young adults) were researched more in detail by the Wüstenrot Stiftung. These young people spent half of their free time outdoors, being active, mobile and enroute (Wüstenrot Stiftung 2003, 2009). The perception of the city by young people can be described as “a sequence of events and a process of occurrences, which is spun of material and immaterial threads” (Wüstenrot Stiftung, 2009, pp.188-189). So young people perceive the public space as an experience of different spatial situations.

Research of the “Use-Management of public spaces” by Litscher (2009) shows that young people are giving public spaces a high value. Important 104 MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

to them is the possibility of choosing different options and spaces as well as to stage their way of life in the public. The way of using the public spaces can be different and provocative against the common opinion of the older generation, but it is an active use of space. Conflicts which are articulated in the urban public spaces are based mostly in the social challenges of society.

In this context, the recommendation is to get the young people to participate in the planning, to support self dependent acting in space, to invest in layers of interaction and to improve the public part (outside façade) and the structure of buildings, so to enrich the public functions of architecture (Litscher, 2009, p.13, Sieverts, 2007, p.10). These are all links for using Media Architecture approaches.

The Experiment “U-DJ” of the Wüstenrot research made a practical intervention by installing a public listening station in a subway station, where young people got invited to play their owe music. With this intervention the traffic area became a stage and a place to pause. This small example suggests the potentials of interactive opportunities in public spaces (Wüstenrot Stiftung 2009, p.169).

Also the Wüstenrot Stiftung postulates the need of real public spaces, which are not limited by private interests and has got a high level of freedom of movement. Young people have a strong desire for differentiated and multilayered public spaces with a wide range of spatial and emotional experiences and atmospheres. Especially rare are free and open spaces for spontaneous games (like football), meeting points and communication areas without any consumer stress (Wüstenrot Stiftung, 2009, p.187).

Young people need multifunctional spaces where they can experience different situations at the same time as well as safe resting areas. And they need free spaces to experiment with their personal way of life.

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To increase the identification as well as the responsibility of people with their neighborhood and their cities, better direct participation by planning and design of urban public spaces is needed.

A lot can be done to raise the quality of urban public spaces. But what role can Media Architecture play? How is Media Architecture able to support and may be to start participative processes and emancipative forces in the public space?

Media Architecture – Examples and Approaches “In the 21st century the technology revolution will move into the everyday, the small and the invisible.” Mark Weiser, 1952–1999

Ways of Implementation Today’s technical developments enables the creation of new forms of public spaces by the use of new media and technology.

The different ways of implementation of technology in the urban space shell be illustrated by some examples. Thereby several approaches to enrich the public spaces can be shown.

The “Tower of Winds” by Toyo Ito, finished in 1986, still gives the standard of the enrichment of the urban space by Media Architecture.

Here architecture is as a holistic medium and produces a special ambience.

This light sculpture represents the nature and complexity of the city and their inhabitants by reacting to man-made and natural forces, such as ambient sounds, wind forces, time of day and season. There is no direct

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man-machine-interaction, but the “Tower of Winds” visualized the sense of the palace in a unique way. It makes aware the complexity and influences of the urban space (Archidose, 2004).

Media Facades The “Blinkenlights” project of the Chaos Computer Club in 2001 in Berlin can be pointed out as the prototype of using a building facade as an interaction tool in the urban space. The possibility of controlling the light shape of the building, of sending personal massages and of collaborating by playing games via mobiles made people enthusiastic about it. This illustrates the strong potentials of interactive opportunities in urban space (project blinkenlights, 2010).

Supported by the increasing development of technology, buildings get complete covered by media facades and appear in the city as three dimensional media-bodies. This media-bodies have the power to dominate the public space by size and by light output. The biggest example of today is the Bayer Tower in Leverkusen. It is installed with the argument of innovation, of activation the urban space and of bringing a new landmark to the region. The media façade airs information into the city space. By art projects and events, the public shell get benefits. Finally the information is controlled by the company and of course, the Bayer Logo beams all over the city of Leverkusen. It is omnipresent in the city. (media architecture institute, 2009.)

A careful implementation of a media façade is the example of the PDS Bank in Münster. This project tries to mediate between the interests of the bank and of the public through a participation process and a mixed content.

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There are many references to the city itself. For example, the media façade shows pictures of the city of Münster (Ag4, 2008; PSD Bank, 2008).

The ”Crystal Mesh” façade of the ILUMA building by realities:united in Singapore do not uses LED-Meshes. It tries to avoid the imitation of a TV-screen. Here the façade is architectural, not invisible but sculptural.

It generates the character of the building by ornamental light-elements.

The use of only white light and the varied resolution supports a sculptural and more abstract appearance of the building. It’s becoming an unique character and enriches the urban public space (realities:united, 2009).

The project “Enteractive” by Electroland in Los Angeles visualize user activities in the building on the outside façade into the urban space. Inside, an interactive floor animates the people to step on LED tiles like in a game sow. Outside, the light reactions are displayed and repeated. Except of the flickering lights the urban space gets not influenced by this installation (ELECTROLAND, 2006).

Emotional Bodies A more emotional kind of Media Architecture is the “D-Tower” by NOX in Doetinchem, Netherlands. It claims to be a public reflection tool of feelings. Through the input of the actual feelings of the people of the city, based by a questionnaire, the tower identifies the “mood” of the city. The “mood” is translated to several colors. The tower shows the colored light as a feedback to the inhabitants. Through the deal with the feelings of the community, the “D-Tower” enters a level beyond the direct communication of text massages or motion detecting (D-Toren, 2007; Gemeente Doetinchem, 2007).

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“Bubbles” by Materials & Applications is a spatial adaptable pneumatic environment, as far as the sources show, in a semipublic location. The interactive installation is reacting on touches and involves the visitors by modifying the shape of the inflated bubbles. This creates a sensual and tactile dialog with the visitors. With this, the installation points out the potential of reactive environments in an experimental way (Materials & Applications, 2007; Bubbles, 2007).

Responsive architecture Projects like the “muscle tower II” (2006) of the hyperbody research group of the TU Delft, the “Aegis Hyposurface” by dECOi Architects (2001), or the “Reflexive Architecture Machines” (2010) by the Situated Technology Research Group at the University at Buffalo, Department of Architecture are experimenting with interactions by kinetic processes, to build up physical interactions to the environment. It’s still a field of basic research, but there can be expected spectacles impressions on the way to get real the dream of movable or reflexive architecture (Interactive architecture, 2007; TU Delft, 2009; Interactive architecture, 2006; Reflexive Architecture Machines, 2010).

Kinetic architecture The Schouwburgplein in Rotterdam by West 8 is a much more basic example of a moving architectural element, but it is realized in the public space. This central square of Rotterdam is designed as a public stage.

Hugh lamps, shaped as cranes, are installed to illuminate the square. This

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lamps becoming an interactive element by the operation of the people. If somebody puts a coin in, the crane starts to move. So the user is asked to act and to intervene in the public space. As a city stage, the square is flexible in use and changing during day and seasons. This concept works with different elements like lightning, fountains and crane lamps to create an inviting atmosphere. With this elements, the public space becomes a playground and a field of physical interaction (WEST 8, 1996).

Interaction areas The “Living-Light” project by the Living Architecture Lab (David Benjamin, Soo-In Yang) of the Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, has developed a building façade, which displays the air quality of the city and the public interest in it. It is realized as a pavilion in the Peace Park in Seoul. The information about the development of air quality in the related part of the city is given by lighting up the single panels. Per text massages, people can ask the pavilion to get informed about the air quality of a district. The interest is displayed by blinking of the asked panel. So this “façade” works as a public information board. A content leaded control is used. It informs about the development of the air quality and about peoples interest in it. Thereby, it is increasing the perception of public issues like air pollution. It can make people aware of there environment. Here, Media Architecture becomes a communication tool of the public space (The Living, 2009).

“Magical Mirrors” was kind of art project and a test setting in the public space. In the middle of Berlin integrated in a façade of a office building, several reactive working large screen were situated in the pedestrian area of

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a street. In passing, people got irritated and curious about it and started to explore the screens. By observations and interviews, the rules of motivation to interact with offered interactive applications were researched. This is a basic research of the user-application relation in public spaces (Michelis 2009).

The intension of the “Moodwall” by Urban Alliance, situated in a low pedestrian tunnel in a neighborhood of Amsterdam Bijlmer, is formulating a technological intervention within the local environment as reaction to the existing social context. The wall reacts to the movement of passersby by dynamic light changes. The aim is to reduce the feeling of security in the local area. This example uses Media Architecture as an instrument to improve the quality of the public local environment. With the project several questions can be researched: What kind of mood is created by the wall? How strong is the reduction of unsafe feelings? By what exactly the insecure atmosphere can be improved? By which associated measures the effects of the wall can be supported? And what effect has the interventions to the general problem of social unsafe areas? (urban alliance, 2009).

An other project with the similar intention is “LIC/LAAC” - Light Information Cube/ Local Annonymous Asynchronus Communication.

A light cube intervenes in “non-places”. This project uses form, light and a LED text scroller to create a social orientated communication tool and a meeting point for the local inhabitants. Trough text based content, the quality of the public space as well as the social condition of asylum seekers gets a platform. A participation offer through text massaging is included. So technical interventions combined with a communication strategy can be a way to involve the neighborhood and to start a process of understanding (co-lab, 2002).

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In the Dessau municipal park, the park lights are changing by the presence of people. The Project, called “ReLief ” – Reactive Light Energy Field, suggested several measures to intensifying the park’s use. The assignment asked to design a concept of more surveillance and security technology.

Actually, the criminal statistics and the local research showed, the “feeling of security” was not founded on facts. The implemented light concept lights some essential zones of the park with brightly light, while other areas remain dark. So darkness and insecurity are still elements of the park. In the selected zones, the perceived security is increased. The visitor can choose between lightness and darkness, the different qualities increase the park’s multiple uses. By movement sensors, the idea is further supported: The less movement there is in the environment, the darker the lighting stays.

This sketches a changeable image of the nightly park usage and increases the cost- and energy-efficiency. Every approaching movement will be registered through the “light-energy field”, so that secure and safe feeling will increase is well (realities:united, 2010).

The Project “Bench of Light” by Stefan Sous shows the power of light to support the use of urban spaces in a direct way: park benches becomes light objects and by this a request to stay. By the function of a bench, meetings and group forming is supported (Stefan Sous, 2002; Lichtnet, 2006).

Intervention tools To empower the single user of public space, the graffiti research lab has develop several intervention tools based on electronic devices such as the LED Throwies and the L.A.S.E.R Tag. These tools are working directly with the public space and are personifying the technique. It enables

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individual remarks in the public space. The user is asked and supported to influence the environment actively. The intention to break the technical devices down to the individual user transfers the idea of the open source software into the public space. This philosophy can be a key approach to develop user-centered interactive opportunities in public spaces (Graffiti Research Lab).

Planning tools A wider dimension of Media Architecture is the conscious use of digital media in the planning process and production of space to create interactive planning tools. It was first implement by Renzo Piano in his project “Mobile Workshop�, UNESCO-Neighbourhood-Workshop, in 1978. A mobile cube was placed on the market place to create a central meeting point. The project was based on the participation of the inhabitants. The cube was a communication base, diverse methods like the open council and the photo-research were combined. For research, participation and documentation, media technologies were used to support the communication process. The interactions of the participation process were very intensive and meaningful to all sides. So the support of the participation through media technologies on-site is a innovative setting and should be used much more in participation processes of today to get people involved (Piano, R., Brignolo, R., 1997).

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Art Projects Two more art projects I like to highlight to illustrate the opportunities of dealings with the public space. With the “Audio Ballerina” (1990), Benoît Maubrey has created an electroacoustic sculpture in the shape of a skirt.

This skirt, like the tutu, is equipped with microphones and loudspeakers and it is wear by a performer. So the performer is able to compose there own music by sampling the sounds of the environment trough different interfaces (microphones, radio receiver, movement sensors).

The performer dances with the sampled sound of the environment. The sampled sound becomes a part of the environment and get sampled again.

By dancing in the public space, the performer can establish interactions to other people by sampling there noises. So through the electroacoustic device their is added an additional communication layer like a filter. The sampled sound is bringing together all acoustical influences. The sound becomes the medium of intermediation between the dancer and other people. This people becoming a part of the performance by their own sounds. The electroacoustic device is connecting the dancer with the whole environment. As a next step, the performer can involve people more directly by dancing. This work creates a new communication cannel by using the electroacoustic device as an interaction catalyst and a “contact machine”. (Maubrey, B.; Medien Kunst Netz, Frieling, R.) The other project works without any technique. Clegg & Guttmann were installing “The Open Library” since 1991 by placing weatherproof bookcases in public places. From there, the books could be free taken or exchanged. The intention was to monitor the reading and communication behavior of a neighborhood. As result, the project faced the whole range of social interaction: Total destruction, enthusiastic acceptance, continuing the project by citizens’ initiatives. The idea of free accessible bookcases also 114 MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

was copied several times. This project understands the public space as an collective open and free space, in which values like books can be shared.

The “open library” installs a free and discreet offer to use the public space as a space of exchange. The book, a medium by itself, becomes a medium of the public space. The question, if people use this offer, if they ignore it, if they just take books, if they also bring books or if they destroy the bookcase shows the social behavior of the people and their relation to the public space. The project also generates a virulent communication process: people start to talk about the bookcases or even to organize themselves to support the project. Hereby, the project asks for the appropriation of the public space and deals with the idea of a social sculpture (Offene Bibliothek, 2004; Bücher-Wiki, 2010).

This selection of projects describes the wide spectrum of today’s Media Architecture. Currently, the effects to the public spaces can only be imagined, because of the lack of empirical research. All public space related projects of the paper are classified through a mapping (fig. 1).

Therein the relation between the size of the effected space to the effected number of people is show. The involvement of people is differ in the active involvement, like tactile experiences or interaction via mobile, and the more visual involvement by distance to the Media Architecture. This mapping is quite roughly and not based on empirical data, but it gives an impression of the different effects. For example, media façades without the possibility of interaction are quite fare away and abstract from people. On the other hand, touchable projects are local based and direct in use of people.

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small group

place

local area

big group interactive area

Mobile Workshop Schouwburgplein Blinkenlights

D-Tower

big group

crowd

indirectly/visual involvement of people

city

fig. 1

116 MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena urban atmosphere

Tower of Winds ILUMA building Bayer Tower

Station Branding The Open Library ReLief

Enteractive

Interactive Parasite

Living-Light Magical Mirrors Bench of Light

small group

PDS Bank

single

L.A.S.E.R Tag

single

LED Throwies Audio Ballerina LIC/LAAC Moodwall U-DJ Bubbles

directly/active involvement of people

crowd

effected public space

There are a lot open questions: How do users percept and rate Media Architecture and their interactive opportunities in the public spaces?

What kind of people give what kind of attention to the interventions of Media Architecture? How do the opportunities change the user behavior?

Which effect has Media Architecture to the perception of the city and the urban public spaces?

The paper shows how little has been done describe the effects of Media Architecture in the urban public space. Clear statements about the particular effects of the named projects are depending on a qualitative and empirical research. Only with this, by asking and observing the potential users, the accomplishments of Media Architecture could be measured and pointed out more clearly.

High Tech vs. Low Tech Many applications of Media Architecture uses high tech solutions. High tech solutions are complex, highly specialized and needs special knowledge.

They uses up-to-date, and therefore, the most expensive techniques. Also the development of prototypes is quite expansive. So high tech is usually applied by big companies and big events to get the biggest amount of reputation and attention. This technique makes possible to influence strongly the public spaces and to become omnipresent.

The opposite concept is low tech. In this thinking, applications are developed by the standard of simple function and producing, simple handling, robustness and simple maintenance. Low tech means no use of expensive technology but use of simple working principles and intelligent solutions to reach high efficiency (Wikipedia, 2010). In comparing to

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high tech, low tech is more based on an individual use. The scale and performance of low tech applications usually are limited. So the effect to the urban space is depending on the number of applications. Several projects shown in the paper work with the low tech concept.

Often, the requirements of projects supported by the local authorities, the administrators of the public space, are similar to the standards of the low tech concept. Except of so called “lighthouse projects”, projects needs to be quite cheep to get realized, robust to keep working for a long time and easy to understand to be used by all kind of people. Also the maintenance should be simple. So the design of durable, low-maintenance and quite cheep applications of Media Architecture by the low tech concept can be a interesting challenge.

Light Almost all discussed projects uses light! The fundamental relevance of light for the use of the public space can be seen by the implementation of the street lighting in the 19th century. It was the precondition of the development of any modern urban night life. Today, cities like Liverpool have established a “night-time economy” by illuminating the inner city to attract it for tourists and visitors. This cities are improving their image through light (Schulte -Römer, Nona, p.11). Light festivals are organized by the city marketing (for example Lüdenscheid), or by foundations (for example Berlin) to support the city through cultural events. More and more cities follow the example of Lyon to develop a master plan of light and to realize a general light concept of the whole city. (LichtRouten, 2010; City Stiftung Berlin, 2010).

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Light mediates safeness and supports the perception of spaces. The station branding concept as well as projects like the “Moodwall” argues with this aspect. By illuminating buildings and landmarks, a city can realize a selfdramatization of its character. Light is used to shape spaces and to promote positive images of the city. This attitude has become a basic element of city marketing strategies.

In this context, illuminated buildings and special light objects reshapes the silhouette of a city and emphasizes special places and areas. Thereby the collective memory of a city can be supported.

Artificial light defines spaces specifically. It becomes a tool of urban design.

If it is corresponding to the urbanistic and social environment, it can support the readability of spatial, historical and social coherences of the city.

Light dos not stop at the plot boundaries. This enables exciting but conflictladen opportunities of space shaping in the urban space. The increasing use of light by private investors in the public spaces is a challenge by developing a coordinated light atmosphere of the overall city. Here again, the question of “who owns the public space?” is touched and concepts for the enhancement of social interaction in the public spaces are required.

Quite small interventions can support this efficiently, as the project like the “Bench of Light” by Stefan Sous is shown. (About light master planning: Zentrum für Internationale Lichtkunst, 2010).

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Interactive Parasite

First time the concept was presented on the exhibition “bremen2.0 - thinking a new city�, Bremen, 2008.

Concept The starting point to develop the concept of the Interactive Parasite was the question, how the technical opportunities of today can be used and being integrated in the public spaces to support their sojourn quality in a free, open and not commercialized way?

The basic concept of the Interactive Parasite is an interactive sculpture (spatial structure) added in the urban public space to create a new atmosphere.

The metaphor of the parasite emphasizes the idea of intervention. The sculpture adds interactive functions to the environment. Therewith, the

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user of the public space should interact with the environment and other users. He should get motivated by curiosity or involved en passant.

The purpose of an Interactive Parasite is to enable open individual or group interventions into the public spaces by offering interfaces and new possibilities of use. The user can influence or impress his environment by using the offered interfaces. The parasite becomes a control panel and the user is sending out personal signals. Thereby also the environment gets personified. The user can read the environment as part of himself.

A process of confrontation and identification is started by the use of the offered interactive opportunities. Within this whole process, the involved person becomes a producer of the public space and of its atmosphere. The concept develops a kind of public playground to make the public space more flexible for the different needs of use and to test and to learn about the personal behavior in the public space.

In contrast to temporary projects, the intension of the concept is to install a permanent working structure to become an integrated part of the public space in daily use. To attract the public space itself by interactions and atmospheres they have to be permanent installed. For a permanent use, other conditions and rules of perception are working. The appearance, the way of interaction and involvement has to work with little “noise�. For this intension, the design of embedded spatial solutions with care or the local conditions and needs of users is required.

Application Possibilities To develop these integrated solutions by using technical as well as social knowledge, the local needs of the users and the requirements of the

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public spaces have to be analyzed. They can have a wide range. Probably, a pensioner likes to have a different atmosphere and spatial setting of the same site as a teenager. Also a central town square needs to get a complete different “parasite” as a public park or a street with there parking places, building entrances and small free spaces.

Especially for the enhancement of neglect public spaces, the change of the atmosphere and the integration of interactive opportunities can be an invitation of use and participation. Projects like “LIC/LAAC” and may be the “Moodwall” show this. They work in a local scale and combine technical solutions with social contents and communication strategies to support a neighborhood.

Acting and Motivation Depending on the offered interfaces, there are conscious and unconscious possibilities of use. If the light in a city park is changing by the movement of people en passant, it is quite unconscious (Project “ReLief ”). If there is a button to push, like at the Interactive Parasite, people need to decide and act very consciously. Also there are different ways to attract the acting.

Since the “Blinkenlight” project looks like the most used idea to involve people in interaction in public is gaming.

Interactions in the public spaces are free to choose. So there has to be a setting, which creates motivation. The rules of motivation in public spaces first were empirical researched by Michelis (2009) with his test project “Miracle Mirrors”. He points out five motivational factors: challenge and control, curiosity and exploration, choice, fantasy and metaphor and collaboration (Michelis, 2008). The user gets motivated by identifying an

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interaction target and by a direct feedback of it’s acting. To get curious, interaction opportunities needs to be quick understandable, surprisingly and unpredictable. The more choices a user can make, the more the interaction is interesting. Metaphors can explain the interaction before starting it. To interact together with other people in one place can create collaborative interactions like gaming.

Situational Spaces The concept of the Interactive Parasite can be extended to a comprehensive concept of developing differed layers of experience and use in adoption to the local conditions and needs. The combination of the built environment including interactive opportunities to a tangible atmosphere in an open, not commercial, way can be a resilient proposal of the configuration of today’s urban public spaces.

The influence of people to decision making, to the shape and to the possibilities of use in public spaces needs to be upgraded. Only by a higher integration of the interests and needs of people, the public space can keep its urban function and can be an attractive alternative to commercialized and gated zones. To connect people more directly with there environment, the integration of public interactive applications can be one tool to make urban public spaces more manipulable. New forms of spatial interaction can show directly the personal appropriation of the public space. This helps to coupling people with the public spaces and supports the identification with the environment. Through the extended concept of the Interactive Parasite, public spaces receives the chance to acquire people by new kinds of appearances and possibilities of use.

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In this wider perspective, the concept suggests to create public spaces with opportunities of individual appropriations by interactive applications.

Analog to the idea of the “Web 2.0” there is imaginable a “Public Space 2.0”, which supports the individual activities of the users and which offers several ways to influence the environment. To this, the social factors of the environment need to be considered. By the connection of an open and inviting spatial design (support of different needs) with several interactive functions (support of communication), a public space could offer different situations and satisfy different needs in one place. By time, by user and by use, the space would be adaptable and later on may be adaptive.

These situational spaces would offer selectable experiences and different opportunities of a direct use in one place. Thereby situational spaces would produce a wide range of offers to the different kind of people living in the city. But this situational spaces can not be thought by using technology only. The combination a open social setting with a differentiate spatial design and public interactive applications can multiply situations. By increasing the public communication and the borders of tolerance, there can be developed a new integration power of urban public spaces. These situational spaces would offer a new kind of quality of public spaces.

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Project The concept of the Interactive Parasite was first presented in 2008 at the exhibition “Bremen 2.0 – thinking a new city” by a prototype model. In 2009 started the realization in the public space as a long term installation for the cultural center “Schlachthof ” in Bremen.

The project tries to connect the questions of getting attention, representing the institution, caring about the user participation and dealing with the quality of space to create a special type of Media Architecture.

Site On one hand the Cultural Center is located next to the residential area “Findorff ”, on the other hand to the biggest town square “Bürgerweide”.

Usually it is a huge parking area. Every once in a while temporary events takes place. Just next to it is the trade exhibition area. Within sight is located the main station of Bremen. Nevertheless the location lies in the backside of the city. The cultural center itself creates a open atmosphere with a kind of experimental or alternative touch. Especially to young people the site offers a free accessible skater area. So the reachable space of the Interactive Parasite is the public space around the cultural center.

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Municipal Park

Findorff

Cultural Center Schlachthof Town Hall, Trade Exhibition & Town Square “Bürgerweide” Central Station (back side)

Center

City ground plan, Bremen

Entrance area of the cultural center 126 MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

The site is daily used by young people.

Design The cultural center was looking for a new kind of outside representation to be noticed as an active cultural institution of the city. Passers-by should get interested about the cultural offers. After a quite long time of discussion about different possibilities and options the cultural center decided to support the idea of the Interactive Parasite.

The Interactive Parasite is an multifunctional object with three different layers. Its purpose is to change the general appearance of the cultural center by a small intervention. The first layer is the unique shape and the highlighted position in about 25 Meter height. The object is a special sign of the cultural center, visible from far distances, especially at night. The second layer is the light. There are 27 different appearances by switching the light. The single lights are combined in a way to get asymmetric pattern,

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so the audience will not understand the logic of the pattern and the installation keeps to be a bit cryptic. The light concept generates attention in the evening and at night. The third layer is the interactive application by a control panel. It is placed at the entrance area of the cultural center depending on time and event. It’s the tool to bring the interactive function to the visitors. Via microphones, the sound of the wind in 25 meters height is hearable at the control panel. This creates a connecting atmosphere to the structure above. By discovering and listening the control panel, people should get curious. To use the control panel for interaction, the visitor only needs to push the bottom. In this moment he becomes an active role: the visitor becomes a producer of space by turning on and off the lights of the cultural center. This flash lights and light changes, for example, can be seen as far as to the main station. So people in the surroundings gets attracted.

The cultural center can visualize its activity through the light changes.

The implementation of the Interactive Parasite is not finished jet. If this is happened, particular the positioning of the control panel to test the different possibilities and situations of use and to analyze the motivation of the potential users can be researched. Also variations of the function, such as the direct connecting of the light changes to the activities of the cultural center (for example by concerts) can be tested.

This project works with the concept of low tech. The budget for realization is very small. So the used material is basic, stainless steel for the structure, fluorescent lamps from the building center for the light, cables and buttons for the electric, microphones and powered speakers for the sound. The challenge of a low budget was taken by the intension to create a basic interaction unit and to test the minimum requirements of a working interactive application in the public space. Depending on the financial resources, the installation can be more developed in future.

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Interactive Parasit light panels (controllable) light stripes (controllable) web-cams cameras (controllable) microphon speakers (controllable) spotlights (controllable) projectors (controllable)

units camera & microphon speaker

contol panel control of light, sound ... projections ... listen to the sound of wind

light panel light stripe spotlight/ projector

Interactiver Parasit, draft, interactive functions

Draft of the Interactive Parasite

View from Findorff, Parasite at night

Entrance area MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena 129

Views from the site to the parasite, control panel

The Parasite, Entrance area

The site at night 130 MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

Evaluation In the first feedbacks, the employee of the cultural center gave positive and mixed reactions about the installation. The comments ranged from “A sign of art and culture, visible from a long distance” to a irritated “Oh, what’s this?”. In general the interactive issue gets the most attention. There is an interest of further developments. But also misgivings of the strong dominance of the concept, if a similar sculpture would be installed on the ground.

There are several opportunities of research through this installation. It is an open structure and can be modified or extended. There can be analyzed the possibilities of motivation to enter the interaction, the perception by visitors and passers-by and the overall effects to the public space.

With the made experiences there can be proposed a first approach of categorization to evaluate test projects and find out more about the settings and typologies.

First approach of categorization of test projects

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Research and Methods To find out more facts about the effect of Media Architecture in public spaces, the paper suggest to use empirical research combined with test projects.

There are many things to research about Media Architecture in public spaces: First of all is the question about the significant effects of Media Architecture in public spaces. The suspected effects needs to be described and to be analyzed empirically. Only an empirical research can deliver valid and applicable knowledge.

The empirical research works with a mix of methods. It includes mapping, field studies, qualitative interviews, the analysis of the medial and social pattern of interaction as well as the study of open and covered conflicts, of the sense of security and of the typical forms of use. Thereby, a user-centered approach to find out more about the users needs plays an important role.

This mix of methods is developed in the field of planning theory, which researches about the spatial planning and urban development. For example, an evaluation of the quality of public spaces was done with this Mix of Methods by Paravicini (2002).

The research will be enlarged by the concept of “research through design” ( Jonas, 2004). With test projects the effects of public spaces becomes monitored. So the influence of Media Architecture in space can be tested and adjusted. This kind of test arrangement helps to understand the means and the mode of action of Media Architecture in public spaces. Other examples of using test projects to analyze the behavior of people in public spaces are the installation “Magical Mirrors” by Michelis (2009) and the

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experiment “U-DJ” of the Wüstenrot Stiftung (Wüstenrot Stiftung 2009, p.169).

The project Interactive Parasite is initiated with the intension of being a research object.

The next steps of research should be a continuous monitoring of the Interactive Parasite, to analyze single topics through modifications and the further development of the installation. The accumulated knowledge can be used to design update versions and prototypes for different situations in public spaces.

This research aims at developing contextual knowledge to planners and designers and transferable concepts of Media Architecture.

Conclusion So by which measures Media Architecture becomes a social catalyst in the urban public space?

The Key is to bring together the topical issues of urban pubic spaces with the multifaceted possibilities of Media Architecture. This discipline develops a wide range of applications and strategies to create emotions, to impact information, to transform spaces and by this, to touch people’s feelings. This is a great resource and potential.

Urban public spaces are heterogeneous and have complex requirements.

They are still the daily world of experience of people living in the cities. In urban public spaces is formed an essential part of the individual identity.

There, also the values of a democratic society are negotiated.

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To strengthen this public “stage” Media Architecture can add communicative and interactive applications to the urban space. Such as stimulating atmospheres, flexible spaces, activating or calm areas and not at least participative tools. Media Architecture can develop differentiated offers to the various needs of the users. The discussed examples give an insight into this. The design of free and open urban public spaces can be a productive challenge to the discipline. In order to support the appropriation of urban public spaces, Media Architecture can play a special role as a interface of mediation.

The current effects of Media Architecture to the public space one only can guess. There is a lack of empirical research about it.

To explore an approach of empirical research, the paper suggests the use of a mix of qualitative and empirical methods in combination with experiments and test projects founded on the concept of “research through design”.

As a test project, the Interactive Parasite provides various possibilities to research in this way.

The research focuses on the relation between the user, the interactive application and the urban space. The purpose is to develop contextual knowledge and transferable concepts in the field of Media Architecture, which helps to enrich and to open up the usability and atmosphere of urban public spaces by a progressive use of today’s technological possibilities as well as the topical social knowledge.

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140 MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

Cidadania Rolf Kruse Dipl.-Ing. Arch.

FH Erfurt, Interim Professor “Media Design” Altonaer Str. 25, D-99085 Erfurt rolf.kruse@fh-erfurt.de Pedro Aibéo Dipl. Ing. Dipl. Ing. Arch.

Höhler und Partner, Architect Shatti Alqurum, Sultanate of Oman info@cidadania-darmstadt.info

Interactive Spaces Cidadania is an experimental approach to explore new ways to visualize the dynamics of spaces and to make them accessible to a broader audience in a live performance. It is based on two strong believes: Broad understanding of spatial and social development processes and participation is essential for sustainable planning of community spaces.

New media technologies help to communicate and discuss those issues.

Architects have to continuously experiment with the perception of space by ordinary people. Otherwise they are tempted to react to challenges with established principles and patterns instead of adapting up-to-date methods and processes.

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What is Cidadania?

Initiated in 2008 at the Architecture Department of the Technical University Darmstadt, the Cidadania project today is driven by an interdisciplinary and international group of artists, scientists, students and professionals from different areas like architecture, media arts, music, dance, acting, computer science, mechanical engineering, and marketing.

Fig. 1 Interaction between video content and actors

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Organismus Darmstadt

Fig. 2 Collage illustrating the manifold elements of the play

Until now two different plays have been developed and staged in different locations in Europe. The conference presentation will focus on the concept and implementation of the first performance called â&#x20AC;&#x153;Organismus Darmstadtâ&#x20AC;? which dealt with the continuously changing structure of urban space. It was performed in the Staatstheater Darmstadt in 2008.

The two hour performance had manifold elements of interactivity between multimedia content, actors, dancers, musicians and the audience: From specially composed and live performed music (from a Balkan folk group, a Scottish pipe band, a new music ensemble and a jazz quintet) through multiple large moving video screens, up to an Virtual-Reality (VR) installation.

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Changing Spaces Corresponding to the different chapters of the play, which are describing the historical development of the city of Darmstadt, the spatial arrangement of the room changed multiple times. The goal was to keep the audience physically and thus mentally “in motion” as it occurs in our urban space in a slower speed.

In the beginning of the performance the screens only let little space for the audience stepping in while the tribune was occupied by the live band. At first people were irritated, but after some time they arranged themselves to share the provided cubes for sitting.

Fig. 4 ‘Shared Space’: Spatial setup at the beginning of the performance

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Fig. 5 â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Motionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;: Movable screens with 36 m2 synchronized video projection

In contrast to that scenario some other arrangements immersed the audience into the performance: Spectators stood between the projection cones with the actors walking and dancing around them. This situation made them a part of the staging which simulated the experience of a public place.

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Fig. 6 ‘Search’: One of the spatial setups to oblige audience to search for a perfect view spot

Fig. 7 ‘Intimacy’: Dancing scene performed in the narrow space between the screens and the audience 146 MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

Fig. 8 ‘Force’: For the pause, the moving screens slowly “pushed” the audience out of the room while showing a video about the role of the citizen in the super-organism: city.

Virtual Reality Scenario According to the interdisciplinary and cross media approach, a high tech 3D visualization technology was applied. In cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research (IGD-A5) and based on data from the Hessian Ministry of Economics (HMWVL), a large digital model of the city of Darmstadt and detailed 3D models of landmark buildings were created by students. One challenge was to create models that can be rendered in real-time, but still maintain their individual character.

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Fig. 9 Large scale 3D city model

Fig. 10 Rebuilding the City: Texture of landmark building

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From passive to active In a central chapter of the play, up to 10 people from the audience were able to control the movement of the landmark buildings just by wearing a hat and walking in front of a large projected cityscape. This changed their role from a passive spectator to an active participant of the play.

Fig. 11 â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Participationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;: Citizens as planners in the Virtual Reality scene

The real-time interaction was performed in three steps: The first scene shows landmark buildings of the city of Darmstadt (such as historical buildings or new ones such as the Darmstadtium.) as seen from a pedestrian view on a black background. Providing a very compressed tessellated impression of the city.

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Fig. 12 First scene: landmarks buildings recognition

Changing to a slight birdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eye perspective, the layout of the whole city of Darmstadt becomes visible: streets, parks, axes, industrial areas etc. People now are given the task to find the actual locations of the building.

Again the perspective changes to a view almost from top. All other building blocks of the city are added to the scene like an injection. A particle system (as it is known from physical simulations) was used to make these buildings continuously moving around while trying to find the best solution between two potentially opposite conditions: 1) move to the place of origin and 2) avoid collisions with other blocks and especially the landmark buildings.

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Fig. 13 Second scene: Street grid added

The (at first unwanted) jittering of the buildings finally generated a really adequate look associated with organism, change and uncertainty.

In step 1 the participants viewed the buildings from ground like they know from everyday live as citizens (= users of the city). By changing the perspective to a top view they had the chance to see, rearrange and thereby rethink the city like planners often do - but in a playful and collaborative way.

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Fig. 14 Third scene: all other buildings are added

Interaction Technology In the setup for the interactive scene, developed by the Media Faculty of the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences (h_da) with support by Invirt - Virtual Environments GmbH, three cameras (B/W, Firewire) were mounted in the ceiling and observed the space in front of the projection screens.

For tracking the position of the people moving in front of the projection screens, the reacTIVision-Toolkit (Kaltenbrunner and Bencina, 2008) was used. Usually the system is used to track tangible objects on rear-projection systems. In our setup the software detected fiducial markers placed on top hats that the “users” were wearing. The calculated position and rotation of the fiducials were sent to the 3D rendering system via the TUIO protocol.

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Fig. 15 Simulation of the tracking camera view

Fig. 16 Hardware setup; Multichannel video playback, tracking & 3D rendering

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Fig. 18 Hat with Fiducial Marker

To improve the – at first very instable - tracking we applied several measures: · Enlarging the visual features of the fiducials without changing their physical size by reducing their complexity (and the maximum number of users). · Cutting out the markers from a sheet of felt to reduce reflections. · Calibrating each camera to compensate for lens distortion. · Setting up the theatre lighting to light up the interaction space evenly without illuminating the projected images.

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For the realtime rendering of the virtual cityscape the X3D-framework “Instant Reality”, developed by Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics in Darmstadt (Fraunhofer IGD-A4, 2008), was used. The researchers helped with a lot of inside tips and optimizations, like the TUIO communication and the collision avoidance algorithm.

Space and Time “Space and time” is the latest Cidadania performance, developed and performed for the United Nations. Especially written for the “International Astronomy Year 2009” the audience was taken on a mellow journey through current questions of astronomy mixed with society issues.

Fig. 19 Space and time in the UN in 2009

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A 360 degree video projection and 3 other big screens allowed to transform a room radically and to transport a message of knowledge quest.

An “update” to this performance is currently under development and will add dance and theatre play. Premiere in Staatstheater Darmstadt on 26th of November, 2010.

Fig. 20 “Space and time” in Staatstheater in 2009

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Experience and Learnings Since the beginning of the Cidadania project experiences were made on two levels, which are equally important and interwoven: the genesis of the performances and the reaction of the visitors.

Joining together people from many and very different areas, was not at all easy; being partly students and partly professionals working for the experience and the result, but not for the money. Creating something new together is even more difficult since there is no common sample you can reference to. Not all team members have the same potential for open and constantly evolving results.

Most of the people with whom we worked appeal to be left alone with their own field of expertise - rather than to take the interdisciplinary approach.

This one requires a great deal of time and energy to understand all partsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; requests and needs, noticeable for example in rehearsal time management.

This universal principle of energy saving is partially overcome by constant group meetings and also, sadly, by a top-down decision process which was being avoided all time possible. Avoided also due to the non-profitable task everyone was involved.

As the team grew together it was noticeable that the around 80 people directly involved, slowly found their responsibility within the group which increased the quality of the whole.

It is important therefore to maintain an open and transparent dialog between the different creative viewpoints all time and avoid top-down unilateral decisions. Principles which we are preserving for the forthcoming plays.

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Coming Up for 2011 Currently we are working on a new project outside of an auditorium.

Again the driving interest is on awareness for the dynamics of architectural environments and social network through a spatial experience and active participation. But this time we plan to have mobile devices running an Augmented Reality application showing personal and external social relationships as 3D shapes and volumes.

The role each one of us plays within the dynamism of the architecture playground. We intend to translate the experiences made in the last three years of enclosed performances into a “wall free” one.

References and further Sources Aibeo, P. (2008) Video of Augmented Reality Scene, [Online], Available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMMi-EpwzrE [24 Sep 2010].

Cidadania II: Space and Time, United Nations, Vienna (2009), [Online], Available: http://www.unis.unvienna.org/unis/en/events/2009/space-and-time.html [24 Sep 2010].

Cidadania II: Space and Time, World space week (2009), [Online], Available: http://www.astronomy2009.org/news/updates/534/ [24 Sep 2010].

Cidadania, Project Homepage (2010), [Online], Available: http://www.cidadania.info [24 Sep 2010].

Fraunhofer IGD-A4, D. (2008) Instant Reality Framework, [Online], Available: http://www.instant-reality.org [24 Sep 2010].

‘Ich bin das Schloss’, Darmstädter Echo, 17.10.2008.

Kaltenbrunner, M. and Bencina, R. (2008) reacTIVision - Toolkit, [Online], Available: http://reactivision.sourceforge.net [24 Sep 2010].

Ludwig, A. (2008) ‘Interaktives Theater - Die Zuschauer sitzen mittendrin’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 07.10.2008.

‘Zylinder bewegt Hochzeitsturm’, Darmstädter Echo, 17.10. 2008.

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Where the Action Should Be Learning from MicroPublicPlaces Marc Bรถhlen Department of Media Study University At Buffalo www.realtechsupport.org

MicroPublicPlaces [1] (MPP) discussed two prominent vectors of the 21st century: the decay of the public realm and the global expansion of information systems. From the perspective of architectural design practice, the decay of the public realm and the rise of the age of information can be seen as related since architecture is the most public of arts while information design is the most public of technologies. MPP argued that a reinterpretation of the scope and focus of information design has the potential to reinvigorate, on multiple levels, the public realm. A video overview of the work is available here [2].

This short text will add to the discussion of three (of several) information design problems the MPP project considered: hiding, organizing, and materializing data flows [3]. The aim is to show why these issues carry weight beyond the MPP project itself.

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Hiding data flows Mark Weiserâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s observation that profound technologies disappear into the background haunts us today with a new disappearing act: cloud computing. The virtualization paradigm upon which the cloud metaphor is formed is a business bonanza of global proportions. Cloud computing promises carefree data handling, an end to personal responsibility for software management and storage expansion; in short, it replaces personal computing with a more contemporary customer-service based model: offshore computing. The offshore approach was a very successful model for the financial industry, and it promises to be similarly successful for the information industry. Keep the interface personal and local, and move the internal processes to a service center for optimal control, efficiency and cost reduction. Just as telephone call centers were once outsourced to East Asia, data storage and processing centers are now disappearing into the background.

However, at present, the background is not predominantly in the developing world. The European Commission has approved only a handful of countries to provide cloud computing services: the United States, Canada and Argentina, where they believe privacy laws sufficiently protect consumers [4]. The business of offshoring computing writes its own rules.

Proximity to major markets and robust energy infrastructure reverse the cheap labor seeking, distance-agnostic mandate of globalization. In addition to numerous startups, many global IT powerhouses are heavily invested in cloud computing as it scales across different user groups and cultural divides with ease.

With an emphasis on comfort and convenience it seems hard to imagine why the cloud should not be celebrated by everyone. A foretaste of the

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dark side of the cloud can be found in the design details of data centers that house the data and algorithms computer users demand. Here it becomes apparent just how inappropriate, but seductive, the cloud metaphor is.

There is nothing heavenly about cloud computing â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the action happens in real places, in strategically selected cities, towns and remote villages.

These private islands of computing, however, are not part of the local fabric in which they are set. And the critical computing resources they hold are subject to the rules of private ownership. Guest data is accepted by invitation only.

The Stone Mountain Dataplex [5] (SMD) in Kentucky USA - currently under construction - serves as a case in point. The SMD will set new standards for ultra secure data storage for discerning clients. Carved into a mountain of limestone, SMD will be an autonomous data zone, sealed behind solid steel blast doors and concrete bunkers. It will have on site water and sewage treatment, a fire station, a helipad, a power plant, medical facilities, regular and random foot and vehicle patrols, perimeter fencing with sensors, ground radar, infrared cameras, motion detection, biometric access control, remote IP based video and audio monitoring, license plate recognition, vehicle barrier systems, guarded gates, an onsite SWAT quick response team, EMF shielding and multiple tiers of electronic network security, as well as police powers granted by the state to onsite security personnel. All this results in, as the prospectus claims, â&#x20AC;&#x153;indefinite self-sustainability for complete stand-alone operability no matter what happens off-site.â&#x20AC;?

A new digital divide is establishing itself quietly in the background of the public sphere. It separates the very-well-to-do with access to indefinite militarized data storage from everyone else.

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Organizing data flows Who decides how information systems are designed? How are the rules that control them applied, and how can one modify or contest them? The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an example of an organization responsible for such rules, and IEEE mission statement claims to “foster technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity” [6]. IEEE has established a growing and evolving set of rules and standards that describe and unify the development and use of technical systems. Some of the standards are voluntary and others are consensus based industry agreements. They cover everything from learning technology to environmental impact assessment.

From the vantage point of critical media design in the public realm, the IEEE Standard 1471 is a particularly interesting example of standards invention and negotiation. 1471 “addresses the activities of the creation, analysis, and sustainment of architectures of software-intensive systems” [7]. 1471 is a „recommended practice’ but important because it introduces succinct entry points and defined relationships for the concept of stakeholder with concerns into large-scale software design processes. 1471 proposes a framework that, in principle, should allow competing interests from multiple stakeholders [8] to be represented in the design process [Fig. 1].

Clearly, 1471 should be a discussion topic amongst humanities scholars.

Despite the proximity of the 1471 standards description to the language of the social sciences – it seems that even Bruno Latour’s Parliament of Things might find a home in 1471 – there has been little creative interpretation of 1471. This is not because 1471 does not allow for contrarians to be included.

Indeed, IEEE claims to seek input from beyond its expert community.

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However, access to the design process is reserved to a membership group, and this group must meet certain „membership criteria’ (hold research affiliation). There is no shared discussion on how concerns can be represented across the disciplines. This problem is not just a consequence of the defense mechanisms of the gate keepers. Humanities professionals simply do not venture outside of their gated communities enough. Deep mistrust between the social and engineering sciences continue to prevent a joint approach to a problem that concerns all. Consequently, the only people actively developing the 1471 framework are engineers, systems designers and representatives of corporations. Critical media designers, philosophers, and hackers remain noticeably absent in the process.

Media interventions in the past have been overly concerned with the events that occur at the presentation stage of technical artifacts such as interface and interaction. A next challenge is to get under the surface of systems. Instead of worrying about mobile phone screen candy and graphically striking „skins’, designers should consider the crucial innards of mobile services such as billing algorithms. Such a shift to infrastructure intervention and design would not be without precedent.

Fig. 1 Diagram of the IEEE Standard 1471

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Net art practitioners were initially proud to claim that their work derived its conceptual significance from being driven by data sources, not data displays. A 1997 diagram [Fig. 2] by Mark River and Tim Whidden [9] shows where they believed the art happened â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in the connection cables carrying the bit streams between computers. Network interventions (at least in the current incarnation of the Internet) are much easier to perform than intervention into regulation, indeed the latter requires a different approach altogether.

Fig. 2 The simple net art diagram

The Wikipedia solution is one example of an intervention into knowledge regulation. Instead of working by the established rules, Wikipedia made its own; from the ground up, and let everyone contribute. However, as the project matured and institutionalized, tensions amongst the various contribution constituencies increased, and some contested entries had to be protected from editor-vandals [10]. Wisdom is not always with the crowd, and â&#x20AC;&#x17E;concernsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; can be insufficient criteria for expertise.

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Materializing data flows The continuing growth in the field of bit design often seems to contrast fundamental constraints in atoms design; compression of information is so much easier than compression of matter. Fabrication labs such as the Center for Bits and Atoms [11] struggle with physical gravity and friction.

But in some domains even these problems can be overcome. Genomics has embraced information theory and is in place to transform biology into an engineering discipline, building enzymes block by block [12]. Trailer sized 3D printers are being developed to build, layer upon diligently deposited smooth layer, full-scale houses in any formal arrangement [13].

And fiber optic communication research is redefining the old binary data transmission scheme. New long haul transmission and detection systems make use of polarization multiplexing and phase shift keying of laser signals to encode four instead of one (intensity based) value, even at record setting transmission rates [14].

These impressive initiatives are successful because they restrict the problem of material design to a defined problem and omit unnecessary baggage.

The fundamental principles of information theory are indifferent to the meaning of the messages they operate on. The improvements of transmission and storage bring along no improvement in quality of content. The quantitative turn of the 20th century saw information theory surpass semiotics and robotics outperform cybernetics because they deliver operational results while their counterparts lack a formal framework. Will the quantitative and qualitative approaches never find common ground?

Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t look for an answer on Twitter.

Maybe additional experiments in materializing data flows should be considered. What if the â&#x20AC;&#x17E;baggage removal constraintsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; were selected with

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different goals in mind. For example, when Danny Hillis of the Long Now Foundation considered how to build a clock that could operate for the next 10’000 years [15], he decided not to work with today’s green-energy darling solar electric as it suffers from „poor maintainability’. Since Hillis understood that there is no reliable (and easy to maintain) way to keep a timing element operating precisely for 10’000 years, he decided to use a coupled system, an unreliable timer that adjusts an inaccurate timer in a mechanical digital loop. Because Hillis wanted to embed the idea of responsibility into the fabric of this clock, he chose to make it dependent on people, on „human winding’, sacrificing operational efficiency for engagement, favoring social robustness and participation over simplicity of operation. It is only through the responses to the constraints-requirements nexus of extreme long duration that this public clock makes any sense.

And the sense it generates symbiotically supports clock logic as a means to create that which no other clock can generate; a shared responsibility for a sane future.

Very inefficient systems can be socially very robust. Consider motorcycles in Thailand, where some 60% of all motor vehicles registered in 2005 were inexpensive 2-stroke engine motorcycles [16]. Cheap, reliable and maneuverable, motorcycles are indispensable parts of the urban infrastructure with their own transportation dialects. Public motorcycles, for example, form a link between bus and train transportation hubs and public housing. It is not uncommon that a single public motorcycle carries several passengers on its small seat. This is a semi-intimate, public, poisonous but adaptable transportation subculture and a mobile and uncontrollable force; a new kind of street-smart, grassroots force with undeniable power as recent rallies and demonstrations [17] have shown.

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Thinking of information as a material, and materials (of all kinds) as information allows for new kinds of flows. They can be powerful, if one can find and implement, carefully, constraints that selectively privilege one over the other in order to generate qualities neither has alone. For critical media design this may require some introspection; considering the dessert, the ocean, the glacier, and the void; places of harshest constraints and unrecorded potentials.

Fig. 3 WorldWaterOne, detail (courtesy RealTechSupport)

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References [1] Frei, H., Böhlen, M. , 2010, MicroPublicPlaces, New York, Architectural League of New York [2] MPP [online] http://www.realtechsupport.org/new_works/mpp.html [3] Data flows as coined by Manuel Castells and interpreted by Felix Stalder in: Stalder, F., 2001. The Space of Flows-notes on emergence, characteristics and possible impact on physical space, 5th International PlaNet Congress. [online] http://felix.openflows.com/html/space_of_flows.html [4] O’Brien, K., Cloud Computing Hits Snag in Europe, New York Times, September 20.

[5] Stone Mountain Dataplex. [online] http://stonemountaindataplex.com/ [6] IEEE Mission. [online] http://www.ieee.org/about/vision_mission.html [7] IEEE 1471. [online] http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/ std_public/description/se/1471-2000_desc.html [8] The term stakeholder is used in finance, sociology and resource management to describe a person or entity with an interest (a stake) or concern in a process and its outcome. See The International Development Research Center, Science for Humanity, Chapter 5: Stakeholder analysis and conflict management. [online] http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-27971-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html as well as Robertson, S., Robertson, J., 1999, Mastering the Requirements Process, Addison-Wesley.

[9] RiverM.,WhiddenT.,MTAA.[online]http://www.mteww.com/nad.html [10] Wikipedia: Ein Kritischer Standpunkt. Konferenzbericht Session II: Digitale Governance, 24.-26. September 2010. [online] Leipzig, http://www.cpov.de/?p=758 [11] CenterforBitsandAtoms.[online].http://cba.mit.edu/about/index.html [12] DNA20.[online]https://www.dna20.com/index.php [13] Contourcrafting.[online]http://www.contourcrafting.org/ [14] Charlet,G., Salsi,M., Bertolini,M., 2009, Taking long repeated submarine systems to 40 Gbit/s and beyond, ECOC 2009, Paper 9.7.3, 20-24 September, Vienna, Austria.

[15] TheLongNowandthe10„000yearclock.[online] http://www.longnow.org/clock/principles/ [16] Warapetcharayut, P., Kuson , M., 2006, The Management of Motorcycles in Thailand, BAQ Workshop, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 13-15 Dec. [17] Sopranzetti,C.,2010,Motorcycletaxisliveinthecracksof Thaisocie ty[online] http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2010/07/21/ interview-with-claudio-sopranzetti-the-politics-of-motorcycl e-taxis/

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Sound as Interface Petros Kataras University College London The Bartlett School of Graduate Studies petroskataras@gmail.com www.kataraspetros.wordpress.com Ermis Adamantidis University College London The Bartlett School of Graduate Studies ermis.adamantidis.09@ucl.ac.uk Alaa Alfakara University College London The Bartlett School of Graduate Studies alaa.alfakara.09@ucl.ac.uk

Abstract Sound as Interface is a reactive sound installation for public spaces that investigates people to people interactions and the relation between peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s behavior and public space in the case of a digitally augmented environment. Ubiquitous computing and new digital technologies embedded in the urban environment increasingly facilitate the emergence of new types of social interaction through the blending of the physical with the digital. The research project presented in this paper sets to explore how these new patterns of social behavior emerge and unfold in an urban scenario enhanced with a digital medium for interaction and what are the implications for social awareness and engagement in this hybrid space.

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Observational studies and analysis of a site specific urban condition are combined with an experiment that involves the implementation of an unconventional urban interface in the form of an acoustic installation that challenges established modes of social encounters. Results show that people are willing to compromise their social boundaries when faced with a sonic installation/intervention inside their spatial and social space.

Introduction Sound as Interface can be seen as a metaphor for the ubiquitous digital platforms for social interactions that nowadays constitute a fragmented and elusive network of virtual public spaces that usually work in parallel or even substitute the physical public space and its traditional role as a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;stageâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; for social encounters. Apart from being just a metaphor Sound as Interface is also an actual experiment on emergent behaviors through the unconventional use of embedded technologies and the production of novel urban experiences. The aim of Sound as Interface is to create the potential of social interactions through the use of digital technologies with sound as the medium and also to examine if there exists any connection between these interactions and the surrounding spatial properties. Indoor or outdoor public spaces can be charged with an invisible sonic layer that manifests itself only through the interaction with the physical presence of people. McLuhan distinguished space into two categories: visual space & acoustic space and according to him we have overstimulated our visual sense over our acoustic sense [Federman, 2003]. Federman takes McLuhan thoughts even further in an attempt to give credit back to a neglected acoustic space. For him, it describes perfectly the digital reality of today that restructures our social interactions. Contrary to visual space which

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is linear and bounded, ordered and continuous, acoustic space constitutes a resonant sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose boundaries are nowhere, a world of simultaneous relationships [Federman, 2003].

Sound as Interface raises interesting issues concerning the relation of people with sound in the contemporary urban environment and the limits and affordances of sound when used as a medium to entice people into a shared experience of interaction. Several factors that affect people’s reaction to sound are identified such as the existing soundscape or the time of the day. By experimenting with different qualities of sound (volume, frequency, vocal/instrumental/industrial) the installation can offer an insight for general issues on other similar acoustic installations as well as for issues of sound perception in urban soundscapes.

Background & related projects Several projects have addressed issues of social encounters through a digitally augmented environment. Some of them bare a certain resemblance to the project presented here because they use sound as a medium for interaction. Audio Grove for example was an interactive light and sound installation by Christian Moeller consisting of 56 vertical steel posts connected to a touch-sensitive sensor system [Moeller, 2000]. This forest of vertical posts functioned as an interface through which sound and light were physically experienced and controlled. The installation was placed in an art gallery and the visitors could evoke a soundscape by touching the posts. Nevertheless, the project was not tested in an open public space but only in the “safe” and controlled space of a gallery.

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On the other hand, the project Piano Stairs in Stockholm focused exactly on the issue of influencing people’s behavior through a reactive platform using sound [The Fun Theory, 2009]. More specifically, the installation transformed the stairs of a subway station into giant piano keyboard that produced sounds when someone stepped on it. The project investigated whether it is possible to alter people’s habit of using the escalators in favor of the stairs by introducing an element of fun. However, in this case the effects of the installation were informally described and the focus was not on the emergent patterns of interaction between the people but only on the change of a specific habit.

Carolina Brione’s LED’s Urban Carpet, although a project that did not involve sound, it is considered relevant as it aimed at the creation of shared social encounters through the use of digital technologies [Briones, et al, 2007]. More specifically the project consists of a grid of LEDs that can be embedded as an interactive carpet into the urban context. A pattern of lights is generated dynamically following the pedestrians over the carpet and involving them as active participants in an unintentional shared experience. The project also introduces broader issues of pervasive computing and digital systems in contemporary architectural and urban spaces.

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Methodology Our methodological approach can be divided in to three distinct parts; observation, empirical experiments and data analysis. The space where the installation was situated, was recorded and observed before, during and after the installation time. The goal was to have as many input parameters as possible for the analysis. The collected data (video, photos) from the experiment were analyzed and compared.

Installation set up The location of the installation was chosen to be the area outside PrintRoom café at UCL main campus. In order to best understand the properties of such a location we have to first present the notion of transient spaces. Transient spaces, also referred to as indeterminate spaces, are spaces very difficult to quantify because of their inherent heterogeneity [ Jund, 2007]. Although many researchers refer in a negative way to the specific spaces, in the present research we use this term in order to highlight specific characteristics of the aforementioned spaces in the context of our research. Temporality and the characteristic of no explicitly assigned function are two of the characteristics of such spaces [ Jund, 2007]. The space outside the PrintRoom café although outdoor and transient, acts as a link between different spaces of the campus, where different categories of people spent time forming engaging and diverse groups. The combination of these attributes creates the potential of a dynamic open urban social ‘’scene’’, where multiple type of interactions can take place.

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Figure 1. Location.

Sound as Interface consists of an array of two (IR) infrared proximity sensors, forming two distinct sound ‘’corridors’’. The infrared sensors can calculate the distance of objects , by continuously taking distance readings which are then translated into analog voltage values, within a range of approximately 5 meters . The sensors are connected with an Arduino board which sends the corresponded analog reading values (based on people’s proximity), in to a program written in Processing programming language.

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexibly, easy-to-use hardware and software [http://www.arduino.cc/].

Processing is an open-source programming language and environment based on Java programming language [http://processing.org/]. The program utilizes SoundCipher Processing library [http://soundcipher. org/] in order to produce different sounds, with different qualities, according to the received values, which are then produced back from a set of speakers. There exists a direct link between the distance of the people from the sensors and the generated sounds; the more close the people are, the more intense, fast and different is the produced sound. This has as a result, the rise of curiosity and interest on how the installation works and sets the foundations for potential interactions.

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Figure 2. Sensors attached to tubular elements.

Figure 3. Final installation set up.

The final set-up of the installation included a visual indication in the form of coloured tapes pasted on the ground which acted as guide lines. The experiment was performed in two stages; the first test was performed without showing people how the installation works in order to test their initial reactions and interactions, while the second test was performed by asking some colleges to interact with the installation, thus providing an indication of how the installation works.

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Results & Future work Sound as Interface has strong links with Hall’s theory of proxemics and the concept of reaction bubbles that he introduced [Hall, 1966]. According to Hall a person’s space is divided in to three categories: the intimate space (the closest ‘’bubble’’ of space surrounding a person), the social space (the space in which people conduct social interactions) and the public space (the era of space beyond which people perceive interactions as impersonal and anonymous) [Hall, 1966]. In the first case of experiments results showed that the amount of people that where willing to engage with an unfamiliar environment on their own was smaller when compared to the results that where obtained from the second case. In the first case, although people were curious about the nature and the characteristics of the installation, they presented a hesitation as it concerns their reaction towards the installation. Their interest was based more on the understanding of how the installation works and less on the process of interaction.

Figure 4. Social & physical interactions between strangers.

Figure 5. Social & physical interactions between friends 176 MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

This was not the case in the second set of experiments where people were indirectly introduced in the installation by observing others interacting. In this case results showed that people became less interested on the how things work and more interested in the process of interaction and engagement.

This tendency of people to mimic behaviors was most apparent when they encountered other people interacting with the installation. They became interested and they were willing to negotiate their social and physical boundaries. This might have links with research in human psychology and psychoanalysis which relates social human behavior and a tendency of humans to follow the majority. The results also showed that the decision of the location plays a significant role in the success of the specific research.

A similar experiment carried out in a constrained indoor space did not produce the same results. People weren’t interested at all in any kind of interaction and they remained constrained in their predefined ‘’reaction bubbles’’. The characteristics and the nature of urban spaces where an intervention will be carried out has a major impact in the success or failure of the attempt and it must always be taking into account.

Future research should include a more in-depth investigation of the links, if there exist any, between the sounds produced and the observed human interactions. It may be true that specific sounds ,such the ones that can be found in contemporary urban soundscapes, can have different affects in the observed human behavior and this should be examined further.

In addition to that, a potential interesting direction could be to examine the effects that different type of interfaces (visual vs acoustic) have in the interactions between humans. It is possible that an acoustic approach could produce interesting and non-intuitive results in respect to humanhuman interactions and human-technology interaction.

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Conclusions Sound as Interface explored the possibilities that arise for social encounters and interaction in urban spaces through the introduction of a sound installation. The recent advantages in digital technologies, creative programming and physical computing offer new ways for the construction of novel experiences which can be embedded in our surrounding spaces.

The installation, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;forcedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; people to compromise their intimate and social boundaries in order to interact with each other and also offered a chance for people to explore an augmented sonic environment. The installation also provided us with an insight on how people react in the stimulation of our acoustic sense which has been neglected over time in favor of our visual sense. Results showed that a non-visual, acoustic approach can potentially produce very interesting results as it concerns the interaction between people and also the interaction between people and digital technologies.

The successful embodiment of virtual spaces as an additional layer on top of the existing physical spaces greatly depends on the characteristics and the properties of the latter. The affordances of different spaces vary significantly and it is only by an appropriate coupling of the physical with the digital that we will be able to achieve meaningful interactions.

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Acknowledgment The authors would like to express their gratitude to Shaojun Fan and Jamie Thompson for their contribution.

The authors would also like to thank Ava Fatah gen. Schieck, Marilena Skavara, Vlad Tenu and Katerina Papapavlou for their invaluable support during the EEmTech project.

This project was developed as part of the Module: Embedded and Embodied Technologies on the MSc Adaptive Architecture and Computation, UCL, London.

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References Briones C., Fatah gen. Schieck A., Mottram C. A 2007, A Socializing Interactive Installation for the Urban Environments.

In IADIS Applied Computing 2007, Salamanca, Spain Hall, E.T. 1966, The Hidden Dimension, Anchor Books Federman M. 2003, The Cultural Paradox of the Global Village.

The McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology http://www. utoronto.ca/mcluhan/article_culturalparadox.htm Alarcon Diaz X. 2007, An Interactive Sonic Environment Derived from Commutersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Memories of the Soundscape: A Case Study of the London Underground.

Leicester, United Kingdom. PhD Thesis. De Montfort University, Leicester.

Jund D. 2007, Transient Spaces: Habitat of the Outcast. Presented in The Theory Forum 2007, University of Sheffield, School of Architecture.

Moeller C. 2000, Audio Grove: Interactive light and sound installation, http://www.christian-moeller.com/display.php?project_id=6 Fatah gen Schiek A., Briones C., Mottram C. 2007, A sense of place and pervasive computing within the urban landscape. Proceedings, 6th International Space Syntax Symposium, Istanbul.

Bringnull H., Rogers Y. 2003. Enticing People to Interact with Large Public Displays in Public Spaces. Interact Lab, School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton.

TheFunTheory. 2009 http://www.thefuntheory.com/ Processing, http://www.processing.org/ Arduino, http://www.arduino.cc/

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Sonic Activation Spectral Architectural Memories Eva Sjuve moolab.net eva@moomonkey.com

Ghost Scraper Ghost Scraper is a networked urban device on wheels, designed for new kinds of interactions with sounds from ghosts. Interaction is tactile and uses urban space material as source to activate spectral sounds embedded in architectural material. Spectral sounds are weak electromagnetic signals from ghosts transformed by Ghost Scraper into sounds, a ghost hunt tradition started by the pioneers of wireless technologies Thomas Alva Edison and Guglielmo Marconi in the 1920s and 1930s. Ghost scraper is a mobile tool for new ways of audience participation, to interconnect and engage with the urban environment, a design to explore the city beyond normality. Audience engagement in using Ghost Scraper may lead to new kinds of urban exploration, and new kinds of listening. Ghost Scraper is a green tool, using solar panels to feed the unitâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s power system and is with this limited to environments with a certain amount of sun hours.

It is running open source software to freely expand on and update the apparatus capabilities.

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Spectral Sounds By using Ghost Scraper’s technology with microphones, the material of urban space, as for example walls, staircases, and pavements are activated to reveal its spectral sounds. Do the sound of ghosts, embedded in material, leave traces as memories, or are spectral sounds always a real-time process?

This project fits within a larger scope of research in sonic wireless, mobile and networked devices. Previous projects in this field have been AudioTagger, a sonic snapshot collector for mobile phones, to build a sonic map on the Internet of spontaneous recordings (Sjuve 2007, 2008) and GO, a wireless interface used for sound synthesis of electromagnetic waves (Sjuve 2008b). Ghost Scraper, due to its focus on spectral sounds, is speculative and playful, looking at the imaginary sonic properties in urban space to activate its hidden auditory signals, “giving an auditory face to a place” (Sjuve 2009, p.2).

Some of the pioneers in wireless transmissions, as Thomas Alva Edison and Guglielmo Marconi worked with the development of new technologies to find ways for the living to listen to ghosts. Edison developed a technology called the Valve in early 1920s to be able to listen to ghosts, but no record exists of his invention (Sconce 2000, A.K. 1921-1922, pp.132141). Edison’s Valve technology picked up electromagnetic waves and transformed them into sounds. Marconi was experimenting with new kinds of radio technologies at the end of his life, trying to record voices of people from beyond (Sconce 2000, p.61).

Edison and Marconi believed ghosts emitted electromagnetic waves, and a detector could therefore discover them. With wireless technologies a tradition of using electromagnetic detectors to discover ghosts was introduced, and according to Sconce, with Edison and Marconi “the 182 MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

shadow history of telecommunication” started (Sconce 2000, p.83). Since then there has been an array of techniques used in detecting and recording ghosts, such as infrared motion detectors, television sets, particle detectors or a Geiger meter, ion detectors to sense static electricity, or a tape recorder connected to a radio.

Friedrich Jürgensen, a Swedish documentary filmmaker was the first one to discover voices from beyond one day when he recorded birds singing in his garden in the late 1950s, using a microphone and tape recorder. Some time later he connected the tape recorder to a radio using an unoccupied frequency on the medium wave band. Jürgensen held a press conference by the time he published his first book Voices from Space in 1964 with researchers from the Max Planck Institute and Institute for Theoretical Physics in Clausthal, Germany to examine and verify his findings ( Jürgensen 1964, Smith 1977).

Another researcher working with spectral communication was psychologist and philosopher Dr. Konstantin Raudive. In the 1970s he built radio devices to receive voice communication from the dead as Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) (Sconce 2000). Raudive employed five different methods to record spectral messages, techniques he called microphone voices, diode voices, radio, and radio frequency voices, described in Break-Through; an Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication With the Dead (Raudive 1971, pp.20-27). Raudive also describes in his book, the sound of ghosts as a flow of different voices in different languages at a very fast speed located in our physical space (1971, p.15). Just as Edison and Marconi, Raudive thinks the sounds of ghosts are very subtle electromagnetic waves. Raudive writes how the sounds from beyond become audible as he “receives these subtle vibrations and create electromagnetic fields on tape which are transformed into sound waves MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena 183

and made audible” (Raudive 1971, p. 24).

So, how have the recordings of Electronic Voice Phenomena been perceived? The EVP have been perceived as flow of speech, sometimes engaging in a dialogue with the researcher using a tape recorder. Ghost speech being for Jürgensen and Raudive part of a flow of electromagnetic information, or a flux described in Deleuze and Gauttari’s words, “The process is what we call flux”, and the tape machine is a “system that cuts the fluxes” (Guattari 2009).

Urban Material Urban space and its architectural material is the focus when searching for ghost communication. Ghost Scraper is a mobile tool developed for urban space praxis, to engage the audience in a play activity. The audience is engaged by following the simple instruction, to search for sounds of ghosts. Johan Huizinga describes the function of play in his writings in Homo Ludens; a Study of the Play Elements in Culture, where he defines the three main characteristics of play. Play is freedom. Play has distinct rules. Play is set outside of ordinary life and distinct from ordinary life in both locality and duration. Play is to step out into “a temporary sphere of activity”, according to Huizinga (1950, p.8). In addition to Huizinga’s characteristics of play, the engagement with Ghost Scraper activities depends largely on the unpredictable communication by ghosts.

Lefebvre speaks in Writings on Cities about the rights people have to the city. He describes it as a social need in urban society, outside of commercial and cultural infrastructures, realized in the form of moments of creative activities, the need for the unpredictable, information, play, and the use

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of the imaginary (1996, p.147). The design of Ghost Scraper allows for an active participation of the audience, to engage in urban space in novel ways, and play beyond normality, crossing over to the supranatural.

In the praxis of Ghost Scraper the bridging of architectural material, urban space, interactive computational media and ghost communication leads to an auditory output shared between the participating audiences. There exist not a specific place in the quest for spectral sounds of ghosts, but the weak signals of ghosts have to be found by moving about in urban space. The mobility of Ghost Scraper allows the audience to move about in the urban landscape and to explore the material in new ways. The praxis of searching for ghost sounds can be seen as a tactic rather than a strategy, according to de Certeau in The Practice of Everyday Life, where “a tactic is determined by the absence of power just as a strategy is organized by the postulation of power” (1988, p.38).

Measurement of resonant frequencies in material includes the use of microphones, one of many techniques used by material engineers. There are natural occurrences of sound travel between atoms in all materials.

When energy is put into a material, such as sounds from ghosts, sonic resonance can be measured. Now, the question is if ghosts can cause these kind of sonic vibrations in material and are they detectable?

The city can be seen as an operating system with many ongoing processes, social processes, information flow, commercial processes, where the audience uses Ghost Scraper to tap into this multitude of activity.

Examining the city with Ghost Scraper, as a tool is when, “the science of the city has the city as object”, Lefebvre writes, when scientific methods are used but analysis slips away because of the continuous actuality of the urban (1996, p.148).

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Electromagnetic waves penetrate the building material of urban space, and in fact almost anything, people, and buildings. McKenzie Wark writes about third nature as an information layer on top of the second nature as geographic landscape, â&#x20AC;&#x153;which appears to us as the geography of cities and roads and harbours and wool stores is progressively overlayed with a third nature of information flows, creating an information landscape which almost entirely covers the old territoriesâ&#x20AC;? (1994, p.120).

If the electromagnetic waves from ghostâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s resonances in building material, the second nature and third nature are more than layered, they are mixed on atomic level. Ghost Scraper, due to its mobility can be used independent of a specific place. Three Ghost Scraper devices are interconnected through a local network. When a sound out of the ordinary is detected, the other Ghost Scraper devices in proximity are notified. Using networks are experiential matters, and the act of listening is part of the process.

The network bridges the urban material, audience participation, and information flow beyond normality. Designing for the supranormal does not need to be in accordance with scientific laws, but for that of play.

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References A.K., 1921 - 1922. The Secret Doctrine and Mr. Edison.

Theosophical Quarterly Magazine, pp.132-141. de Certeau, M., 1988. The Practice of Everyday Life.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

Guattari, F., 2009. Chaosophy. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).

Huizinga, J. 1950. Homo ludens; a study of the play elements in culture. Boston: Beacon Press.

Jürgensen, F., 1964. Rösterna från rymden. Stockholm: Saxon & Lindström Förlag.

Lefebvre, H., 1996. Writings on Cities. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Raudive, K., 1971. Break-Through; an amazing experiment in electronic communication with the dead. New York: Lancer Books.

Sconce, J., 2000. Haunted Media: Electronic presence: from telegraphy to television. Durham: Duke University Press.

Sjuve, E., 2007. AudioTagger: wireless phonography. [online] Proceedings Digital Art Weeks Symposium.

Zürich: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH). Available at: <http://www.digitalartweeks.ethz.ch/docs/daw07proc/ poster-sjuve.pdf>. [Accessed September 27, 2010].

Sjuve, E., 2008. New wireless phonography in urban space: audioTagger.

In: ISEA. The 14th International Symposium on Electronic Arts.

Singapore 25 July - 03 August 2008. Singapore: ISEA2008 Pte Ltd. Sjuve, E., 2008b. Prototype GO: a wireless controller for Pure Data.

8th International Conference New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME08). Genova 5-7 June 2008. Genova: NIME08.

Sjuve, E., Ghost Scraper: Sonic Activation on wheels. 7th Creativity and Cognition Conference (CC09). Berkeley 27-30 October 2009. New York: ACM Press.

Smith, S., 1977. Voices of the Dead. New York: New American Library.

Wark, M., 1994. Third nature, Cultural Studies, 8(1), pp.115-132.

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Fernfühler – Intelligent Furniture for the Architecture of Tomorrow Matthias Weber Develicious Studios Weber, matthias.weber@develicious.de Sebastian Hundertmark Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, sebastian.hundertmark@uni-weimar.de Ursula Damm Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, ursula.damm@uni-weimar.de

Abstract Observing people on a public space is a widely discussed topic in several research fields and also in the arts. The “Fernfühler” project wants to take this one step further. “Fernfühler” actually integrate the place, they observe people and react on their behavior, thereby changing the place. They are an architectural component of the place, an intelligent component.

“Intelligence” is incorporated by using a neural network. Each “Fernfühler” acts as a neuron therefore enclosing the whole place in this network.

Introduction The observation of public spaces has been a topic in both science and the arts for a long time. Science provides quantitative and qualitative methods to describe pedestrian crowds and pedestrian interaction. With person tracking and intelligent algorithms it is possible to observe the behavior MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena 189

of people moving on a site. Statistic methods provide measurable data to categorize and evaluate such behavior. In comparison, few is known about the impact of architecture and the design of public spaces on the ambiance of a site.

Present systems only passively observe places and pedestrians on it without influencing the situation. What would happen, if the space itself could change? Taking this one step further: What if a place itself would observe passers-by and respond to their behavior to the point of influencing them?

This is the essential question behind the “Fernfühler” project (see Fig. 1). The project proposes the creation of fluctuating spatial settings, to foster the understanding of the relation between urban design and human behavior therein. This paper first outlines related work which somehow led to the idea of “Fernfühler”, followed by a section on intelligent elements a “Fernfühler” could be built of in general. This leads to the construction of the specific “Fernfühler” proposed in this work. Finally, a conclusion summarizes the various aspects of this paper.

Figure 1: Fernfühler on a public place 190 MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

Related Work Though there is not enough understanding of the impact of architecture on public spaces and especially on the behavior of people, an interesting work on architecture and public places is presented in (Rose, 2008). Additionally, observation of pedestrians on such spaces and especially crowd behavior was described in (Moussaïd, 2010). Observation is only one aspect in studying crowd behavior. Crooks et al. (Crooks, 2007) present an agent-based crowd simulation. Johansson et al. (Johansson, 2007) combine analyzing people’s motion and using a crowd simulation to study evacuation scenarios, pilgrimage, and urban environments.

Schaur (Schaur, 1992) describes the unplanned development of settlements which shows how architecture can develop in an uncontrolled manor. An overview of various aspects of the connection between physical spaces, architecture and games is shown (von Borries, 2007). In contrast to Schaur games often use planned architecture.

As an example for public spaces responding to pedestrian activity the installation “world lines” – a public art project for the Metro Station “Schadowstrasse” in Düsseldorf – consists of interactive, illuminated paving stones arranged in an irregular pattern on a square above the metro station.

The stones react on the movement of passers-by by emitting light. This data is collected and processed into a generative video, extrapolating the movements of pedestrians into the future and constructing a new, virtual image.

None of the current related work combines the principles of observing people and crowd behavior and proposes an impact on this behavior by means of intelligent architecture. This work presents an approach geared towards such a combination. The following section describes the necessary elements to achieve this goal in principle.

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Intelligent Elements In general, an observed place has to be furnished with sensors and intelligent elements that react on people. Such elements could be interactive illumination, moving barriers or exhibits that shift corresponding to the behavior of people. Moving obstacles should have a significant impact on people’s (spatial) behavior. Another category of objects that supposedly will be highly influential concerning the behavior of people is moving furniture. Therefore, such types of elements are worthwhile to be investigated or to be included in art work.

Different technologies could be embodied in such intelligent elements.

They should lack the ability to sense people, while influencing the outlook and the design of a place. Those elements should be able to learn about a location by observing pedestrians circulating on it. Also they should be able to act on site according to what they have learned. In consequence, these elements could become operators of a kind of “learning machine“. The setup becomes even more interesting if a place is regarded as intelligent life form: It could function as a neural network, like a brain, responding to peoples behavior. The aforementioned intelligent elements would be the sensors and actors of such a neural network. This is what this project is aiming for: The place as an entity shall learn about pedestrian behavior and respond to it.

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Specific Fernfühler “Fernfühler”, in their specific occurrence, are seating options for public spaces that can move around at will (see Fig. 2). Instead of offering seating in public place as permanently fixed arrangements, mobile groups of seats are provided. These communicate with passers-by and each other, and discover thereby, through experimentation, the optimal arrangement of elements on a site.

Figure 2: Fernfühler as special chairs moving around

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The “Intelligent” Part – A Neural Network “Fernfühlers” are part of a neural network which fully encloses a place.

Such a neural network can sense a site and can change it. This is achieved by sensing people with each “Fernfühler” and by moving the “Fernfühlers” according to the behavior of and the communication with the passers-by.

“Fernfühlers” position themselves relatively to the behavior of people, but at the same time the design of the “Fernfühlers” defines the usage of a space. The “Fernfühlers” correspond to neurons of a neural network, the very basic element of such learning systems. An example of such a neural network is presented in Fig. 3. It is a so-called self-organizing map (SOM) which works as a memory of space, learning the walking behavior of pedestrians.

Figure 3: A Self-Organizing Map (2D and 3D variants)

“Fernfühlers” will be the integral part of such a SOM. A SOM is unsupervised learning method. It can learn data without the need for a teacher or so-called teaching input. Additionally, SOMs are winner-based networks. They first search for a winning neuron and then adapt the network based on this winner. The adaptation works by attracting each 194 MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

neuron to a certain point in space. The grade of attraction depends on the distance of this point to the winner and on distance between winner and currently adapted neuron. For this adaptation, a point in space can be the coordinates of any person walking on the observed public space.

Such a simple adaptation process can lead to certain distractions in the neural network. One of the most common problems is that all neurons could be attracted to only one point that does not move. All neurons would end up on one point and can not be separated any more. To overcome this problem the learning process has to be changed accordingly. The velocity of passers-by could be integrated. Certain behavior like looking at a “Fernfühler” or shouting at one might lead to the opposite learning behavior, i.e. being pushed away from the person’s position. Conversely, whispering and not looking at the “Fernfühler” could be interesting for it so it will be strongly attracted to this position. And last but not least, touching a “Fernfühler” just stops adaptation.

Additional Interaction If simply watching the automatically operating seats is perceived as too contemplative, “Fernfühler” offers the possibility of interacting with the intelligent furniture by means of a smart phone. After the necessary software has been downloaded and installed via a wireless connection a game-like interface offers the opportunity to activate and control the “Fernfühlers”. The screen will show a network structure with dots at each node (see Fig. 4). Each “Fernfühler” in the area represents one of the nodes of this network. The network connects each “Fernfühler”, acting as a skin overlaying the area.

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One of the ideas behind the installation is to make public space more attractive, especially for young people. By providing networked seating, they experience an area as a changing space, one that has moved beyond stable architecture. People can also take the role of a director, influencing the behavior of passers-by through re-arranging the positions of the furniture. The setup can be operated via hand held computers or through a central screen.

The experience resembles a computer game, though it takes immediate effect on the surrounding physical space, and thru that on the people on site.

Figure 4: Smartphone interface

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Hardware Prototypes S everal hardware prototypes have been developed for the “Fernfühlers”.

First prototypes were built out of alloy (see Fig. 5). They are able to extend a backrest and can sense people sitting on them. Originally, they were built with dwell motors. Unfortunately, these motors were found to be much too inaccurate. This prototype has LEDs to show its status. Finally it is a seat so a sensor for people sitting on it is also integrated.

Figure 5 : First prototypes of the “Fernfühler”

The current prototype is built on a wooden platform which is incorporated in small library steps which somehow have the shape of a stool. The notion is still that they shall be intelligent seats moving around a public space. This

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platform could also be integrated into other furniture, like normal seats.

The electronic parts of this prototype are shown in Fig. 6 and are described in the following: · 2 step motors with their respective motor controls, for going in all directions, · an Arduino board which is the main computing device of a “Fernfühler”, · a microphone, for “hearing“ people and communication between “Fernfühlers”, · a camera to sense people and other “Fernfühler” which is an opensource embedded camera module with an ARM7 processor capable of computing diverse image processing algorithms (see http://www. cmucam.org for more information).

Figure 6 : The current “Fernfühler” prototype 198 MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

Conclusion This work presents an approach towards observing pedestrians on a public site, learning their walking behavior and reacting on it. This reaction can happen as any type of architectural changes of the place. To achieve this intelligent elements have to be incorporated into a place. For the “Fernfühler” this means that there will be chairs that follow pedestrians in a certain way, they hear and see what people do and react on their behavior by presenting themselves as seating at interesting locations of the site.

Learning takes place by integrating a neural network into the “Fernfühler” where each “Fernfühler” is one neuron of the network. It should have selforganizing capabilities like a SOM. To make it more interesting for visitors a smartphone can be used to display and interact with the neural network directly. Altogether, this creates a system that is capable of simultaneously observing and influencing a public space.

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References von Borries, F., Walz, S. P., Böttger, M. (Eds.): Space Time Play – Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level. Birkhäuser, 2007.

Crooks, A., Castle, C., Batty, M.: Key Challenges in AgentBased Modeling for Geo-Spatial Simulation. In Proceedings of GeoComputation 2007, September 2007, NUI Maynooth, Ireland.

Johansson, A., Helbing, D., Shukla, P. K.: Specification of the Social Force Pedestrian Model by Evolutionary Adjustment to Video Tracking Data.

Advances in Complex Systems, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2007, pp. 271–288.

Moussaïd, M., Perozo, N., Garnier, S., Helbing, D., Theraulaz, G.: The Walking Behaviour of Pedestrian Social Groups and Its Impact on Crowd Dynamics. PLoS One, Vol. 5, No. 4, 2010.

Rose, A., Schwander, C., Czerkauer, C., Davidel, R.: Space Matters, ARCH+ 189, 2008.

Schaur, E.: Ungeplante Siedlungen / Non-planned Settlements, Charakteristische Merkmale, Wegesystem, Flächenteilung. Universität Stuttgart, Institut für Leichte Flächentragwerke -IL-. Krämer, Stuttgart, 1992.

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Large Screens and Small Screens: Public and Private Engagement with Urban Projections Geoffrey Shea Associate Professor Ontario College of Art & Design University gshea@faculty.ocad.ca Michael Longford Associate Professor York University Longford@yorku.ca

Introduction Urban screens, including large public displays have the potential to dramatically alter our built environment. Moving images, animated text and video are increasingly prevalent on elevators, train platforms and roadside billboards. Moreover, the ability to interact with these screens played out in Hollywood films such as Minority Report is quickly becoming a reality with the incorporation of Bluetooth, RFID, GPS and gesture based inputs enabled accelerometers built into the current generation of handheld devices that include remotes for gaming, smart phones, and tablets. However, the exploration of urban screens as a site for more complex forms of social interaction continues to be concern primarily for artists and critical designers and fuels discussions at events such as the Media Facades Festival, Urban Screens, Future Everything, and this conference.

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Although the field of inquiry is broad, in this paper we will focus on one specific emerging trend â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the co-existence of large public shared screens, and small private personal screens, and how the two are increasingly able to interact. Our reflections are based on our experiences co-developing an multiuser interactive experience for installation in public spaces called Tentacles.1 Tentacles is both a large, responsive projection environment that displays avatars in a shared space, and a unique application for the Apple iPhone/iPod touch that turns the device into a remote controller.

Together, these two features of Tentacles enable individual viewers, players or passersby to participate in a multi-user, location-based, game-like experience projected into public spaces. Tentacles has been presented in urban environments, indoors and out, projected onto walls, and giant outdoor screens on the sides of buildings. Players are immersed in an inky pool of darkness found deep near the ocean floor and interact with one another Each by controlling a squid-like life form while in search of lifesustaining micro-organisms.

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Play & Interaction One of our objectives for Tentacles was to create an ambient play environment in a public space – something without a beginning or an end that participants could join and leave spontaneously. By ‘public space’ we are referring to a locale where many, otherwise unrelated individuals are able to view and interact with a common moving image. A gallery façade on a city street, screens at film festival party, the sides of buildings or large-scale screens and public display boards found city squares are possible locations for Tentacles. But in each case, it is important that the viewer/ player be aware that he or she was sharing the experience of viewing with others, often in the context of a crowd. This locativity – or specificity of location – ensures that there is a parallel social metaphor. The life forms on the screen participate in a play of interaction or avoidance, which could be mirrored by the life forms standing in the street. This public being and public action, which operates on different levels, but in immediate proximity to one another is a base requirement of the Tentacles experience.

Although Tentacles shares some features with games, we didn’t want it to look or act like standard console based games and in this initial iteration we’ve tried to avoid standard gaming conventions. There are no levels, no overt objectives, no winners or losers. We approached the interaction design by spending time looking at old high school biology films of the blood stream and circulation systems and then we turned our attention to the micro-organisms and other creatures living in perpetual darkness at the bottom of the ocean. The movement and behaviours exhibited by these creatures served as a spring-board for discussions about what kinds of behaviours and interactions we could adopt in building a shared experience.

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Fig. 1: Tentacles installation. Nuit Blanche, Toronto, 2009.

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Our hope was, through interaction, the experience would inspire a kind of spontaneous public performance. Operating from within the crowd, viewers (or players) had the opportunity to ‘step onto the stage’ of the projected environment – to display themselves in action, engaged with other virtual creatures. Text messages within the system, for example, are not sent to each other’s private, small screen view, but rather are posted to your public, large screen self. Similarly, the way that movements, gestures and displays become part of this spontaneous public performance is suggestive of the activity on a dance floor, where typical rules about decorum, reservation, engagement with strangers and physical contact are suspended. A private, gestural experience is amplified publicly as a by-product of being within a crowd, as opposed to being a self-conscious performance staged for the benefit of the viewer. Here, in Tentacles, the differentiation between viewer and participant is effaced.

Play is presented as a free-form, creative activity – a childlike enthrallment with exploration, skill-learning and sharing. Games, or rule-based play, emerge later in life and becomes the standard in the adult world. This dichotomy between structured and unstructured play is further explored in other mobile phone controlled presentations, such as PLAY: The Hertzian Collective2 by one of the authors. There the metaphor is continued by overlaying the additional concept of playing music to further highlight the creative potential of large screen / small screen experiences.

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Fig. 2: Tentacles iPhone interface & projection.

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Field & Figure Another way to consider the relationship within the large screen / small screen experience is to consider the large screen the ‘field’ (background or environment) and the many small screens the ‘figures’ (agents or citizens).

This metaphor is not perfect, since the players’ avatars are displayed on the large screen as they are being controlled from the small screens. While the small screen does afford an alternate view of the player’s engagement with the environment, it is more like a dashboard or a cockpit. The private interface view includes steering and speed and controls for displaying messages on the large screen.

But the field and figure metaphor comes to life with the structure of the accompanying musical score. In addition to the visuals, we also built sound components including a background soundtrack that plays in conjunction with the large screen augmented by a library of smaller musical elements, which play asynchronously on the small screens. Your device springs to life, emitting sounds which complement or run counter to the musical soundscape, calling to and enveloping passersby and proliferating as more people participate in the game.

At this point players and non-players become acutely aware that the creatures on the large screen represent participants who are in the crowd all around them. The multiple sound sources, like the multiple participants holding onto their small devices, combine to form one single social entity, which is only partially revealed on the large screen in front of them.

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The Experience Tentacles transforms the phone into a kind of remote control that allows you to interact in real time with primitive, hybridized creatures, whose bodies are created from a library of ink blobs, organized in ways that mirror each other – not unlike a Rorschach test. Together they reveal layered references to the organic, the analogue and the digital.

In terms of the user experience, people are immediately engaged by our sense of wonder at the magic of radio waves enabling us to interact in real time from a personal handheld device with a public projection in an architectural space. The interplay of scale – the small screen in the palm of your hand contrasted with the large public screen on the facade of a building – parallels other core human experiences. The intimacy of touch, for example, is threatened by the supremacy of projected, broadcast visual stimuli, while the screen – the sign – forms a kind of text waiting to be read. Your personal space simultaneously shrinks and expands as the tiny gestures you make with your fingers are magnified for all to see. Public and private stand in stark contrast, highlighting dichotomies like wireless and wired, perception and cognition, knowing and being.

In this way, the sharing of space on the large screen and the non-sharing of the small screen immediately throws us into a consideration of identity.

On one hand our creatures are an element in a world, a member of a community. They participate in an accelerated life cycle – born with the click of a button, they glide through a fluid environment, eating, occasionally entangling with the other creatures around, by accident or design. With another click of a button, they expire and explode into hundreds of tiny particles, ready-made food for those around them. On the other hand, their individual identity is rooted outside of the large screen environment, steered and directed by an invisible other.

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Why iPhone/iPod Touch?

The larger screen, the easy-to-use touch screen interface employing a variety of gestures, the software developer kit that included a combination of drag & drop GUIs, templates, and code prompts to help you learn how to develop applications for the phone were all key motivators for adoption for the adoption of the iPhone / iPod Touch. But by far the biggest incentive was the creation of the App Store, which allowed us to leap over the mobile service providers and telecommunication companies gaining direct access to audiences. One of the biggest hurdles we faced in previous projects was the inaccessibility and lack of distribution networks for the applications we created. Prior to the App Store we needed to partner with service provider who, in Canada at least, showed little appetite for content creation, production, or distribution produced by small independents.3 Particularly, content that was in part born out of an artistic, cultural or research context. At the same time, however, we recognize the App Store is also a proprietary network over which Apple exercises complete control, which raises issues related to corporate control, US government regulatory policies, and concerns regarding censorship and surveillance.

Conclusion The use of a single, large-screen display for a shared, real-time, social activity has presented numerous technological and social research opportunities.

For example, a contrast has emerged between typical online anonymity and on-site engagement with other participants. Also, the reliance on a specific mobile phone platform (iPhone / iPod touch) and their attendant data service plans or network requirements has necessitated specific

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presentation strategies such as providing devices to would-be players, and implementing free Wi-Fi in the immediate area.

In creating Tentacles the researchers chose to divide the interactive experience between what was shared publicly on a large projection screen and what was revealed solely to each participant on their own device screen: public and private expressions emerging simultaneously within any given individual in a shared environment. Our experience with this strategy suggests that large screen / small screen interactions, mirroring public / private interactions, will play an increasingly important role in urban, media experiences, and that the built, architectural environment will need to reflect this and incorporate the potential of this emerging medium.

Endnotes 1 Tentacles is an ongoing project co-developed by Michael Longford (Mobile Media Lab, York University), Rob King (Additv), Geoffrey Shea (Mobile Experience Lab, Ontario College of Art & Design). Initial funding for Tentacles was provided by the Consortium on New Media, Creative, and Entertainment R&D in the Toronto Region (CONCERT), support from the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and with the participation of Apple Canada. (http://www.tentacles.ca) 2 Play: The Hertzian Collective is a sound and video installation controlled by viewers through their mobile phones. A rich collage of naturally occurring visual rhythms and a spoken text explore schoolyard games: the structured and unstructured play invented by children during the loss of innocence that accompanies growing up.

3 In contrast to this, over the past ten years telecommunication giants in Canada such as Bell Globemedia, now CTVglobemedia and Rogers Media Inc. have been purchasing radio and television assets and have recently begun to roll out mobile products and services.

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Creativity, Knowledge, Engagement: Keys to Finding the Right Governance Model for a Regional Community Precinct Kirralie Houghton Marcus Foth Greg Hearn Urban Informatics Research Lab Queensland University of Technology Brisbane, Australia www.urbaninformatics.net

Abstract This paper investigates the Cooroy Mill community precinct (Sunshine Coast, Queensland), as a case study, seeking to understand the way local dynamics interplay and work with the community strengths to build a governance model of best fit. As we move to an age of ubiquitous computing and creative economies, the definition of public place and its governance take on new dimensions, which â&#x20AC;&#x201C; while often utilizing models of the past â&#x20AC;&#x201C; will need to acknowledge and change to the direction of the future. This paper considers a newly developed community precinct that has been built on three key principles: to foster creative expression with new media, to establish a knowledge economy in a regional area, and to subscribe to principles of community engagement. The study involved qualitative interviews with key stakeholders and a review of common practice models of governance along a spectrum from community control to state control.

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The paper concludes with a call for governance structures that are locally situated and tailored, inclusive, engaging, dynamic and flexible in order to build community capacity, encourage creativity, and build knowledge economies within emerging digital media cityscapes.

Introduction Our study site in regional Queensland is a newly developed community precinct. The project aspires to best practice in environmental, building, and landscape design, by implementing master plan guidelines and strategies that foster creativity, knowledge, and engagement as the three core principles of the development. These three aspects align with the three main elements of the precinct: The heritage listed and now refurbished Timber Mill with boiler and kilns; an old factory that is now a multi-arts and interactive media facility; and the newly built library building completed in 2010 featuring state of the art network and media technology.

The Board was established by the local community and the local government in late 2004, to advise on the management, planning and development of the site. This group has been responsible for creating the strategic vision and implementing the master plan. As the construction of the site is being completed, the Board is looking for best practice models for the continuing governance of this new interactive precinct, and for ways to ensure the local community is engaged not just in decision making but also in ongoing activities enabled by the new media facilities. As the Board considers the issues associated with the ongoing management of this connected place, our paper explores the process of developing a suitable governance structure for the management of the interactive 212 MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

media and local community spaces. The site calls for a consideration of community engagement opportunities afforded by social technology, digital augmentation and locative media, that this paper will discuss with a view to allow for future re-interpretations and re-inventions of the site and its technical facilities by local residents, even after the construction process itself has been completed.

After reviewing models of place governance and community capacity, the paper first describes the site and its actors or stakeholders, particularly the advocates and champions who drive the community and make things happen in creative and innovative ways. These are the socio-cultural animators (Foth 2006) who interact with local groups such as students from high school, the wood workersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; club, community services, the library, business people, and members of the local government.

Secondly, analysis of interviews with these socio-cultural animators then informs our discussion of a community engagement model that moves through a cycle from decision making and active use to reflective feedback.

Through this cycle, community capacity is being built to develop a resilient, capable, informed, and self assured community. Three key factors were identified as crucial values in this model, and as such also for the precinctâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s development and its ability to collaboratively envision its future direction.

They are: creativity, knowledge, and engagement. Therefore, they represent the cornerstones of the governance structure for the site.

Thirdly, in order to determine the most suitable model of governance, the components of three models are compared in light of their best fit with the needs of our study site. The first is the Advisory Committee Model, where local government takes on the role of management with a community advisory committee providing the strategic direction for programming

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and development. The second is the Not-for-profit Private management Company with a board of directors – as successfully implemented for Bryant Park, New York, USA. Third, we review the Ambassador Program – as used in Denver, Colorado. Our comparison evaluates these basic models against their compatibility with the site’s aspirations to innovatively employ social technology, digital augmentation and locative media for community engagement. A question/answer filter system was used to shape a model that reflects best practise in open governance, and suits the needs of the local community. Further, it is expected that over time the use and management of the space will evolve in a dynamic way and according to the lived experience of local residents, which the governance structure has to account for.

Thus our paper presents a working model of place governance that promotes community engagement in the management of interactive media and public spaces and ultimately, in the development of vibrant connected places.

Literature Review Governance of place It is said that “about eighty percent of the success of any public space can be attributed to its management” and “no matter how good the design of a space is it will never become a true place unless it is cared for well” (Kent 2001,13).

Getting the management and governance of a place right is a vital element therefore in determining the success of any place and as relevant for

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innovative and creative precincts as a grocery market. The key being an open engagement with the community who will animate and activate the space which Kent & Schwartz call the “incremental steps that incorporate feedback and accommodate unexpected energies and opportunities” (Kent & Schwartz 2001, 10).

O’Toole and Burdess (2004) highlight the two aspects to governance being; “governance as structure and governance as process”. Where governance as structure is an organizational or institutional arrangement of actors” and governance as process where there are a “myriad of processes” which define how governance occurs. O’Toole and Burdess point to a vital question and one that weighs heavily in this discussion “can it be assumed that if the organizational structure is ‘right’ that it will be a solid governance model, or as the opponents of such a thought suggest: “is governance actually the dynamic outcome of social and political actors and therefore a dynamic need to be addressed” (O’Toole and Burdess 2004).

This consideration of the governance function will consider “the totality of interactions, in which public as well as private actors participate” (Kooiman 2003). Through this process of governance a focus on “creating societal opportunities” is sought “attending to the institutions as contexts for these governing interactions; and establishing a normative foundation for all those activities” (Kooiman 2003).

Taking Kooiman’s perspective that “governance can be seen as the totality of theoretical conceptions of governing”, (Kooiman 2003) this paper explores the relationship between the actors within the community who provide opportunity, leadership, innovation and ownership to the question of local governance of the Lower Mill site, Cooroy as a case study of innovative, creative, knowledge precincts.

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Both governance as ‘structure’ and governance as ‘process’ should be considered in this modeling process.

There are four key qualities which Kent and Schwarts ascribe to good places, and the vision of how these qualities come together to create a place are relevant to the construction of a governance model which looks at the longevity, function, capacity and appropriateness of the vision. These four key qualities are “accessibility, activities, comfort and sociability” (Kent & Schwarts 2001).

The actors or stakeholders who play leading roles (as well as the minor roles to some extent) have a part in developing collective ownership and interplay between each other to animate the space and to develop it as it evolves into a place with local, community meaning. From the outset these relationships should be acknowledged. Kooiman (2003) suggests, “in the governance perspective it is assumed that governing interactions also have to be reflected in its conceptualization” (p3).

As Kooiman goes on to discuss there are a range of governing efforts or actions that involve diverse actors, such as government, business, creatives and community, and there is an interplay of actions and roles on several different levels. The process of governing and the issues around governance can involve both public and private entities “they are frequently shared and governing over various societal actors whose relationships with each other are constantly changing.”

The role of traditional government can be seen to shift to a role of facilitator and as co-operating partner” (Kooiman 2003, 2). This shift is inline with trends to see more open and accountable government, enhanced by our ready access to information in the form of new media that creates an

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expectation that information is always available. It directs government into a role of managing interactions and interplays that are required to allow creation, innovation and inspirational places to evolve, within the process treating the governing actors on an equal basis. Management structure needs to be capable of exerting formalized and authoritative influence in order to retain functionality and implement decisions.

“The governance approach focuses on the interactions taking place between the governing actors within social-political situations. These interactions give human actions their irreversible and unpredictable character as attempts are made toward understanding diversity, complexity and dynamics of these situations.” (Kooiman 2003, 7).

A model is proposed that identifies components of social capital such as trust, commitment and identity, associationalism, civic participation and collaborative problem-solving. These concepts are then theoretically linked to effective governance (Veenstra and Lomas 1999).

Community capacity “The ability of a community to respond to problems and, indeed, to take advantage of government policies and resources is termed its community capacity. The attainment of a level of community capacity is mediated or constrained by conditioning.” (Armstrong,Francis and Totikidis 2004, 3).

Of particular relevance to the creative precinct of the Cooroy Mill Site is the “structure of opportunity” and the “density of acquaintance” along with the “distribution of resources”, that is, the means or strategies to enhance or maintain capacity are the central concerns in the development of a suitable governance model.

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Resources alone are not the only measure of success or the determining factor, nor do they necessarily mean a higher level of community capacity or “social capital”. It is as Armstrong et. al. (2004) point out a combination of factors being the resources, networks and characteristics of the place and its networks of actors, along with the dynamics that is the bonding, bridging and relationships between these actors or interplay between them which determine outcomes. These outcomes can be positive or negative and may build community and add to cohesion and productivity or where there is a lack of bridging they may have a negative impact and breakdown community capacity (Armstrong,Francis and Totikidis 2004, 4).

It was noted that “the most effective committees were chaired by someone who was a ‘champion’ gathering resources from their council, generating a lot of enthusiasm from members and chairing committees which were active, met regularly and felt a sense of achievement” (Armstrong,Francis and Totikidis 2004, 4). A champion may also be in take the role of coordinator or curator who drives activates and energises the space, drawing the community and stakeholders with them in the use and attachment to the place.

Cavaye has an interesting reflection on a community approach to governance which he calls “Engagement governance”. He sees it as a new way of looking as our assumptions, the structures and culture about how we frame or construct the work of government, saying “The central perception is the view of government not as a “provider”, but as an “enabler” of vibrant communities. In that regard, community engagement has the potential not to challenge government, but to enhance it” (Cavaye 2004).

This shifted view is much more about a partnership and shared ownership than a dismissal of one or the other as irrelevant or not involved. If this

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approach were to be plotted on Arnsteinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (1969) Ladder of participation (see Figure 1), it is reaching for a degree of citizen power, partnership, delegated power or possibly even citizen control at the highest level. With citizen power comes a sense of involvement, engagement and ownership.

Figure 1: Arnsteinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ladder is Citizen Participation

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Context and Setting of the Case Study Site Careful planning, creative design and community engagement from the outset combine to create an innovative mix of heritage, community facilities and interactive digital media in the burgeoning creative precinct of the Lower Mill Site on the Sunshine Coast in a small township of Cooroy. The development of the former Timber Mill and surroundings aspires to best practise in environmental, building, and landscape design, by implementing master plan guidelines and strategies that foster creativity, knowledge, and engagement as the three core principles of the development.

The project has brought together a diverse set of stakeholders including the Mill Site Board (a local community group formed to preserve the Mill site as a community asset and heritage legacy), Queensland University of Technology, Sunshine Coast Regional Council, and Arts Queensland through funding administered by the Queensland Writers Centre.

Engagement has included a wide range of the community with local school students participating in design exercises in Second Life (Mallan et al. 2010; Foth et al. 2009), digital heritage narratives recorded from former mill workers (Wiesner et al. 2009), and local artists working with the community.

The case study is the Lower Mill Site in Cooroy, located on the Sunshine Coast Hinterland, Queensland, Australia. It was developed as a project in conjunction with the Regional Council (the local government), a partner in the grant that supports this study. The Regional Council is in the process of redeveloping the Lower Mill Site that was formerly used as a timber mill. The vision for the new site is â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;to develop and sustain

220 MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

facilities [...] for present and future generations of the community with balanced consideration to history, culture, education, arts and economicsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (http://lowermillsite.com.au). The site is now well developed and the master plan has seen the development of a new library building, as well as the renovation of heritage-listed buildings that formed part of the timber mill precinct (Fig. 2, 3, 4). The building of a former butter factory, now redesigned as a performing arts centre, is located within close proximity and is incorporated into the precinct. The Lower Mill Site will eventually house many community groups and has two â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;heritage listedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; buildings from the original sawmill as its centrepiece.

Figure 2: Restored Kilns and Woodworkers Cottage. Source: mysunshinecoast.com

The Mill Board was established by a group of local business and community members who saw that the former mill site represented an important opportunity for socio-cultural and economic development for the

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community and that the site should be retained in community ownership for the support of the community and as a hub of the local region. With a well established arts centre in the refurbished Butter Factory adjoining the site it lent itself to a creative arts precinct. The local government authority and Mill Board both explored potential uses for the site, being particularly keen that the principles of a development informed by the pursuit of creativity, innovation and knowledge be employed.

LOWER MILL WOODWORK COMPLEX Refer Detail Area 1

RIPARIAN CORRIDOR Supplement existing vegetation with native riparian tree planting

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Figure 3: Cooroy Library

Figure 4: Lower Mill Site Masterplan

The Council was interested in exploring new ways to engage diverse and traditionally under-represented sections of the local community, such as young people. Research projects at the site have included involvement of young people from the local school becoming involved with the design and planning of the site and their engagement with other local stakeholders of the site to share the heritage and future of the site (Mallan and Greenaway 2010).

In addition to the engagement activities at the local high school, the local government authority also established an initiative to employ specifically selected artists-in-residence (called “Neos”) to foster community, culture and commerce – the “3C Model”, (McQueenie, 2005). The objectives were to develop local content in various forms and with various applications with 222 MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

a focus on local stories, education and writing in the digital environment; to innovate in the uses of community spaces and take advantage of the media and community engagement facilities of the Lower Mill Site; and to assist in the development of socially engaged creative businesses and jobs in the creative industries by employing local and national creative professionals from across the disciplines of writing, new media, and community cultural development. This initiative, called â&#x20AC;&#x153;Neo-Geographyâ&#x20AC;?, was to pilot and evaluate the 3C model as a way to strategically link communities, creativity and economic development in a non-metropolitan area of Australia.

The Neos work on locally designed community projects based on digital or locative media, narrative and writing. Each Neo will define and generate a project which engages schools, community groups, local government programs or a range of other creative professionals. The specifics of each project will be locally determined by the Neos and project partners. The Neos have been based at the library and work with local community groups of the Sunshine Coast. While their projects have sought creative ways to engage with community and activate a sense of place, there is another key aspect of their involvement that revolves around a fundamental new understanding of the Arts and that is the issue of entrepreneurship in the creative industries. As such, this initiative seeks to redefine the relationship between community, culture and commerce in a regional context.

Voices of the Socio-cultural Animators The precinct and the projects that have been enacted within the space involve a variety of socio-cultural animators (Foth 2006) who interact with local groups such as students from high school, the wood workersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; club,

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community services, the library, business people, and members of the local government. There have been several animators working with different groups within the community and our study undertook to interview several of these hands-on creative practitioners about how they see the management of the precinct evolving and how those governance structures serve to activate the place and engage the local community. These “voices” make visible the soft infrastructure of the precinct which is just as relevant as the buildings and digital media infrastructure in understanding how the precinct is evolving.

Strong themes about the accessibility, cost versus community and curation of the site emerged. Also issues such as the energy and personality of the appointed manager at any point in time took a more prominent focus than which entity – government or private – was in control. This concentration of the process rather than structure was consistent amongst the Neos working in the precinct. “the whole precinct should have an artistical [sic] creative director I would think” “but an overall director for the whole precinct that didn’t have a single agenda for visual arts or music performance but was across the spectrum... as far as delivering a creative program for the precinct.”

The dynamic of the curator or manager was identified as vital for a centre’s vibrancy beyond the facilities or funding. It was noted that there had been an earlier curator for the Butter Factory art space who had been able to do wonderful things. “were you there when Rosemary was there? Wasn’t she great! … we used to go out in the middle of the night, no the middle of winter for concerts and

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things, and there were no facilities whatsoever and now it’s all offices and bookings and I don’t know it’s just not a vibrant place” Another element of the prior success of the Butter factory was the community involvement and ownership. The next quote also identifies another issue for the governance and management process that is the values of being community driven and that the loss of ‘burn-out’: “people in that community ran the space, and it had lots of problems because it never had any funding and people got burnt out, but it always was a really creative space, it was a place where artists met, where artists were involved, and where lots of creative things happened” The potential for media technology precincts like Cooroy to be a hub for the community and an opportunity for youth and community to access technology in new and exciting ways was noted by respondents along with the dangers of limiting accessibility or letting dollar determinants exclude those least able to pay. One respondent observed: “that’s obviously the biggest issue for managing a venue like that in a regional area.. is that accessibility factor … especially young people who have.. great opportunity to get in there and use this equipment but it gets booked out by all these other people.”

There was a general sense amongst respondents that the overall project as it had been developed and implemented so far was positive.

“It’s been great for Cooroy and I do see a lot of positives things in the library. I know I am critical of the design it could have been done much better, but, uhm for that small community to have a fabulous library like that, the library has been wonderful a lot more people reading books a lot

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more kids being there in the afternoon, kids just come there because they want to play games on the computer…“ The attraction of technology for young people was also a common theme and supported by respondents. The sites ability to attract and provide for young people was seen as its strength and part of the value that it adds to the community. Also more generally the value to a wider community was strongly espoused along with the potential for the precinct to be a place for community and youth.

“I would like to see it as more of a community space where … youth groups could accessibly go and do performances and workshops there” The potential of the site and the new spaces created within in it was commonly articulated in a very optimistic light: “it is heading in the right direction it will be interesting to see where it goes in the next couple of years” “The space itself is a example of what I would like to see on the Sunshine coast, which is more buildings like that which are open to the community.

I think it is a prime example of what we want, and I just love it.”

Governance Models The traditional method of managing community spaces in Australia has been within a local government structure, utilising an advisory committee model. This structure would involve a committee consisting of community representatives of the identified stakeholders or actors. The level of involvement in the day-to-day management varies depending on the level

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of authority or delegation that the Council affords the group. The advisory board sends recommendations back to council for authoritative decisions to be made and maintenance costing and management is handled within the Council business. It is interesting to note that the J Arts Precinct, a local government run facility within the same region as Cooroy, was seen to have allowed the pressures of financial returns and measures of return for money drive the management and programming of the site.

The second model is the not-for-profit private management company model. This model has been very successfully implemented in Bryant Park, New York. It see the development of a company which is accountable to all aspects of maintenance and programming of the park and its activities.

But using this model the concerns of daily management including raising funds falls to the corporation. The viability of the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;spaceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; will depend to some degree on the entrepreneurial abilities of the members of the board and their connections. This push into the competitive sphere of economic returns is not necessarily a negative but must be weighed in light of the concerns raised by respondents about the loss of the community accessibility in the pursuit of economic viability. Creating opportunities for the inexperienced artist or sound engineer or other creative taking the initiative to use the space carries a risk factor higher than the well established experienced performer, but encouraging that talent, can stretch boundaries of creativity and push innovation in new directions. The risk with the not-for-profit model is that financial pressures could result in limitations.

The Ambassador model is another governance model for community space that is used in Denver, Colorado. The ambassador program is managed under the The Downtown Denver Partnership, Inc. that defines itself as â&#x20AC;&#x153;a non-profit business organization that creatively plans, MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena 227

manages and develops Downtown Denver as the unique, diverse, vibrant and economically healthy urban core of the Rocky Mountain region” structured in a similar way to a main street program or local business people collectively form a community organisation to develop or encourage a collective support their local community and economy. The ambassador program is a sub-program or falls under the umbrella of the Downtown Partnership as a community feedback committee.

The following matrix provides a means of displaying the values and strategic objectives for a project and weighing them against the potential models for comparison.

Strategic Objectives Council -Management under Community Ambassador Program: supported Assets management

Not-for-Profit Model: self managed

Community Involvement in management

Ambassadors see there role as connecting with the community and feeding back community needs to council or not-for profit organisation - mediators

Community Run – community empowered. Need to ensure it is not hijacked by vested interests

Via ambassadors, to committee,

To company, through formalised feedback channel, through membership of NFP

Sense of link to space and ambassadors actively trying to build connection and ownership

Highest level of community ownership – opportunity to ‘buy in and support’

Limited to identified stakeholders – additional measure required if further community involvement is required

Feedback mechanism Formally through council –letters, councillors, community representative, addressing meetings Community access and ownership

Councils/ Local Governments often seen as disconnected to community. Would need to actively work at building community connection and ownership

Community Energy – Need to seek right person – energy within personality to take on Council framework, no community control the role on selection or direction of Council staff

Group of people can support and energise Need to seek right person in a project each other management, capacity. There is scope to build a team with energy and commitment

Government Responsibility

High

Financial returns

Need to see financial returns and value for Role as a community facility clearly money needs a measure to report back to established – financial viability and council accountability still relevant

medium

Seek sponsorship and support, financial viability of activities. Push to creative entrepreneurial and financial return.

Low

Further development of & Commitment to Technology

Depends on Council commitment – subject Can be built into ambassador structure to change with re-election

Can be strongly supported as focus, will depend on which parties for the N-F-P.

Identity of the site – Branding

Would need to consciously develop branding, specific to site and separate to council – especially given the large regional nature of council

Ambassadors can be part of the branding process. Strong word of mouth connections

Strong emphasis put on Branding and specific unique identity

Activity at the site

Programmed and managed within Council

Ambassadors seek out community input for programming

Constant need for activity to justify company and its relevance

Table 1: Evaluation Matrix

More questions could be added to this matrix and it should closely identify the aims, visions, objectives or goals of the space to be governed.

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Stakeholders and community should have a lead role in assessment of the matrix outcomes and weighting of the comparative boxes. The end result may be to hybridise or massage one model to the best fit for the particular circumstances.

Cooroy Mill Board have chose incorporate their Mill Board and utlising the energy and commitment to the site that this group first initiated to direct the future of the site. The Council has been a major support in this process and while there are council officers on the incorporating board it is also strongly represented by many different stakeholders within the community. The drive to see this site connecting with the community of Cooroy and moving it into an exciting future is prominent within the group. “there is just the last block left, we want to see some knowledge based development there… a partnership with a uni would be great” By incorporating and working as a not-for-profit group, they are able to generate funding and activities to ensure that the vision of the place is maintained as well as its economical sustainability.

Conclusions “The community has grown up, the community has gotten bigger, the community has grown up” (study respondent).

Communities do change and the needs and requirements of a place will also change, in the age of digital, ubiquitous computing some of these changes are occurring at an “dizzying velocity” (McQuire 2008 p.3).

But some fundamental elements of good communities and good places

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remain the same. Building community capacity to support itself, to encourage creativity, innovation and build knowledge, still remains a vital component of an engaged and healthy community. It can be seen however that whichever model of governance a community chooses the role of governance as process and governance as structure should be taken into account. Governance should also be open to engage and communicate with community, not always in terms of structure but certainly in terms of the process. There are new and creative ways that new media are being used or could be used that provide a means opening up discussion and engaging underrepresented or disinclined community groups but that is an area for further research not within the scope of this work.

Further it is expected that over time the use and management of the space will further evolve in a dynamic way and according to lived experience, which the governance structure has to account for. Whichever governance model is suited as a best fit needs to incorporate a system of review and flexibility to take on these opportunities and embrace their potential.

Acknowledgements This research is supported under the Australian Research Councilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Linkage Projects funding scheme (project number LP0882274). Associate Professor Marcus Foth is the recipient of a Smart Futures Fellowship supported by the Queensland State Government and National ICT Australia. The authors would like to thank the study participants and our partner organisations: the Regional Council, the Queensland Writers Centre, the local high school and the members of the Lower Mill Site Board, for supporting this research project, as well as the Media City 2010

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conference committee and the anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper. Special thanks to key stakeholders and project members: Bhishna Bajracharya, Christine Ballinger, Kate Eltham, Ruth Greenaway, Ian Haycroft, Helen Klaebe, Samantha Littley, Kerry Mallan, Megan Marks, John McQueenie, Evonne Miller, and Courtney O’Connor.

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Cavaye, J. M. ed. 2004. Governance and Community Engagement - the Australian experience in participatory governance: . Edited by. M. M. a. R. S. W.R Lovan, planning conflict mediation and public decision making in civil society. UK: Ashgate Publishing.

Foth, M. 2006. Sociocultural Animation. In Encyclopedia of Developing Regional Communities with Information and Communication Technology., edited by S. a. T. Marshall, Wallace and Yu, Xinghuo Hersey PA: Idea Group Reference (IGI Global).

Foth, M., B. Bhishna, R. A. Brown and G. Hearn. 2009. The Second Life of urban planning? Using neogeography tools for community engagement. Journal of Location Based Services 3 (2):97 - 117.

Kooiman, J. 2003. Governing as Governance. London: Sage.

Mallan, K., M. Foth, R. Greenaway and G. T. Young. 2010. Serious playground: Using Secondlife to engage high school students in urban planning. Journal of Learning, Media and Technology 35 (2):203-225. http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/17439884.as...

Mallan, K. and R. Greenaway. 2010. ‘Radiant with possibility’: Involving young people in creating a vision for the future of their community. Futures. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/29743/.

McQueenie, J. 2005. 3C’s- Community, Culture and Commerce. In Museums Australia Conference Melbourne, 1-4 May, 2005.

McQuire, S. 2008. The Media City Theory Culture and Society. London: Sage Publications.

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Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Toole, K. and a. N. Burdess. 2004. New community governance in small rural towns: in Australian experience. Journal of Rural Studies 20:433 -443.

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Wiesner, K., Foth, M., & Bilandzic, M. 2009, Nov 23-27. Unleashing Creative Writers: Situated Engagement with Mobile Narratives. In J. Kjeldskov, J. Paay & S. Viller (Eds.), Proceedings OZCHI 2009 (pp.

373-376). Melbourne, VIC: The University of Melbourne.

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Urban Overlay Some preliminary remarks on technical solutions for nontechnical problems Martin Kohler HafenCity Universität Hamburg Kai von Luck Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Hamburg Jens Wille Ubilabs Hamburg

Abstract The restructuring of global cities big urban developments like the HafenCity in Hamburg, the Ørestad in Copenhagen or the Abandoibarra in Bilbao have been faced by a special challenge: Usually these projects are realized by private enterprises as developers that extinguish after a certain lifespan leaving a working urban area as social and physical neighbourhood.

The emergence of an active community becomes the crucial part in such projects in quite a short time. To initiate and establish these social bonds with the people next door and the urban environment technical solutions as playful and communicate tools will become a major role.

Inspired by Scott Snibbe and his social immersive media (Snibbe, 2010) as well as by the Danish Digital Urban Living projects (DigitalUrbanLiving, 2010) we propose technical installations like media facades and social interaction installations for provoking village like settings in high density urban environment.

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In this paper we use the urban background of these projects exemplified in a case study of the HafenCity with a focus on the typical and special needs of the pioneering residents to reflect on thoughts about playful, seemless integrated digital communication solutions to frame the emerging social networks (typically based on blogs, mailing lists and websites). In this we hope to raise questions more than provide answers.

Background Development of computer aided socially close relationships appears to be common practise regarding established virtual communities by systems classified as social software (e.g. Facebook, among others).

At the same time development of emerging neighborhoods and dedicated groups of residents is of special value for successful urban development and urban regeneration projects. The commonly observed shift in perception of communes as representatives of an „activating state“ (Harvey, 2000) renders processes of local adaptation and regeneration by its citizens necessary. Thereby their capacity to build neighbourhoods and structures of communication and knowledge accordingly become the center of focus (Chaskin, 2001).

Supporting these processes of acquisition and self organisation by social networking systems as location based applications, could be of vital importance for urban development projects as well as improving residents’ contentedness and quality of life. Feeding such virtual information back into (urban) real world spaces is usually is described as Augmented Reality.

Big displays lacking of special interactive abilities already are implemented in public spaces (e.g. Points of Sale as well as ticket machines or interactive information boards) and already are a common part of our cityscapes.

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Besides commercial advertising and business services, experimental civic participation projects (e-Participation) enter public spaces engaging transparent dialogues with residents by embedding relevant information in his/her neighbourhood. Thus improving social communication, civil engagement as well as access to local knowledge (Kingston, 2005).

This way a close involvement of residents and visitors to a certain location is based on emotional engagement, which not only results from individual internal processes but is also established from external social processes (Emotion (Riger, Lacrakas, 1981)). Insights from the fields of Environmental Psychology reinforce the value of emotional engagement: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Local identity, sense of community and social capital are critical aspects/ parts surrounding individuals, promoting development of communities and their physical, social, political and economical aspects. Especially affective binding to locations are capable of inspiring action, since individuals feel motivated to visit, linger, to protect and to improve locations of individual relevance.â&#x20AC;?(Manzo, Perkins, 2006).

For this paper the question of how immersive social media strategies can provide solutions to connect complex interactions (movement, distance, gestures) with public space to support community communication as emotionally relevant experience in urban large scale project.

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Case HafenCity, Hamburg Hamburgâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s HafenCity, one of Europeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most unique urban development projects on an area of 157 ha for 12.000 inhabitants and 40.000 work places until 2025. Housing, offices, retail businesses, and dining and entertainment fuse together with cultural and tourism oriented uses within a close-knit neighborhood. Different small-scale urban functions coexist and are associated with the diverse needs of various user groups.

This creates a new everyday metropolitan culture that is neither characterized exclusively by consumption nor limited to providing a platform for orchestrated urbanity; instead, it produces complex sites of urban encounter.

Picture 1: Staged uses and art festivals are important strategic elements in the developing the HafenCity

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Commissioned by HafenCity Hamburg GmbH, a research project explored use and function of public places within the HafenCity.

Following ethnographic research methodology the survey resulted in book of photographs complied by six photographers and urban researchers working under the supervision of Martin Kohler during the summer of 2008. The objective of the research project was to track which patterns relating to use, encounters and visitor stopovers emerged on the streets, squares and promenades of HafenCity. To this end, the researchers observed and photographed the locations around the clock on workdays as well as weekends, documenting what they saw in 17,000 photographs and detailed field journals.

According to social qualitative interviews of residents in the HafenCity the most prominent reason for the decision to move to the HafenCity can be found in starting a new phase of life in a new environment. The starting of a family, retirement or a new relationship are among the mentioned reasons.

Also, most of the residents are embedded in globally spread relations to working partners, family members and friends. The pioneering motive means a loss of physical interaction and adds to the need of supporting social relations within virtual communities like facebook, linkedin, xing and else.

The Results from the former mentioned ethnographic survey on the use of public places in the HafenCity support this and suggests a distinctive need of exposition the private in public by the residents as part of a bigger play to present themselves and stage a â&#x20AC;&#x153;public privacyâ&#x20AC;? in this highly popular place (Bruns-Berentelg, et al, 2010).

The findings of this survey propose spatial clusters of public exposed behaviour and spaces for the everyday activities in which visitors and

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residents seamlessly mix. The public places (promenades and waterfront plazas) are used to a high degree by sports and consumption activities, photographing and chatting with more or less known people. All of the observed people show a strong sense of being watched and posing for the public within an air of playful leisure time, communicating with different aspects of the provided architecture.

Another result was the high degree of work in the public spaces that is usually meant to happen in office buildings. Business meetings, working on Notebooks and Smartphone and official phone calls influence the public life in a stronger impact than as observed in comparable neighbourhoods.

So we can find a type of resident and employees that is mastering digital communication as everyday activity and is in a need of new social encounters. To bring these existing virtual communication into the public sphere will be a strong supporter in the creation of a public sphere where there was none at the beginning.

Social software and digital social media Social software installations well known in private, virtual settings like facebook, twitter, blogs, flickr etc bringing the shift from publish/consume to participation as mentions by Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Reilly (Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Reilly, 2005) as the WEB 2.0 phenomenon become more and more established in relative small, relatively well understood environments like companies (cf. McAfee, 2006) and are discussed under the term enterprise 2.0. These activities are supported by results from the computer supported collaborative work (CSCW) approach, resulting amount many others in large interactive displays (e.g. BlueBoard von IBM Research) (IBM Blueboard, 2010), (Russell,

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Gossweiler, 2001) for sharing company and work related information .

Displays for highlighting social activities are recently presented e.g. by the Community Mirror project of the UdBW Munich (Ott, 2010), (Koch, 2010). The software company SUN presented specialized social software systems for he work related interaction of their knowledge workers.

(SunSpace, 2010). The needs for digital social media and the research questions in this area are recently discussed in (Bry et al., 2010).

Picture 2: Stills from „Three Drops“, digital installation by Scott Snibbe (Snibbe, 2009)

Localized information and participation systems (e.g. the e-participation system DEMOS of the TUTech Hamburg) have proven the usefulness of these approaches. All these system are based on a top down oriented information based approach, many of them as extensions of geographical information and decision systems or forum based discussion platforms.

This observation is almost true for innovative examples like the citizen information system, prototypical implemented at Municipality of Bowen Island ( Journeay et al., 2004) or the platform NextHamburg (NextHamburg, 2010) as well.

Immersive technologies developed in the arts like the social immersive media experiments of Scott Snibbe (Snibbe, 2010) or the tangible bits proposals by Hiroshi Ishii (Ishii, 2010) show the potential of interactive immersive installations for urban neighborhoods. Elements of the ambient MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena 239

assisted living research (e.g. AAL, 2010), especial the context aware systems, could be cornerstones of new installations as well.

First steps of converting these proposals into everyday situations were already developed among others at the HAW with the hamburg cubical (Gregor, 2009). In the Ambient Intelligence research lab at the HAW including a 140 qm smart apartment with an integrated usability new gesture based interaction techniques with context aware components are developed. Beside tangible interaction experiments and multitouch installations are camera based gesture detection in the research focus (RoĂ&#x;berger, 2008), (Stegelmeier, 2009), (RoĂ&#x;berger, 2009), (HAW Ambient Intelligence, 2010). Interactive information and esp. participation systems based on these results should be installed and evaluated in local neighborhood settings as well.

The implementation of social software approaches inside an urban neighborhood is in the moment in the starting phase. Especially the specific conditions of interactive technologies in outside areas, confronting digital less educated people with ubiquitous computing environment pose new challenges on user centered design methods und community centered installations.

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Conclusion Summarizing we do not believe that these technical solutions compensate for a lack of serious urban development in a all its aspects. But by the relocalization of virtual communities into the public sphere a boostering and intensifying effect for the emergence of social bonds is highly assumable. These effects will prove to be more long-lasting and sustainable than a sheer city marketing of any kind.

The new types of urban atmospheres and self constructions of the residents beyond the classical private/public dichotomy in the big urban development projects of our time are perfectly suited for playful and less meaningful digital solutions in the public sphere seducing people to act with these interfaces.

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References 3. Deutscher AAL-Kongress, 2010, Berlin Bry et al., 2010. 10041 Manifesto -- Perspectives Workshop: Digital Social Media, Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings, 2010 Bruns-Berentelg, Jürgen, Eisinger, Angelus, Kohler, Martin, Menzl, Marcus, 2010. HafenCity Hamburg – Neue Begegnungsorte zwischen Nachbarschaft und Metropole, Berlin Chaskin, R.J., Brown, P., Venkathes, S. h, Vidal, A., 2010. Building Community Capacity. New York: Walter de Gruyter CommunityMirror, 2010. [online]. wiki.informatik.unibwmuenchen.de/Main/CommunityMirror DigitalUrbanLiving 2010. [online]. www.digitalurbanliving.dk Gregor, Sebastian et al., 2009. Tangible Computing revisited: Anfassbare Computer in intelligenten Umgebungen, Kongress Multimediatechnik, Wismar Harrison, Beverly, Gossweiler, Rich, 2001. Distributed and Disappearing User Interfaces in Ubiquitous Computing, SIGCHI 2001 Workshop Harvey, David, 2000 Possible Urban Worlds. The Fourth Megacities Lectures, The Hague HAW Ambient Intelligence, 2010. [online]. www. informatik.haw-hamburg.de/~ubicomp Hwang, J., 2008. U-city: The next paradigm of urban development.

In: M. Foth, (ed.), Urban Informatics: Community Integration and Implementation, Hershey, PA: IGI Global IBM Blueboard, 2010. [online]. http://www.richgossweiler. com/projects/BlueBoard/index.html Ishii, 2010. [online]. tangible.media.mit.edu Journeay, M., MacKinnon, C., Dunster, J., 2004. [online]. Community forum and review of the Snug Cove village plan (Version 5): in search of common ground.

Kingston, R., 2002. The role of e-government and public participation in the planning process, in Proceedings of XVI AESOP Congress, Volos, Greece, July 10–14 Kingston, R., Babicki, D., Ravetz,J., 2005. Urban Regeneration in the Intelligent City, Nineth Conference on Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management, CASA, London, 29th June–1st July Koch, M., Ott, F., Richter, A., 2009. Community Mirrors - Using public shared displays to move information out of the box, Suppl. Proceedings European

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Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 17-18 Manzo, Lynne, Perkins, Douglas, 2006. Finding Common Ground: The Importance of Place – Attachment to Community Participation and Planning, Journal of Planning Literature, Vol. 20, No.4, pp.335-350 McAfee, 2006. Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration. In: MIT Sloan Management Review, Jg. 47, H. 3, S. 20–28 Ministry of Information and Communication, 2006. u-Korea Master Plan, Seoul Ministry of Construction and Transportation, 2006.

Ubiquitous City and Infrastructure Planning.Seoul NextHamburg, 2010. [online]. www.nexthamburg.de O'Reilly, Tim, 2005. What Is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software Ott, F., A. Richter, M. Koch, 2010. SocialNetworkingMirrorTM Einsatz halböffentlicher Touchscreens als ubiquitäre Benutzungsschnittstellen für Social Networking Services, In: Tagungsband der Multikonferenz Wirtschaftsinformatik Overmeyer, Klaus,2010. Kreative Milieus und offene Räume Bericht an die Stadt Hamburg, Hamburg Raasch, Jörg,2006. Usability von Anwendungssystemen - didaktische Aspekte, Lecture Notes in Informatics, pp. 23-35 Roßberger, Philipp, Luck, Kai von, 2008. Seamless interaction in interactive rooms - some preliminary remarks, World Usability Day, Hamburg Roßberger, Philipp, Luck, Kai von, 2009. Iterative design of tabletop GUIs using physics simulation, Mensch und Computer, Berlin Russell Daniel M., Gossweiler, Rich 2001. On the Design of Personal & Communal Large Information Scale Appliances, Russell Daniel M., Gossweiler, Rich 2001. UbiCom ‘01, October Snibbe, 2010. [online]. www.snibbeinteractive.com Snibbe, 2009. [online]. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ arkansasdiscoverynetwork/3483504277/ Stegelmeier, Sven et al.2009. iFlat - Eine dienstorientierte Architektur für intelligente Räume, AAL, Berlin SunSpace, 2010. Peter H. Raiser: Introduction slides to SunSpace, [online]. http://www.slideshare.net/peterreiser/atlassian-webinar-sunspace Talen, E. 2000. Bottom-up GIS: a new tool for individual and group expression in participatory planning, Journal of the American Planning Association 66, pp. 279–294.

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244 MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

Boulevard of Production: A Future Talents Attractor A Retro-innovation for Graz 8020 & Co. [1] Georg Flachbart mind(21)factory for Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Design, Stuttgart www.mind21.com Ivan Redi ORTLOS space engineering, Graz www.ortlos.com It is not about the comfortable continuity of tradition, but about transformation and social mobility â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not about fitting in, but breaking out. _William J. Mitchell

The State of Things Our Western society is going through a transition that is crazier than ever.

It is partly a result of globalization, partly of the Digital Revolution and the information-based economy it has produced. By liberating us from physical boundaries and tangible assets it has made us both more flexible and more vulnerable to competitors of all kinds. Moreover, this transition forces us to radically rethink just how long not only business companies, but well-established institutions, and even cities and states, can survive and thrive.

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It’s not only now in the wake of the Great Recession that the relevance of current economic models has been questioned. The business environment has radically changed long before: Everyone from Everywhere competes for Everything (see Sirkin and Hemerling and Bhattacharya, 2008).

Many a country of the developed world – notably the U.S. – is facing both a huge budget deficit and high unemployment. And the chances to reduce them are bad. The main reason are excess production capacities in classical manufacturing industries, specially in the “world‘s factory” China. Manufacturers are still producing more goods than the world wants and the economic recovery could suffer for it for a long time. It means, factories in some labor-intensive sectors will have to be either closed or retooled for new innovative products. If not, there are fears that the U.S. – still the driver of the global economy – remains stuck in the so-called New Normal, i.e., slower economic growth, anemic recovery, high unemployment and eo ipso spreading poverty, which would be bad for all. As Larry Summers, former president of Harvard and now director of Obama’s National Economic Council, candidly admitted at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington in July 2009: “Something new and possibly strange seems to be happening in this recession. Something unpredicted by the experts. The American economy has been shedding jobs much, much faster than assumed. I don’t think that anyone fully understands this phenomenon” (cited in Ramo, 2009, p.36).

Of course, the jobs crisis offers also a unique opportunity to think in profound ways about the jobs people in developed countries can and should do best in order to avoid menacing poverty divide by ensuring sustained job gains. As Reihan Salam, a policy adviser at the think tank e21, stresses: “People who feel obsolete in today’s information economy will be joined by millions more in the emerging post-information economy, in which

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routine professional work and even some high-end services will be more cheaply performed overseas or by machines. This doesn’t mean that work will vanish. It does mean, however, that it will take a new and unfamilair form” (Salam, 2010, p.40). So in order to cope with this looming problem, new determiners for economic growth and international competitiveness have to be analyzed, preferably even before the change is obvious.

The combination of technological innovation and creative minds – brains & talents, creative risk-takers – seems to become a matter of considerable importance in current attempts to secure sustained prosperity in Western World also in the future. What we urgently need to stay on top of the innovation game are new intellectual interaction-stimulating environments propelling imagination and ingenuity; environments, then, that take effect on us like mental Viagra (Flachbart, 2006, pp.595-596). For everywhere in Western World – not only in the Sillicon Valley – it‘s high time to plot new scenarios of how to live, learn and work outside familiar economic patterns because it‘s obvious that our recent past‘s visions of the future weren‘t visionary enough. For example, we should as fast as possible unplug the old wires and connectors of the corporate welfarism and, instead, transform most of us into self-directed inventors & innovators like Nikola Tesla, for instance, once was, and Steve Jobs today is – both great masters of the art of disruption. The objective is to “create a New Capitalism” – capitalism against corporate welfarism, as Joseph E. Stiglitz recommends in his recent book Freefall (Stiglitz, 2010, pp.199, 208). [2] In this kind of intellectual interaction-stimulating environments – favorable for entrepreneurship of all kinds – technological infrastructure, economic organization, social relationships, and spatial structures are very closely linked and even merged together, thus creating a powerful Knowledge Space, which, in turn, enables all kinds of possibilities for MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena 247

expanding individual opportunity, transforming the structure of work, and, in so doing, propelling emergence of the new (invention, innovation, game-change). The key term being Open Innovation – probably a new hypercapitalist economic narrative of the emerging post-information era, fairly focused on mastery of advanced tools and skills necessary for the competing ways of life in the new world of Globality. It means tools and skills for a future creative right-brain economy based on human-capital supremacy.

There are four stages necessary to make the new economic narrative happen: Open Space, Open Mind, Open Source and, last but not least, Open Heart. A kind of Open Social as the Google guys would say. All these terms relate, in one or another way, to Globalisation 3.0 where the decisive vehicle of change are no longer corporations but groups and individuals with their “newfound power to collaborate and compete globally” (Friedman, 2005, pp.10, 70).

An Example May Illustrate: Graz 8020 In the fast-moving, transnational reality, European cities, regardless of their current ranking, will act the way businesses are acting today, i.e., as strong competitors fighting for high-powered human capital (brains & talents) – the hottest ingredient in the future value creation process.

For it is this ingredient that ensures that the innovative metabolism of a municipality does not slow down. This might prove to be fatal for local urban development efforts, especially in a world where ceaseless innovation and change is the omnipresent mantra. In this world, it does not do for something to be new; it must be new in an awesome, mind-blowing way: simply w00t!

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Since brains & talents deal largely with data, images, ideas and transactions, i.e., intangibles, it‘s not likely for municipal authorities to focus much on reviving the tangible parts of the economy, such as manufacturing, logistics, traditional energy business and so on in order to cope with the current economic downturn. They would certainly be better off when investing in upgrading their urban infrastructures – enabling platforms (traffic and broadband connections, energy grid) – to lay the groundwork for accelerating the emergence of the new (new industries, new products, new ways of life), and not merely updating them, i.e., deploying the same economic patterns as in the past. Because once the current turmoil is over, competing with “Everyone from Everywhere for Everything” within old economic patterns will only become more fierce. The reason ist that it is no longer high-tech that guarantees the Western World economic progress and, as a consequence, high standard of living but high-concept – simply ideas, many ideas, many smart ideas, brilliant, astounding, revolutionary ones, which can be turned into popular, cutting-edge products just like Apple’s iPod, iPhone or iPad for example. [3] So from now on, the question every municipality will face is the following: What does it take for all the fancy-free talents, cheerfully gallivanting about the transnational landscape, to stay with us for as long as possible?

The answer is quite simple: by creating as many intellectual interactionstimulating environments as possible, which act as attractors and magnets for brains & talents – like lanterns for moths: “But, if talent magnet developments can get the formula right, they will probably become key to urban competitiveness in the twenty-first century” (Mitchell, 2005, p.109).

Our strategic approach to attracting more of the world’s smart, creative risk-takers to the disadvantaged district of Graz 8020 (ZIP code) – the MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena 249

implementation of a Boulevard of Production in the Annenstrasse (Annen Street) between Roseggerhaus and Metahof – is an attempt to “get the formula right”. Looking back, catapulting ahead, it is a real innovation, because astoundingly easy to implement: plug & play.

a) Annenstrasse as Boulevard of Production #1

Graz, Annenstrasse (Annen Street), connecting the Central Railway Station and the Südtiroler Place, suffers from the extinction of the traditional business patterns.

A standard example of a dying street in the middle of a mid-sized European city.

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Annenstrasse, connecting the Grazer Central Railway Station and the S端dtiroler Place with the new Kunsthaus, has been suffering from the extinction of the traditional business patterns for years. In the past, with very little traffic and no shopping malls luring customers to the outskirts, this street was a lively location with small shops and miscellaneous services providers based there. Today, the Annenstrasse is full of empty spaces, cutprice stores, fast-food restaurants, and betting shops. A frequent change of owners and tenants is the norm.

An empty store in the Annenstrasse (Annen Street)

Another empty store in the Annenstrasse (Annen Street) MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena 251

For that reason, the street has gradually been losing its originality, vitality and locational attractiveness, and becoming more and more a faceless transit zone.

In brief, Annenstrasse – and with it the whole neighbourhood of Graz 8020, for years struggling in the shadow of middle-class Graz 8010 – needs help. It needs a new “golem” – an advanced tool that, contrary to the original golem story, revives and vitalizes the whole district. This new golem is, of course, not a colossus built of clay, but rather a productive nothingness, a pure infrastructure. In other words, it is a can-do-approach to life resulting from district dwellers‘ mastering of advanced tools and skills and leading to an authentic, enthusiastic, foolishly inspiring city district, always in high spirits and always well interconnected. [4] But how can such a city district come into being without great material effort?

The solution is, once again, quite simple: the primary driver of urban life is no longer consumption, it is production. It is concentrated in the centre of the city again, say, in a street, similar to artisan areas in medieval cities. Consequently, by activating the autosuggestive function of urban planning, the Annenstrasse will be converted to the Boulevard of Production between Roseggerhaus and Metahof.

But instead of classical artisans (German Handwerker), you will have “brainworkers” working next to each other – the entrepreneurs of the new creative knowledge industry, a sector of industry specializing in the perpetual production of innovation. The point is: “Innovation is increasingly about having groups of people come together to leverage their diverse talents and expertise to solve multi-faceted challenges that cross multiple disciplines” (Lindegaard, 2010). At present this comprises a mix of jobs in IT, media, art, education, science and management. Later on, creative risk-takers on the Boulevard of Production will be the whole variety of new, yet unfamiliar professions such as day-dreamers, fantasy gardeners, invention catalysts, imagination incubators and the likes.

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The Annenstrasse between the Roseggerhaus (01) and the Metahof (03) to be converted to the Boulevard of Production. The small grey boxes stand in for the future iVan implants in old buildings with empty stores.

The raw material predominantly processed in this new industrial base is digital data. This raw material is shapeless (golem â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Hebrew for something shapeless) and can therefore be shaped into anything and can do anything; it is inexhaustible and can be varied, combined and transformed in endless ways with virtually no quality loss and supplier traffic. The form and the capacities it assumes during the production process â&#x20AC;&#x201C; notably prototyping and digital fabrication â&#x20AC;&#x201C; depend on the application. However, this will require the implementation of a high-performance IT-infrastructure for open, distributed and heterogeneous application environments on the basis of next-generation networks that can carry massive amounts of data and so deliver the full potential of on-demand content. [5] High-Bandwith Provide is the byword, which is the only necessary pre-investment by the Graz City Council.

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Spiritual intensity provided by smart, creative risk-takers based in the Annenstrasse will generate urban density without costly material interventions, e.g., erecting new buildings or consumer temples. Our cityupgrade proposal focuses on the existing “hardware” (old buildings) set up with new “programmes” but without major refurbishing measures.

This will make it possible to create something new out of something old with minimal investment of capital and reduced impact of materiality. The environment we envisage will remix life, work, leisure and overcoming space. The Annenstrasse is supposed to turn into an open, dynamic sociospatial configuration: a Vibrant Agonistic Public Sphere, as we decided to call it after having fallen in love with this term coined by Chantal Mouffe (Enwezor, et al., 2002, p.90). It is a dense sphere brimming with conflict, vibrant and lively, inspiring and motivating, where people meet not as enemies (antagonism) but as challengers, adversaries (agonism). It is a robust democratic business platform that will make a free fall of fantasy possible for its users. A zero gravitation zone on earth. An attractor for brains & talents. A magnet for people. Hallelujah! For, as Richard Florida writes in his latest book The Great Reset, “Talented people who live and interact in dense ecosystems generate ideas and products faster than they can in other places. There is no evidence that globalization or the Internet has changed that” (Florida, 2010, p.152).

And where are new production facilities (programmes), the generators of both wealth and urbanity? The abandonned shops on the ground floor will experience a novel form of upgrade. They will not be adapted and refurnished; instead they will be stripped and changed into production sites by means of modularly designed city labs called iVan, following the principle of plug & play. The modules will be inserted, their components interconnected, linked up to the electricity and high-bandwith – click! –

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and will be ready for use. Not unlike dental implants processing, instead of food, digital data.

Basic slice of the iVanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s envelope resizeable in lenght

Combined basic slices making the iVan resizeable in all directions MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena 255

b) The City Lab iVan: the Heart of the Boulevard of Production

Outside the iVan with a customized facade, example 1

The City Lab iVan – the Intelligent Vibrant Ambience/New – is a largescale instrument of the beyond-the-desktop-era ambient computing for creative networked collaboration. This advanced, modulary-designed, prefabricated, network-centric, mixed-reality-based space tool marks one of the first heterarchitectural works. With 50% of architecture being located outside its architecture – on the Net, online, the iVan is conceived as a quantum object in which real space (1, OFF-line) and virtual space (0, ON-line) are literally superimposed, thus obeying the rules of quantum mechanics (1 and 0, OFF and ON at once) rather than classical physics.

[6] This makes the iVan extremely flexible, notably in enabling on-demand working environments to be created according to any given requirement

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by the user. In this way, the iVan can support a wide range of users working to resolve the complexities of large-scale data management issues like datarich 3D modelling, analysis and strategic decision making. Moreover, due to the fact that it does not prescribe any particular kinds of usage, the iVan behaves like a “supportive design partner” (Feng, 2010, p.624) rather than an intrinsically passive tool unaware of the context in terms of environment and users’ behavior. So using the iVan is actually a pervasive human-environment interaction that “not only yields a reading of the current configuration but also reconfigures the system itself,” (Feng, 2010, p.626), i.e., learns users’ behavior and adapts services and interfaces to it.

Proactive Computing is the byword.

Inside the iVan’ data space

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In other words, the iVan is a sort of large-scale iPad being realized in space: easy to install, easy to use, easy to customize, easy to move (just like driving a van from/into a garage). And like the iPad, it is “merely the tangible component of a much larger device, an entire Internet ecosystem that extends out to the horizon in every direction” (Grossman, 2010, p.23).

The difference is, while the iPad is a device for consuming content, the iVan is a device for creating it. Moreover, it’s ready for Web3D, providing interactive, immersive experience much richer than graphical interfaces of today’s Web.

b1) What the iVan Does and How It Does It In resolving the complexities of large-scale data management issues, e.g. prototyping or virtual collaboration, the main challenge is to allow the user an intuitive access to 3D modelling and numerical simulation engines, combined with an attached background knowledge represented as semantic networks. This makes the difference that transforms a database into an information space – for which conventional WIMP-style user interfaces (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer) are inappropriate.

For the design of highly complex spatial configurations, as aimed at in the City Lab iVan, we need a novel generation of user interfaces by means of which space itself becomes the pre-eminent tool, rather than the familiar desktop. This implies a paradigm change: Instead of having to choose operations explicitly, e.g., from a menu, the software actively offers the operations that are most likely needed by the user. To some degree, the software derives the user’s intent, which requires certain context awareness, but also flexible re-configuration of input devices and interaction modes.

An important principle of this form of human-computer-interaction is 258 MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

cognitive transparency: it must always be completely clear to the user what his options and choices are.

This goal can only be achieved by sophisticated graphical means to highlight views, selections, and operations appropriately showing which input channels are mapped to which degrees of freedom of the design that is currently under development. The challenge, however, is to visually show not only data and relations, but also the operations the system offers or proposes to the user. It must be possible to start a spatial flow simulation literally by only waving one’s hand, the result of which leads to model changes that can be carried out very precisely using tangible interaction devices. This overall intent can be roughly divided into two parts, a backed context management and a fronted technology the user is in direct contact with, i.e., a diversity of heterogeneous input and output devices that can be promptly reconfigured. So instead of separating the physical space into classical rooms or functional room sequences we organize the real envelope as flow sections, which means that the two dimensional floor plan and the appropriate section melt into four fields of activity – the rooms are not defined by their classical office function (work spaces, open plan office, cubicles, meeting rooms etc.), but through scope of actions. Their coefficients vary according to the need (requirements) and their activity vectors can entangle, a “liquid” space comes into being which defines itself according to the wishes of the users. The following functional flows permeate the room:

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The iVan’s components with functional flows

1) production flow – here work happens ergonomically and according to personal preferences, sitting, lying down, standing. Since the concept of work today changes daily, the user should not be prevented from working creatively by the room or by the furniture.

2) data flow – the visualization of data should visually float in the way the user needs it. No matter if it is a matter of info screens, projection surfaces, interactive floors or other media dependent on data flow. We are talking about a space built from data which, however, has a haptic configuration.

It is consequently about different data media, which can be activated, changed or deactivated according to what is needed.

3) social flow – there are no specially designated meeting rooms, because one is constantly in collaboration, real and virtual. The coffee breaks are 260 MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

integrated within the working process, combined in social “in-between” situations and integrated in production, where the transition from small talk to productive brainstorming happens. Communication and social interaction merge in this area of activity with the presentation of everyone’s own work. The area of activity can also unfold in the outdoor area and the public space directly in front of the building door.

4) support flow – additional demands result from the need to support securable areas, such as for example server areas, storage areas, toilets, etc. The iVan is conceptualized in such a way that it is inserted into the available building structure, preferably into urban ground floor zones, as they often have an open floor plan (in most cases reuse of former retail space). Technically, it is a matter of envelope, or of a single surface, which can vary in width, length and height. Above the air handling ceiling is the space where installations and technology is placed, and under the floor the necessary infrastructure, connections and heating are placed. This concept makes it possible to freely design an interior according to unforeseen requirements.

b2) The iVan’s Main Components The iVan is equipped with a virtual environment construction kit adaptable to the needs of soft architecture (a reconfigurable space system) consisting of three parts: a) multi-projection facilities, b) tracking and gesture-recognition components, and c) spatial interaction techniques based on natural metaphors that make the use of 3D immersive devices intuitive. Its particular function is to support collaborative approaches to the production of perpetual innovation.

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It is important to point out that the technology we are discussing here is already on the market or it will be in near future. The main challenge lies in the interoperability of components. At the present, the single devices are not “aware” of each other and as such in their unity not aware of the user in a proper manner. For that reason the middleware software is to be developed which connects hardware components and applications based on service-orientated architecture. Since the spatial setting of the environment cannot be foreseen in regard to the user’s requirements the whole system has to be modular and highly flexible where a quick “ondemand” adaptation is possible.

The interior of the iVan is envisioned as a sensitive space, usually described with somewhat vaguely defined terms such as Ambient Intelligence or Context Awareness in a very concrete setting. We re-interpret these terms to make them operational by: 1) keeping a notion of context of the task that is currently being carried out by the user, 2) presenting the possible options, data, and operations unambiguously, and 3) trying to infer appropriate responses to the input received from the user.

The iVan project aims at developing a formal context model for dynamic environments that combine the strengths of both approaches while trying to avoid carrying on their specific weaknesses into the resulting framework. Semantics is the key to scene understanding: A table and a wall can both be projected on, but only on the table things can be put (e.g., for object tracking), while a moveable screen can block light from a camera or from a projector. This kind of reasoning is indispensable for the

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dynamic re-configuration of mentioned sensitive space. The context model will therefore combine three things: 1) knowledge represented by ontologies and semantic networks, 2) logical reasoning based on this knowledge, and 3) user-definable operation sequences.

With respect to front-end technology, the iVan pursues the vision of using cameras as generalized input devices. This is both ambitious and necessary. Only camera-based input provides the extreme flexibility and high bandwidth needed for advanced human-computer interaction; only cameras can survey space at a reasonable ratio between cost and coverage.

We envision the full range of camera-based interaction modes, marked by the following examples: 1) back-projection walls with rear cameras to track finger multi-touch 2) multi-touch tables and tangible objects carrying markers for highprecision 2D input 3) normal tables surveyed by top-mounted cameras to track gestures and objects 4) cameras targeting the space where users perform, applying gesture recognition 5) cameras detecting feet, hand and whole body movement and also static positions through self-adapting luminance-based tracking algorithms 6) camera-projector feedback performing 3D object reconstruction instantly

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7) self-calibration of external and internal parameters of both cameras and projectors.

So far each of these techniques have been used individually. The ambitious goals of the iVan, however, can only be achieved through a tight integration of at least some of them. Space only becomes context-aware when it is possible to switch promptly from object recognition to marker tracking to 3D reconstruction – all based on the needs of the user. On side of the output, the state-of-the-art presentation technologies, such as holographic screens, large-scale projections using edge-blending or high-end screens, will be employed to create a space where shared interaction becomes possible and efficient. [7]

Concluding Comments The iVan‘s genuine application field is the Creative Knowledge Industry.

As we already mentioned in the intro, we assume that in the near future this industry will be playing a leading role in Western World and that it will require new socio-spatial environments being able to offer optimal working conditions and tools to a work style characterized by increased mobility, high levels of creativity and powerful 3D simulation capacity.

The city lab iVan is a docking station for creative minds, supporting “vibrant design thinking culture that will encourage prototyping as part of the creative process and not just as a way of validating finished ideas” (Brown and Wyatt, 2010). This is a prerequisite sine qua non for rapid, cost-effective transformation of original ideas into competitive products and services, in a word, innovations.

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Outside the iVan with a customized facade, example 2

The iVan is about bringing the very latest in visual computing technology to the practical level, enhancing education and business capacities notably in disadvantaged, nonmetropolitan areas. Its comprehensive visualization system will enable regional SMEs, independent research groups, administrative and educational units, and individual risk-takers in a wide variety of fields to collaborate locally or remotely accross disciplines, visualize and evaluate data in a more intuitive fashion, and make complex decisions in realtime under extensive use of feed-back loops. This kind of technology is exactly what we need in Europe to push divergent thinking as “the route, not obstacle, to innovation” (Brown and Wyatt, 2010) and, in doing so, to ensure sustainable economic growth.

The iVan is designed to be scalable and replicable all over Europe, and even the world. But it will be launched first in two ”training centers” in Graz, Austria, and Kosice, Slovakia, as a pilot. In Kosice, this will take place within the European Capital of Culture 2013.

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Notes [1] This article is the sequel of our article Golem Reloaded: For More Capitalism and Less Architecture, 2006, published on initiative of the Hyperbody Group, TU Delft, led by Prof. Kas Oosterhuis. In: Oosterhuis K. and Feireiss L., eds., GameSetandMatch II: On Computer Games, Advanced Geometries, and Digital Technologies. Rotterdam: episode publishers, pp.588-597. It encompasses our independent research activities from 2006-09 within the framework of the project City Upgrade – The High-spirited Networked City, Part Two, situated in Graz, Austria.

[2] Robert Litan, who directs research at the renown Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, which specializes in promoting innovation in America, has made a following diagnosis: “Between 1980 and 2005, virtually all net new jobs created in the U.S. were created by firms that were five years old or less. That is about 40 million jobs. That means the established firms created no new net jobs during that period.”

In: Friedman T. L., 2010. Start-Ups, Not Bailouts. New York Times, April 3.

[3] By the way, the renown U.S. magazine FORTUNE has chosen Apple‘s Steve Jobs the CEO of the Decade for following three reasons: “He defied the downturn, cheated death, and changed our world”. Fortune, 160(9), cover.

[4] Compare Alden Oreck. The Golem, 2010. Available at: http://www. jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/Golem.html . “In Jewish tradition, the golem is most widely known as an artificial creature created by magic, often to serve its creator. (...)

In Hebrew, “golem” stands for “shapeless mass.” The Talmud uses the word as “unformed” or “imperfect” and according to Talmudic legend, Adam is called “golem,” meaning “body without a soul” (Sanhedrin 38b) for the first 12 hours of his existence. The golem appears in other places in the Talmud as well. One legend says the prophet Jeremiah made a golem. However, some mystics believe the creation of a golem has symbolic meaning only, like a spiritual experience following a religious rite.” – In principle, the golem is for us a can-do-approach to life: an architecture against architecture, pure infrastructure: “unformed” or “imperfect”, which “would come to life and serve its creators by doing tasks assigned to him”. And so is the iVan. What it needs to get formed or perfect is “soul” – is data. To put it simply, the golem is a masterpiece of heterarchitecture (or quantum architecture). And so is the iVan. Relating to heterarchitecture see Flachbart G. and Weibel P. eds., 2005. Disappearing Architecture: From Real to Virtual to Quantum. Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhäuser Publishers for Architecture, pp.13, 268.

[5] For example, NEC‘s SpectralWave reconfigurable add-drop mutiplexers (ROADM) – an optical networking solution – enables 3.2 terabits per second of transport which is equivalent to sending one thousand Hollywood movies per second into homes per Internet TV. [6] The term heterarchitecture was first coined by Georg Flachbart and Peter Weibel in Flachbart G. and Weibel P. eds., Disappearing Architecture: From Real to Virtual to Quantum. Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhäuser Publishers for Architecture, pp.13, 268.

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[7] Key features to be still solved: a) ambient intelligence by integrating contextawareness with user feedback, b) extending a toolbox ofsoftware components for cognitive vision, c) adapting and refining existing interaction technologies. The basis for it will be the results of the ITEA 2 project “Easy Interactions” 2007-2010, led by EADS Secure Networks, France, within Europe’s premier co-operative R&D programme Information Technology for European Advancement (ITEA), driving pre-competitive research on embedded and distributed software-intensive systems and services.

References Brown T. and Wyatt J., 2010. Design Thinking for Social Innovation.

Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2010. [online] Available at: http://csi.gsb.stanford.edu/design-thinking-social-innovation Feng H., 2010. Quantum Architecture. An Indeterministic and Interactive Computational Design System. In: CAADRIA 2010.

New Frontiers. Conference proceeding published by Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia.

Flachbart G., 2006. Golem Reloaded: For More Capitalism and Less Architecture.

In: Oosterhuis K. and Feireiss L., eds., GameSetandMatch II: On Computer Games, Advanced Geometries, and Digital Technologies. Rotterdam: episode publishers.

Flachbart G. and Weibel P. eds., 2005. Disappearing Architecture: From Real to Virtual to Quantum. Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhäuser Publishers for Architecture Florida R., 2010. The Great Reset. How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

Friedman T.L. , 2005. The World Is Flat. The Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. Farrar, New York: Straus and Giroux.

Grossman L., 2010. Launch Pad. TIME 175(14).

Lindegaard S., 2010. Why a Networking Culture Is Important. [online] Available at: http://www.business-strategy-innovation. com/2010/03/why-networking-culture-is-important.html Mitchell W.J., 2005. Placing Words. Symbols, Space, and the City. Cambridge/MA, London: MIT Press.

Mouffe C., 2002. For an Agonistic Public Sphere. In: Enwezor O., et al., eds., Democracy Unrealized. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz.

Ramo J.C., 2009. Unemployment Nation. TIME, October 5.

Salam R., 2010. The Dropout Economy. The Future of Work Looks a Lot Like Unemployment. TIME 175(11).

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Sirkin H.L., Hemerling J.W., Bhattacharya A.K., 2008. Globality: Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything. New York: Hachette Book Group.

Stiglitz J.E., 2010. Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company.

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New Media as a Catalyst for Integration in CrossBorder Regions?

Jan-Philipp Exner Dipl. Ing. MSc., TU Kaiserslautern, exner@rhrk.uni-kl.de Guido Kebbedies Cand. Ing., TU Kaiserslautern, kebbe@rhrk.uni-kl.de Department for Computer-Aided Design in Urban Planning and Architecture, TU Kaiserslautern http://cpe.arubi.uni-kl.de

Abstract Cross-border integration was and still is one key aspects of the EU. The focus of this study is to show the efforts of a German-French border-region for a better integration and its use of new media and technical solutions by planners. The Eurodistrict SaarMoselle is a new founded EBCG (European Cross-Border Cooperation Groupings) to improve the crossborder cooperation in this German-French region. Due to the fact, that media has the ability to connect people and places, the question could be raised, if this integration is fostered by innovative solutions induced by new media? How could such a system be supposed and if there is an approach or some kind of platform and furthermore how will be the acceptance and how could it be raised? One of the first projects for this newly founded administrative unit is a common monitoring and management system for

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the commercial zones. In order to realize this enterprise, the aim was to create a web-based tool, which is accessible by every participating German and French project partner and enables them to maintain their own spatial data (commercial zones for example). Besides the development and composition of this tool, continuative ideas were discussed, how to induce further cross-border integration and cooperation by the use of new technologies and new media.

Study case Eurodistrict SaarMoselle The European Union and its integration have a long and eventful history.

The transformation from an inhomogeneous accumulation of sovereign states into a more supranational confederation is accompanying with the ambition of more cooperation between the countries. Thus, this is especially remarkable in border areas. One of these regions with an especially eventful and changing history in the last 200 years is the German-French-border.

The Federal State Saarland as parts of this area even changed its affiliation for eight times (Eurodistrict SaarMoselle, 2008).

One of the first remarkable cross-border cooperation projects was the region Saar-Lor-Lux. This was founded by the state of Luxemburg, the French federal state Lorraine and the German federal state Saarland (subsequently, the Belgium Wallonie and the German Rhineland-Palatine joined this administrative construction as well) and was established mostly because of the common economic structure (steel- and mining-based industries) and their needs for common cooperation. Besides this greater-region those issues, the demand for a cooperation unit on a smaller scale arose. Especially the importance of urban areas for the rural development attained more

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attention. The Charta of Leipzig now as well underlines the importance of this issue in 2007 from the European Union (European Commission, 2007).

One of those regions is the German-French neighbouring region around the city of Saarbrücken. This agglomeration area of Saarbrücken and its close German communities as well as the bordering French communities count about one million inhabitants (Eurodistrict SaarMoselle, 2008).

Especially the spatial proximity and the same economy structure are causing the demand for a high cooperation and integration and on the other hand, the disuse of this special potential. Aim for this area, which is a smaller unit than a EUREGIO, was to establish an Eurodistrict. In the middle of the nineties, the “Verein Zukunft-Saar-Moselle-Avenir” was founded to improve the cooperation and integration in this cross-border agglomeration area. Subsequently in 2010, the Eurodistrict SaarMoselle, an European Cross-Border Cooperation Groupings (Europ. Verbund territorialer Zusammenarbeit/EVTZ) developed from its predecessors.

This construction is founded by the European program Interreg IVa and by a yearly member fee of 0,80€/inhabitant. The following picture clarifies the dimensions with the actual members of the Eurodistrict (blue line) and possible partners.

As mentioned before, the idea for this cross-border region with a changeful history is, to create a sense of unity. This should be achieved mostly by cooperation and cross-border projects, both on administrative and on social levels. Whereas the actual study project is focussing on a commercial zone management system with the Eurodistrict, 3 German and 6 French partners and its complex requirements, further going ideas will show the potential of the embedding of social media for example.

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Figure 1: Eurodistrict SaarMoselle 2010, Members 2010.

[Image online] Available at <http://www.saarmoselle.org/ page446-409-kartografie.html> [Accessed 02 August 2010]

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Approach Cross-border integration is always accompanied with problems and barriers. These barriers for this integration could occur mostly on multidimensional levels. The administrative level and the political frameworks are the ones which could just be hardly changed. Due to the social and cultural differences in border regions there are often problems on this planning level as well. The technical level (software, workflow, original data for example) often has big disparities between communities and especially countries, but these are the problems that could be solved, in particular by new, innovative technical solutions. Hence, one of the first projects in their new constitution of the Eurodistrict SaarMoselle was to develop a common, cross-border management for the commercial zones. If there is the will to cooperate between different kinds of areas and regions, it is essential to manage the arrangement of kinds of land use, has a need for common strategies to avoid unrestrained usage of settlement and to give a basis for the management for the conflicts of use between the interests of the project partners. Hence, it is the logical step, to embed and land use monitoring, which is an observation over time, in order to as well achieve sustainability in an economic and ecologic way. This is as well the condition for the management and monitoring of the commercial zones, which is the reason for the cooperation between Eurodistrict and TU Kaiserslautern.

The idea was, to create a technical platform comparable to a portal that contains a coherent raw-dataset with centrally managed spatial data and decentralized managed metadata for common cooperation. Furthermore, the aim was to organize and promote spatial data, first for the mentioned political and administrative purpose, in a second step to create a platform to attract and inform potential investors.

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Basis to organize this spatial data is a Geographical Information System (GIS). Guhse (2005, p. 257) states that a GIS-system is the „integral component of the information and communication-technology in the administrative departments“. Usually, the term GIS-system is used for a specific, complex software-package with a connected database, which is specified to organize spatial data and for geospatial analysis. Because there has to be a strategic and as well expensive decision for specific GIS-system, the approach in this project was to set up first a “test-balloon”, to show to potential of such technologies to the project partners. Our approach for a first an easy-to-use solution was a combination between a website with embedded mapplets and the connection via scripts to a database file.

In fact, it is not typical GIS by definition, but by its components, it is a geographical-information-system that displays map-based data and allows simple geospatial analysis. This small and thin solution makes it possible, to create results, which are manageable without any complex briefings for the project partners and is adaptable for requirements. Hence, it has not the full functionality and usability of a Desktop- or Web-GIS, but it is available via every usual browser nearly without any restriction. The existing data has been collected and homogenized via a web-appearance by the use of existing open source web-standards. Thus, this first easy-to-use solution to visualize results is rather a website connected to a database than a typical web-mapping-service or a Web-GIS, which is still sufficient at this step.

The software which was used for pre- and post-processing (QuantumGIS) is as well as the map database free available in order to avoid costs for the communities, which have naturally a very limited financial range and capacities. The technical realization had as first step to think about a common database, which accessible via Internet. Fundament for this should be Openlayers–platform (Open Source Geospatial Foundation) that allows it to embed maps from various sources like for example the 274 MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

free available Open Street Map as well as commercial providers such as Microsoft Bing (Microsoft Cooperation) or Google Maps (Google Inc.).

After setting up this first step, the relevant commercial zone data of the project partners has to be aggregated. One big problem as well is to homogenize this data in terms of geographical projections and graticule.

Standards on French and German side are different, even between the territorial communities on the French side are different geographical systems. This data has to be integrated in a webportal, which was made by the use of a mixture of shp-files and kmz-files. Another point is to adjust the arrangement and exposition of the data, whereas the project partners had different ideas about. Questions like the amount of published metadata, potential commercial zones, embedding of traffic zones and calculations have to be solved. This system needs a thoughtful composition and maintenance, with focus on data handling, avoidance of data redundancy, especially with a server and a lot of decentrally connected project partners from different countries with different workflows. This data is published in a first, intern portal, just accessible for administrative authorities that have to join the connected metadata (pictures, information and contact persons for example).

Figure 2: Own graphic 2010. Content. [electronic print] [Accessed 29 August 2010]

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Furthermore, the possibility is given to set up sample database queries and geospatial analysis (all free areas between 20 and 60 square kilometres, for example), to get use of the connected data. Technical and administrative questions (who is running the system, how to organize the user rights for example) have to be solved in the future as well. The structure has to be flexible, to react on occurring problems, like a changing composition of the project partners, different administrative structures and workflows and different focus of usability. An approach for this complex task and further common projects could just be to achieve it with a step-by-step solution, initiate it from a slight and smart starting-point. In addition to this, it is important to involve the local authorities as much as possible in order to gain consent. This bottom-up-principle could act as catalyst to raise the acceptance of this portal, because every project member is in charge for their own data and not dependent on a higher authority.

This own consciousness and responsibility for the data also on the lower administrative levels is important to boost the subsidiary. For this point, the bottleneck of the system is the usage of the kml/kmz-files for the visualisation and the shp/dbf format as database storage and the restricted functionality. With this solution, it is very easy to edit the metadata of the commercial zones but if the geometry of the zones changes or a new commercial zone is planned, it is necessary to edit the data with a Desktop GIS and re-import it to the system. A solution for this problem is the usage of a â&#x20AC;&#x153;realâ&#x20AC;? geodatabase and a WFS-T as a backend. In this case the user of the Administration-Portal is also able to change the geometry of the commercial zones as well as further complex tasks.

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Administration-Portal The â&#x20AC;&#x153;Administration Portalâ&#x20AC;? is closed for public visitors and aims especially for data input and to manage and aggregate the commercial by the cooperation members. The homogenising data (same projection mode and the method of collection) is displayed on this website and only accessible for the communities and they are in force to insert their own data. The strong focus on self-administration should aim for a better acceptance of such a portal and especially the way of working and collaborating.

Hence, there will be not a typical top-down-oriented result because every member will be in charge of the quality of their own data and will feel responsible for it. Besides the data input, it gives he potential for more detailed geospatial analysis than in the open portal and it contains as well the planned commercial zones, which are already not legally fixed.

Figure 3: Own graphic 2010. Administration portal. [electronic print] [Accessed 29 August 2010]

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Viewer-Portal In addition to that, a â&#x20AC;&#x153;Viewer-Portalâ&#x20AC;? with possibility for data-request is developed to inform public visitors and investors and in a marketing purpose. It should result in a platform for spatial information. In order to raise the acceptance for such a common approach, on both German and French side, the availability for every partner for all collected data to a certain degree could raise its acceptance for example as well. The following screenshot shows a possible databasequery.

Figure 4: Own graphic 2010. Viewer portal. [electronic print] [Accessed 29 August 2010]

Possible future perspectives As mentioned before, the system is just technical snap-shot. Besides the mentioned functionalities, the integration of further analysis-tools to monitor the commercial zone areas use is a logical progress, for example.

By observing the changes with resilient numbers, it gives the chance for a sustainable evaluation of the cross-border commercial zones development.

Even with the restricted functionalities, the requirements â&#x20AC;&#x153;observation, 278 MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

acquisition and interpretation of changes” Streich stated in 2005 (p. 248) for an at least simple spatial monitoring system are fulfilled. Further going thoughts intends to create a common portal for the region. However, these properties are not fixed so far, but there are ideas for a common spatial data infrastructure with connected map-based data. An information-portal like this to represent the region and to give its population a central contactpoint would not be only “just” a GIS, rather than geographical, web-based community portal. Whereas on a larger scale, like for Greater Region Saar-Lor-Lux, a complex GIS-solution is needed for regional planning and spatial observations and tends more to fulfil the requirements. Besides the European integration, the European Union pays also attention for the requirements for an information society, because “the development of our society towards an information society is an inevitable trend” (European Parliament, 2000). Thus, innovation and the knowledge society are mayor EU-policies and are aiming for new creative solution to existing problems.

Maybe, the first cross-border Geoportal with people involved, promote region as innovative with innovative projects could be one of them.

The observation was made, that the Technical barriers especially on the software level are often easier to overcome than the complex and more static administrative ones between countries and other local units.

Furthermore, on the roadmap for the Eurodistrict SaarMoselle is this commercial zones monitoring system just a first step – upcoming projects are for example a tourist guide and the mentioned common GIS-solution.

A logical continuation could be also a social community portal – with basis spatial data and linkage to social communities (facebook, flickr, Qype for example), in order to get more related content (facebook-Like-Buttons, photos, recommendation and events for example). O’Reilly highlighted this importance of this social communities and user-generated-content in

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the web 2.0 in 2005. The principle of those communities with the use of interactive and collaborative elements could foster the idea of integration.

A possible first project could a common bicycle network in the region, which is enriched by posts, recommendations and connected to specific social community groups. By this, such a portal could be enriched with more information, which is relevant for the inhabitants of the Eurodistrict and could aim to link the portal locally. Plus, it might act as an interface between the local and administrative level. As mentioned, there is the potential to use media and new technical solutions to utilize people as driven forces for the cross border integration. Hence, it is important as well that besides the authorities, the people have to be involved.

Another enriching element could be a user-driven crowdsourcing data collection. By this, users are adding various data to system and are upgrading the database. Though, the integration of the commercial zones metadata (geometries later) shows this principle on a low level. Though, the whole potential is even bigger. This user generated content, added by desktopcomputers and especially by mobile devices will increase in the future and could lead to a stronger and vital connection between the users and their data. However, together with all of these chances, there will be some threats and requirements as well. There has to be a specific management and administration for this geographical attached information in order to avoid data cemeteries and to provide constant access. In addition, a base of technical standards and interfaces for the data-use has to be developed in order to ensure resilient data sampling methods. Time will show, if this could be the European INSPIRE directive, or if more decentralised developments form the OGC could be more promising. Some spatial databases are still very fragmented at the moment, but upcoming standards in the rising field of spatial data usage, like Google Earth kml/kmz-files for

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example, could show where the development could go in a short period of time. There should be the ability to integrate data from other servers as well via (web map service, web feature service), no matter if the data is private or public. When it comes to the point of embedding the web 2.0 and the ongoing developments in the GeoWeb, it is important to build a flexible construction in order to react on actual developments. A long planned and fixed All-Inclusive-solution will not be as successful as a stepstep-solution on the long term. It is rather important, to have the ability to embed existing communities than to create a new one, which would be sentenced to fail. There will be no blueprint to create a cross-border portal which helps for the integration in the region, however with a sophisticated approach, it could a help to overcome the barriers from previous times and may aim to create a common spirit.

Conclusion The question was raised, if cross-border cooperation and integration could be achieved by the use of new media. There is a potential for that, though it is complex task which requires a flexible and multidimensional solution, even already for the comparatively small study case of the commercial zone monitoring system of the Eurodistrict SaarMoselle. Communities like facebook, flickr etc. donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know borders and their crowd-sourcing attitude could be used to raise the acceptance on the part of the population. At least it will be interesting to observe as well the differences between the requirements for administrative and social integration.

The portal to manage the cross-border commercial zones is just a first step on a way with many difficulties and hurdles. However, it is a working tool and

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a first step, which could be used by German and French partners to work on common projects and may lead to further comprehensive solutions. When it comes to developments in terms of new media in the internet, one of their characteristics are, that there are mostly standardized and often have a big cross-border acceptance and a high degree of popularity like facebook for example. They are already often working â&#x20AC;&#x153;cross-borderâ&#x20AC;?, and they could boost cross-border integration. Thus, Geoportals combined with the integration of communities could be run also under different ideas, like for example tourism issues or comprehensive spatial planning. Networks from a technical perspective and networks from a human perspective could enrich each other reciprocally and activate endogenous potentials. The fundament for such a development is a strong connection with locationbased communities and of course mobile availability of them.

Questions like the missing standards in terms of software and origin data and different administrative levels just for a small project has to be solved.

The possible successor of a more complex portal will raise other questions as well, like for example data management and data privacy. In particular the question, what kind of data is public data and what is the intention of the project partners. The more the data is organized decentralised with the principles of subsidiarity, the higher is the risk to create data cemeteries and redundancy. A tourism-portal for example could be open for everyone. The people who wants to insert new data, share his opinion with others or in general wants to communicate with other users about their cross-border region, this could be one step to create and strengthen a cross-border consciousness. Furthermore, these new collected data is not only useful for an interested user who wants to inform himself, but also for the planner. Depending on the offering of the portal, he could develop new strategies for up to now unknown problems. If fallow land and empty

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sites are integrated in the portal, the planner could analyse the actual stock and compare it with the population development to adjust his further planning. An expanded portal could be useful for both the planner (spatial data) and the citizen (information and communication). Due to the fact, that computers, internet and social networks are getting more and more ubiquitous in peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life, so their potential to solve such tasks has to be used. Integration on an European scale shall show, that differences arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t that big on the other side of the border â&#x20AC;&#x201C; common work and a common platform could show, how this work and integration may develop with the new possibilities of technology and media. This is the point, where such a portal could act as an interface between the administrative (local authorities) and social (inhabitants) level. The intention is to strengthen the idea of one cross-border region both in peoples and governmental heads. To push forward and maintain this integration is task of spatial and urban planners.

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References Eurodistrict SaarMoselle. 2008. Die Region, Eurodistrict SaarMoselle, [online] Available at <http://www.saarmoselle.org/page409389-die-region.html> [Accessed 22 August 2010].

European Commission.2000. Schlussfolgerung des Vorsitzes Leipzig Charta zur nachhaltigen europäischen Stadt European Parliament, [online] Available at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/summits/lis1_de.htm [Accessed 22 August 2010].

Google Inc. Google Maps. 2010. Google Maps [online] Available at http://maps.google.de [Accessed 22 September 2010].

Guhse, B. 2005. Kommunales Flächenmonitoring und Flächenmanagement. Heidelberg: Wichmann Verlag.

Microsoft Cooperation. 2010. Bing Maps [online] Available at http://www.bing.com/maps [Accessed 22 August 2010].

Open Source Geospatial Foundation 2010. Open Layers [online] Available at http://openlayers.org [Accessed 22 August2010].

O’Reilly, T. 2005. What is Web 2.0? [online] Available at http://www.oreilly.de/artikel/web20.html [Accessed 22 August2010].

Streich, B. 2005. Stadtplanung in der Wissensgesellschaft. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag.

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The Mythological City Peter Wendl Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg: chair of graphic design & visual communication Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg: department of sculptural and interdisciplinary working methods Urban Research Institute / forschungsgruppe_f www.peterwendl.de www.adbk-nuernberg.de, www.urban-research-institute.org, www.forschungsgruppe_f.net

I. To live in a cave: an introduction In his study „Arbeit am Mythos“ Hans Blumenberg defines the human being as an entity that tries to escape the absolutism of reality (Blumenberg, 2006, p.10), i.e. the powerlessness of the prescient human being agains the force of nature (e.g. thunder-storm, fieriness, disease).

The human being uses all conceivable means to fight the absolutism of reality by searching for explanations for unexplainable things: the human being searches for „Erklärungen für das Unerklärliche, (…) Benennungen für das Unnennbare“ (Blumenberg, 2006, p.11). They produce myths to make their chaotic environment more liveable. Myths are a prescientific rationalization of reality because they produce tales and images. Due to these images the human being creates the ability to dissociate itself from the immediacy of reality. From Blumenbergs point of view, the retreat of early humans into caves and the invention of cave paintings is an manifestation of this behaviour (fig. 1) (Blumenberg, 2006, p.16).

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By inventing myths mankind also invented media, which can be used as a shock absorber between mankind and the immediacy of the world. Media is not only a concept that has the function of a safeguard against the outer world, but provides also an interface, a facilitator that offers a window to the world and makes a controlled communication possible (Galloway, 2010).

From this point of view our cities appear as a contemporary transformation of the Stone Age caves. Caves show the following symptoms (caves, villages and cities have in common): firstly, all these sites were – and still are – refugiums and panic rooms of mankind. Secondly, all these sites seem to inevitably provoke humans to produce signs and images, not only in written form (the first writings of mankind were done in the first cities, founded by the Sumerian)(Watson, 2005). In fact, these signs and images manifest themselves directly in space. As a result, they are constantly visible.

Space only becomes cultured if it possesses signs (Peirce, CP 2.275). Space, which possesses no signs, stays “wild”. The human being produces signs to distinguish cultured space and to delimit it from the wilderness (fig 2).

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fig. 1: To live in a cave I / Paintings in the Caves

fig. 2: To live in a cave II / Paintings in a public toilet

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Traffic signs and road signs satisfy the desire of humans for a rationalized order of space. All the other signs we produce (like graffiti or advertising) do not provide a logical order of space. They cover the environment with a mythologizing interface, This also allows a more distanced point of view.

Moreover, it reveals the hidden laws of space not in a rational and logical manner but annotates it in a more associative way.

Since 2007, Sao Paolo is the only city in the world which bans advertisings in urban space by law (fig. 3). Revealingly, in Sao Paolo you can see more graffiti than in every other city in the world (, 2009) (fig. 4).

Images and signs which are put in public space in addition to the logical information (traffic signs, road signs, maps) seem to be an evidence of the need of human beings for a mythological prescientific and pre-rational order of space. It seems that the human being is not satisfied with a purely logical information system, which is implanted in space. Apparently, the human being needs other resources to oppose absolutism of reality. Even the so-called “modern” human being goes back to the instrument of creating myths. Roland Barthes particularly remarks that even photography, film or advertising can embody myths (Barthes, 1964). In addition to that he states that the important message of a myth is basically not the content communicated but the way in which it is communicated: „Da der Mythos eine Aussage ist, kann alles, wovon ein Diskurs Rechenschaft ablegen kann, Mythos werden. Der Mythos wird nicht durch das Objekt seiner Botschaft definiert, sondern durch die Art und Weise, wie er diese ausspricht.“ (Barthes, 1964, p. 85). McLuhan transfers this argument to media in general (McLuhan, 1967). Myths have to communicate with us.

As well as cave paintings and Christian Myths (fig. 5), also contemporary signs and images which are put into urban spaces serve this need: they speak to us, weather we want to or not (fig. 6).

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fig. 3: Lack of information / Banned Advertising in Sao Paolo

fig. 4: Glut of information / Pixação in Sao Paolo

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fig. 5: Divine Interface I / Detail of the Sistine Madonna by Raffaello Sanzio, 1514.

fig. 6: Divine Interface II / Hot Wheels, 2010.

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The significantly formal coherence between figure 5 and 6 points to their common idea: the main message in these figures in not “Believe!” respectively “Buy!”. The main message in both examples is: something is looking at you and it is located in a higher dimension. Both pictures communicate that there is a superior power which cannot be explained in a rational way. By producing such messages, the human being embeds itself into a bigger context, which makes the environment more reliable.

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II Contexts The human being is a Homo Pictor ( Jonas, 1994). It customizes his environment to his needs and desires by leaving sings and icons. Hans Jonas says that this skill marks a anthropological border: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Not an animal intervened at that place, where I can see this sign, it must have been a human being.â&#x20AC;? As a result, the Homo Pictor transformed a natural state into a artificial state (MittelstraĂ&#x;, 2004, p.961) and documented his own presence in space. Jonas states that only this conversion from nature to culture makes the human being a human being. As a result, it is possible to differ between human being and animal respectively human being and nature. The Homo Pictor marks his space with signs and icons and delimits it from the space of nature, wilderness and the non-denoted etc. (fig. 7 to 9).

fig. 7: Assault of the symbols, Surrender of Nature / The Eagle Awards, 2010.

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fig. 8: Expansion of the symbols, Repression of Nature / Art Farm, Wim Delvoye, 2010.

fig. 9: Retreat of the symbols, Regeneration of Nature / WMF, 2010.

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Initially this distinction happens by chance. First and foremost, signs are temporary communicators, which have their right to exist as the only connection between transmitter and receiver. Space which is permanently occupied by signs is only generated as a secondary effect of communication.

But we have to assume that this side effect is not completely irrelevant to the human being. Otherwise we could not satisfactorily explain why we don´t clear up the space and remove all those signs that we don´t need for our communication processes any more. Why does the Homo Communicator (Baacke, 1973) not get rid of his signs?

1. Native language There is no doubt about the question why we don´t remove traffic signs or navigations systems every day and just put them into space when they are needed for someone´s guidance. They behave like institutions, which are inscribed into space (Löw, 2000) and regulate social processes. It would be irrational if we redeveloped all these signs again and again. We need them too often. In addition to that, they are set out to be generally understandable, everywhere and every time. We could describe them as the logical symbol systems or the native-language sign systems of our societies because they always communicate meaningfully and understandably.

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2. Foreign language But how about all the other signs, which we produce in our environment?

There are Graffiti on walls, writings on toilets, stickers on glass panes, posters on advertising collums?

Firstly, these signs mostly don’t conduce to pure information and they don´t form a coherent and universally understandable language like traffic signs in a city. In fact, these signs are not organised, but arise anarchically and belong to different control systems which are not universaly understandable but merely comprehensible in isolated social units.

Secondly, these signs don´t make sense as institutions which permanently mark the public space: on the whole, they don´t regulate social processes.

Undoubtedly, unique symbols, which only small groups can understand, can nevertheless have regulative functions (e.g. Hobo codes from migratory workers). But in consideration of the fact that insiders always belong to the minority, we have to ask the question: what do these non-universal symbol systems mean to those who don´t belong to the circle of insiders? How does a society handle these foreign symbol systems? How can we lead back all those signs to a convincing and coherent meaning? We could describe them as the mythological symbol systems of our society.

3. Obscure contexts How can we differ between logical and mythological symbol systems?

Information can only be logically decoded, if we know about its particular context, in addition to the information itself.

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On the one hand, we should be aware of the specific code of the information in a semiotical sense. On the other hand, we should know about the punctuation (signification of the information within the whole communication process) in a sense of the communication process.

Furthermore, we should care about both transmitter and receiver of the information. To turn the argument on its head: if we don´t know enough about the context of information, its message enters the territory of the mythical.

4. Obscure encoding: territorial marking Public space, seen as a media for communicative expressions, is ambivalent: although information points at an individual, it is nevertheless apparent for others. Therefore, we can notice two different strategies to channel information: First, encryption of the entire message. As a consequence, only a defined audience will be able to decrypt the information. All the other recipients won´t be able to decode it. Nevertheless, we know that the information is not addressed to them (fig. 10 and 11).

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fig. 10: Territorial marking by a Piru Killer (PK), a Latin Style Killer (LSK) and a Nigger Killer (NK) / Gang graffito in Los Angeles, 2010.

fig 11. Territorial marking by non-transient twittering / Singing Blackbird, 2007.

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5. Obscure punctuation: babes & strangers The second strategy is, to transfer small packages of unencrypted information, which are isolated from their context. The entire context itself is only known by insiders. In turn, other recipients which are not meant to be addressed are able to read the single information packages but do not understand the message, because of the missing links. The excluded recipient does potentially not realize that the information is actually not addressed to him, while he is receiving those signals. As a consequence, he perhaps takes the message as referring to himself (fig. 12 and 13).

6. Obscure Transmitter: Words of God Signs serve the needs of direct communication, adjourned communication or permanent communication between transmitter and receiver.

Depending on the particular latency period between the moment of broadcast and the moment of reception, different types of media have to be used. Nevertheless, signs often outlast their intended life expectancy.

As mentioned above, visible signs mark the human space. In addition to that, those signs, which outlast their own intended lifespan, sediment the human space and charge it with anachronistic meanings. Signs of former communication processes are not merely passive hints from the past (like a footprint). In fact, they are active voices, which talk to us about incidents that are not up to date anymore. If signs outlast the latency period of the communication they belong to, they get rid of their own origin and context. They become signs which have forgotten their own transmitter. If a physically and logically allegeable emitter instance is missing, we displace the source of information to a metaphysical place. These signs become words of god. Examples of mythological sign production similar in kind are numerous.

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fig. 12: “Rude but Cute!” – “Should I call her? Perhaps she´s already 32!” / Wim Delvoye, 2000.

fig. 13: “Pick you up in 1 hour” – “But mother always told me not to go with strangers.” / Fiat, 2010.

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7. Obscure Recipient How about signs which indeed have an emitter, but are not addressed to a specified recipient? At first sight, a missing recipient seams to not be as productive for us as a missing transmitter. At least, signs that have disengaged themselves from their emitter have essentially made a contribution to the development of religions. Furthermore, it is quite normal that a human being is talking to himself, without addressing his words to a specified counterpart. However, we have to ask the question why we are actually doing that? Does this form of communication have any effect and does it make any sense? Obviously, a contingently effect can only affect the emitter, due to the fact that nobody else is involved to the communication process. A human being, who is talking to himself is potentially broadcasting sensible signs, but he already knows their meaning. That is why we usually have to categorise this communication as absurd. Initially, signs that have no specified receiver, come to nothing.

Nevertheless, we produce signs without addressing them to an available recipient over and over: the message in a bottle, the house blessing (fig.

14) or the Golden Record, which the NASA launched to the universe in 1977 (fig. 15).

fig. 14: House blessing / Religious message in a bottle to a divine recipient.

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fig. 15: The Golden Record / Cosmic message in a bottle to a alien recipient.

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Why are we doing that? It seems to be absurd, to spill signs like milk that have no specified receiver. Just as a usual prayer, the conventional message in a bottle and the unconventional Golden Record are metaphysical information transfers which dislocate the reception of the information along the space axis and time axis potentially ad infinitum. By consciously displacing the receiver into the dark even into the netherworld, a ordinary cybernetic model of communication becomes practically impossible. If we get feedback anyhow, we are irritated. We are not prepared for that, because we would not have expected an answer or we would no longer have expected it. In any case, an imminent answer is definitely impossible.

Nevertheless, the message in a bottle and the Golden Record do make sense for us, even though the answer is obscure. The appreciation for this form of communication is not describable as a successful information transfer to a recipient that potentially does not exist. It does also not fail because of the missing response. If it were like that, we would have quit that long ago. Just as the signs that miss their emitter, we can not logically decode those signs that miss their recipient. They can only be decrypted, if they are not only seen as occasional relicts of human communication and if we admit that the spatialization of signs has its own meaning, which exceeds the intrinsic semiological meaning of the signs and produces a secondary semiological system (Barthes, 1964). For producing such superordinate symbol systems, it is required that a seemingly meaningless communication lasts as a document and makes the signs available for others as an evidence of the communication process. This assures that the effects of the signs do not disappear without a trace but have influence on ensuing ages.

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8. Odds and Ends The production of this secondary semiological system proceeds in two steps: logical communication turns into communication without context.

In a debris of messages, coming from the dark and going into the dark, nevertheless not disappearing, but lasting as documents. After that, the Homo Communicator uses those messages to create his own mythology and makes himself to a Homo Crēditōris: “The originality of mythic thinking is, as the bricolage in a practical sense, the fact that we produce structured entities, not directly by means of other structured entities, but by using odds and ends […], fossil vouchers of history, of an individual or a society.” (Levi-Strauss, 1973, p. 35). By means of the bricolage, the human being constructs own explanatory models by producing own myths, where an entire coherence is missing. The amateur even uses the fund of existing myths for creating his new ones. As a consequence, different mythologies do not independently generate origin funds of symbols. Similarities between early Sumerian writings, the Gilgamesch epos or the Hebrew bible vouch for that (Watson, 2005). The symbol of the all-seeing eye also still appears under the same circumstances in most varied pictorial universes (fig. 16).

Both similarities of content (the omnipresent gaze) and style (Horus type, hand type, flying eye type, triangle) are obvious.

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Fig. 16: The omnipresent gaze. Egyptian iconography: Horus (a), Arabian iconography: Nazar (b) and Fatima (c), Christian iconography: God Father (d) and Trinity (e), heraldry: Leon Battista Alberti ( f ), iconography of world conspiracy: United States one dollar bill (g), esoteric iconography: Hubble Helix Nebula (h), nautical iconography: AIDA cruiser (i), graffiti iconography: Kripoe (k).

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III. The mythological city The logical symbol systems of our cities, which I mentioned above, find strong competitors in mythological signs. They push into still unoccupied space: in Galata, a traditional business district in Istanbul, graffiti characteristically limits itself to the ground level rolling shutters of shops. These roller shutters go down in front of elaborate displays of the showcases (fig. 17) after closing time. During the day the business districts of Istanbul are littered with sings and symbols. Every imaginable corner or reachable height is occupied to display the products on offer. At night, countless products disappear behind voiceless roller shutters without a trace. What remains is a lack of information, offering space for new signs, virtually provoking their appearance. In Galata it is quite ordinary that sprayers unhurriedly leave their Graffiti on closed roller shutters next to cafes and bars which are still opened in the early evening. They don´t have to fear to be accused of vandalism (fig. 18).

Kripoe, a sprayer, whose graffiti are well known in Berlin, systematically sprayed almost every roller shutter with his significant eye and bone symbols in the high street of Galata, even in the side alleys. This cannot be described as an undercover mission any more, which suddenly happened in the dead of the night. The result is too big and obvious. Nobody seems to be bothered about that.

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fig 17: Allurement: products on offer in Galata, a traditional business district of Istanbul. 2010.

fig. 18: Greed: takeover of the lack of information by a graffito in Galata. 2010.

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1. Fictions It is not relevant for the reception of mythological symbol systems of a city that the emerging signs don´t form a coherent system at all, but rather an occasionally inconsistent formation. Today, the sciences of mythological studies assume that myths still are part and parcel of human entity, but are not received as literally true. In fact, todays myths can´t (and won´t) disguise their fictional nature (Mittelstraß, 2004, p. 953). Therefore, myths have to be described as a “visual allegorical expression of a life form, which – undisappointed – has lived up to the intangible, while endeavour to come to its senses, because we can already regard the effort to see reason as an aim, which exclusively cannot be missed.” (Mittelstraß, 2004, p. 953).

Under this circumstances signs that are independent of logically coherent and directly earmarked symbol systems, have a second meaning: we do not receive the message in a bottle, the house blessing, the graffito or the advertising as literally true, but merely as allegorical expression of our effort to denominate the uncertain and to make it manageable.

2. Dialogues As shown above, the signs and symbols of our cities can be characterized by their missing contexts. Because of that, they provide an ideal fund for a playfully and fictional communication without consequences. A dialog on the wall of a toilet (fig. 19) does neither have an emitter nor a specified receiver. As if by magic, a new story unfolds on the walls because of endless reactions and answers. This story can only be described as a myth. A dialogue that communicates with itself that arises from off and vanishes into off.

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fig. 19: Self-referential dialogue, coming from off.

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Current developments in advertising show similar tendencies: the achievements of recent advertising strategies like viral or guerilla advertising prove that advertising whose context is missing, definitely affects people.

Advertising gets rid of its own broadcaster, but not to deceive us or to conceal its own intentions. By disposing of the emitter, advertising also initially does away with the literal receiver, i.e. the consumer. Just as the message on the wall of a toilet, advertising with dynamic contexts offers us the way to understand and recycle it as stock. Although we are aware of the fictionality of urban myths (it is interesting that this phrase has established itself as a term that describes the spread of rumour, which originally were planted by advertising companies), we do not banish them to the realm of the forbidden but we admit a dialogue between advertising and us as well as single messages on the wall of a toilet admit a dialogue between each other (fig. 20 and 21)

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fig. 20: Moot is a dialog / 3m Security Glass, 2009.

fig. 21: Mourning is a dialog / Dexter, 2010

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The ways to interact within this dialogue are â&#x20AC;&#x201C; because of the missing contexts â&#x20AC;&#x201C; manifold: answering and modifying (Adbusting), affirming and retelling (Viral), associating and quoting (fig. 22).

fig. 22: Learn to anticipate / Learn to associate

3. Activation of the dialogues As a conclusion, we can perhaps answer the question, which positive effect can wrenched from the mythological signs in public space and what we need graffiti and advertising for to symbolically acquire of our environment.

By now, graffiti worked hard to equal the status of a contribution to the culture. But this contribution is restricted even in the graffiti research on

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the one hand to a subcultural or individual expression and consequentially the mechanisms of empathy and on the other hand to a menetekel function (Institut fĂźr Graffitiforuschung, 2002 / Graffitiverein, 2009).

Advertising remains to struggle for that status. The sociological reception of advertising is â&#x20AC;&#x201C; beyond critical arguments â&#x20AC;&#x201C; limited to a indicator function. Advertising was an indicator for the wishes, needs and interests of our society (Ernst Primosch, n.d.). But this is not the insight, we can benefit from. It is rather its intention: advertising is developed to correspond to our wishes and interests respectively advertising rather generates them.

The effects of graffiti and advertising are always discussed under the same circumstances: they are always seen as fossil signs, with which the archaeologist has to infer to a condition of our society, of a subcultural movement or of single individuals. At best we can use those interpretations to anticipate future developments. Advertising and graffiti are always seen as passive endpoints of a discontinued communication process, as signs without junctions, but never as active voices of a communication, which is still in progress, i.e. as fragments that we can recycle in our myths that inscribe themselves into our symbolic systems and modify them. These modifications necessarily reflect themselves in our symbolically adoption of space. Symbolic systems that are earmarked and have the function to regulate social processes do not tolerate that. Urban planning, architecture and art in public space are too idle for that.

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References ARTE Metropolis 11.2009.

Baacke, Jürgen: Kommunikation und Kompetenz. München 1973 Barthes, Roland: Mythen des Alltags. Frankfurt a. M. 1964.

Blumenberg, Hans: Arbeit am Mythos, Frankfurt a. M. 2006.

Galloway, Alexander R.: Das müßige Interface, Köln 2010.

Graffitiverein, Darstellung des Modells der Graffitipolygeneses im Kontext der Bildenden Kunst und ihrer räumlichen Situierung. n.D. Institut für Graffitiforschung, Graffiti-News Nr. 48. 2002.

Jonas, Hans: Homo Pictor. Von der Freiheit des Bildens, in: Gottfried Boehm (ed.): Was ist ein Bild?, München 1994.

Levi-Strauss, Claude: Das wilde Denken, Frankfurt a. M. 1973.

Löw, Matina: Raumsoziologie, Frankfurt a. M. 2000.

McLuhan, Marshall: The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, 1967.

Mittelstraß, Jürgen (ed.): Enzyklopädie / Philosophie und Wissernschaftstheorie, Stuttgart 2004 Peirce, Charles Sanders: CP 2.275.

Watson, Peter: Ideen – Eine Kulturgeschichte von der Entdeckung des Feuers bis zur Moderne, München 2005.

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MediaCityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Atmospheric Commons Jordan Geiger Assistant Professor CAST: Center for Architecture and Situated Technologies Department of Architecture, University at Buffalo http://cast.ap.buffalo.edu

More even than for the industrial city, the media cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most contested and vital field is its palimpsestic atmosphere, its airs rife with overlays. Air in the city is subject to multiple stakeholders, it hosts multiple publics, and it suspends an overlay of new invisible, essences: wireless communications and pollutions. Both EMF and NOX in the atmosphere today and their subjugation under technical and legal means reveal urban airs to be fields under threat of becoming a de facto privatized commons. This is the volatile and fleeting stuff of our cities today, and it touches the everyday actions of individuals just as it is often the result of large organizations of government: conditioning the workday, the commute, cultural identity, security and onwards.

This talk describes some examples through three recent works, projects that intervene in fleeting opportunities at these overlays, each employing a minimal or transformative materiality, a bounded spatiality, and an indefinite but terminal temporality. Such are some characteristics of the new modes of publicity and commonality in the media city.

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Intro To begin, we can revisit the notion of the commons, most famously polemicized in the 20th century by Garrett Hardin in his article, The Tragedy of the Commons (1968). This important work might best be summarized in his grim statement that, “Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.” Hardin’s analysis links urbanization and population growth to the end-game: “Using the commons as a cesspool does not harm the general public under frontier conditions, because there is no public, the same behavior in a metropolis is unbearable... the commons, if justifiable at all, is justifiable only under conditions of low-population density. As the human population has increased, the commons has had to be abandoned in one aspect after another.” As world population has since expanded and urbanized at a brisk clip, it may be not so much a question of morality as practical necessity and sober consideration of all consequences - cultural, ecological, economic - to revisit Hardin’s conclusion under these new, hyperbolic circumstances. Today, we see the commons - as both public space and a public discourse - evolving.

Hardin’s discussion recounts various degradations and abandonments of the commons against the backdrop of population growth, but today we recognize both the space and discourses of a commons to appear differently and suggestive of diverse responses. Consider the project “Public Smog,”

by Amy Balkin. Initiated in 2006 and ongoing since, the project is many things - a website, book, park, legislative action and more. The project website is a vast collection of information that both explains and accretes to form the substance of the project. It includes information on a number of efforts to list “extra-state spaces” as UNESCO World Heritage sites, 316 MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena

including the Moon itself. As Balkin puts it: PUBLIC SMOG is a park in the atmosphere that fluctuates in location and scale...Activities to create Public Smog have included purchasing and retiring emission offsets in regulated emissions markets, making them inaccessible to polluting industries... When Public Smog is built through this process, it exists in the unfixed public airspace above the region where offsets are purchased and withheld from use.

Other activities to create Public Smog impact the size, location, and duration of the park. These activities include an attempt to submit Earth’s atmosphere for inscription on UNESCO ’s World Heritage List. Any state that has signed the World Heritage Convention and wants to support a World Heritage submission to the Tentative List - acting as State Party in presenting a nomination file on behalf of Earth’s atmosphere - should contact this website.

Conceiving the Earth atmosphere as a commons, Balkin uses the project as a means of exposing inequities within industrial emissions trading and of asserting a way to subvert emissions trading for the creation of an atmospheric commons above Earth. Much of the artwork is expository, explaining its process, its legal, economic and scientific underpinnings for a general public. It also contains various accounts of its making, including Balkin’s efforts to purchase offsets through the clandestine help of brokers who were not permitted to sell to individuals.Balkin has pursued Public Smog in several different countries, each with their own emissions trading markets and legal structures in place to ensure the exclusive participation of large commercial concerns. Her advocacy to place Earth’s atmosphere on UNESCO’s World Heritage List is a natural legal extension of such efforts, one that draws on a relatively nascent legal commons and reflects back on Hardin’s own observations of the legal mechanisms of the tragedy.

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Three Commons Within this expanded notion of both the atmosphere (global, supranational, high-altitude) and of the commons (global, supra-national, highly contested), specific local spatial and temporal instances emerge, â&#x20AC;&#x153;eventsâ&#x20AC;? that crystalize the risks and opportunities of the atmospheric commons today. These also show how the presence of embedded electronics participate in this evolving commons. Three recent works of mine have considered local events in the city as sites for design intervention, and the creation of a suspended atmospheric commons. That is to say, these are situations within which the terms at play are loosened to enable awareness of and engagement with the increasingly saturated atmospheric commons.

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Flash Plazas

This recent public artwork proposed as a temporary intervention in Berlin was part of a call for projects sponsored by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in 2010, towards their “Über Lebenskunst” programming. Organizers sought contributions of any sort to think past technological “greening” solutions towards social practices that considered a fusion of everyday life and art practice, framed by issues of survival (hence the title’s pun).

Contributors were asked to imagine what one would do with a “25th hour” in the day.

The Flash Plazas proposal imagines the addition of a 25th hour in the day as a “time out”, as in sports - time inserted into the limits of a game’s clock.

This is both the time and the space of “flash plazas,” abruptly created public spaces that look past “greening” solutions to social practices that enable

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individual agency - in the work day, in our neighborhood, and in the health effects of traffic, of work and of electromagnetic frequency (EMF) radiation on our bodies.

In the project, four small vans - mobile bollards - close street intersections, each for one workday hour at a time. For that hour, they redirect automotive traffic, provide street benches and disrupt EMF to that outdoor area with a metal net that stretches between the vans, acts as a weak Faraday cage, and provides shade. These mobile bollards, ironically, respond to a critical mass of requests from neighbors using a web interface - community seeking a break from online interaction, and seeking one another, in the street.

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Archipelagos

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RFID toll crossings and national pass control stations are last centuryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s familiar polyps in road development, the ubiquitous spots where two lanes expand to ten. Inverse diagrams of automotive speed on the ground, these add up to surprisingly vast tracts of sacrificial lands at the gateways of cities and, indeed, of nations. Yet thanks to the gradual introduction of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, Nexus Cards and other electronics for toll payment and border services, these lands are now open to being rethought. Their redevelopment can open potential for new bi-national zones, new forms of land use for new kinds of public interaction. These sites - each a hybrid architectural/landscape object enabled by a sensory and database infrastructure - are suggestive of new forms of public space that might gradually replace them.

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These crossings are not only the familiar convergence of diverse personal data such as banking records, automotive registration and law enforcement info. A driver entering also identifies mentally as a bridge-and-tunnel commuter; and carries a personal role in the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s air quality. The toll plaza is more than just the locus of physical entry and data transfer, but of cultural and environmental events too. With the growth of RFID use, toll booths are growing obsolete. But just as RFID transponders obviate tollbooths, RFIDs themselves may soon vanish too: in Germany, truckers are already charged perpetually, by kilometer, via GPS. Such changes promise the end of toll plazas in cities like New York, and the emergence of enormous polyps of available land for redevelopment, all strategically placed at the gateways to the city. These will form an archipelago of lands needing consideration as public spaces and potential sites for air quality remediation works.

Boundaries to the city will no longer be about the toll plazas as gateways (points); nor about many smaller zones within downtowns (fields, as in congestion traffic pricing); but rather about perpetual sensing in our streets (lines, or perhaps meshes). This perpetuity, this duration, touches all issues at play here: movement, banking records, ecological fallout, and place-based identity. Archipelagos is a study of land use redevelopment of these areas, toward the creation of new public spaces integrating the dynamics and forms of interaction found at the sites of old toll plazas.

Customs crossings along the Great Lakes region are the subject of a recent portion of this study, resulting in drawings that show an inventory of existing customs stations, a unique chain of land / water zones along the US-Canada border, their physical makeup, traffic load, and emissions from idling engines. Land areas at the largest twenty-four sites around the Great

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Lakes alone total 2903.85 acres, or over 4.5 square miles. By comparison, this is over one-tenth the land area of Buffalo, New York (40.6 square miles).

It also dwarfs some of North America’s largest urban parks (Toronto’s High Park is 398 acres, Central Park is 843 acres, Boston’s Emerald Necklace is 1100 acres, and San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park is 1017 acres, to name a few). Viewed together as a dispersed asset, these amount in scale to the land area equivalent of a vast park or a small border town.

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Regulate [EMF/EMP]

Regulate [EMF/EMP] is a courtyard installation for an outdoor sculpture space in New York City. Composed of a complex net structure that touches and runs down the sides of the courtyardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s outer walls, the installation defines multiple nodes where the net gathers and concentrates, gradually to the point that its density disrupts EMF signal from the outside. At each node, visitors are drawn to a different aberration in the otherwise featureless abstract rectangle of space: a radio, a heat source in the winter, an interior court. Each of these nodes draw visitors toward them, though they cannot be physically occupied. The spatial result is both a boxy object and an inhabitable void of space, in which signal is caged out but an occupant is caged in.The project responds to growing online banter around fears of domestic and foreign threats in the air, and how to regulate them. Some of the debates regard EMFâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unknown health consequences (a domestic threat, created through the proliferation of mobile computing

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devices and wireless networks), while others come from the small industry and community concerned with protection against an electromagnetic pulse terrorist attack (EMP). An EMP attack, some worry, is an imminent danger to the United States, and would cripple all life services and economy as it would render all electronic devices nonfunctional.

This larger concern of the work joins these perceived “domestic” and “foreign” public health concerns found in electromagnetic frequency disturbances. But the work is also specific to some of the physical and cultural contexts of SculptureCenter, the exhibition venue. Two such contexts are SculptureCenter’s entry procession and its historic relationship to sound sculpture. In the spatial and programmatic functioning of SculptureCenter, the courtyard behaves as a buffer from the street, a dislocation in time, space and in its quiet geometric and material break from the street. Here,

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its boxy space is rendered more like a minimal object with the lacey “lid,” even as its linear path is broken with three nodes. While the making of this is all reliant on recent techniques in computer modeling, they are here employed to reveal and let visitors manipulate the invisible forces present, rather than to create a formal spectacles as an end unto itself. For example, the central node is marked by a “hearth”: a heat source beneath a hole in the net. Around this hole is a dense area of net that protects visitors who gather and may meet at the heat. But as a sensor detects increased signal use at this node, the donut hole expands on a small motor. The radio near the door to the galleries is a paradoxical presence. Protected from an EMP attack, it can endlessly function but raises the question of what it would play without broadcast infrastructure.

These works consider are obliged to acknowledge examples like the “Electro-Sensitives” conceived by Dunne and Raby (2001) as crucial precursors, but also as symptomatic of larger scale responses, wherein interaction involves an inherently social, material and architectural context. In each of these, the identity and vicissitudes of the atmospheric commons - its legal, spatial, cultural and other characteristics - reveal themselves to be highly place-specific, locally-negotiated, situated.

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References Hardin, Garrett. Science 13 December 1968: Vol. 162. no. 3859, pp. 1243 - 1248 Balkin, Amy. http://publicsmog.org/ [Accessed 26 September 2010] Dunne, Anthony and Raby, Fiona. Design noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects, August/Birkhauser, London/Basel. 2001. “Electro-Sensitives,” pp. 39-43 Electromagnetic Pulse Protection: http://www.futurescience.com/emp/emp-protection.html EMP Protection: “When Shit Hits the Fan”http://www.whenshtf.com/ showthread.php?1373-EMP-Protection [Accessed 26 September 2010] EMF-Less http://www.lessemf.com/ [Accessed 26 September 2010]

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