Posts tagged urban technology

Call for Projects: Interactivos? Hack the City - Current and Future Needs (due May 20, Dublin)

Hacking has always been associated with innovative appropriations of existing resources, re-engineering, working below the radar, and modifying structures to reap new benefits. What happens if you take the philosophy of hacking and apply it to the urban environment? When you consider innovative ways to harness the flows of energy, data and people that pass through the city every day? That is what will be done at Interactivos ‘12 in Dublin.

Project proposals due May 20. Interactivos?’12 Dublin: Hack the City. Current and Future Needs, July 11–26, 2012, Dublin, Ireland.

Read the full call here: http://medialab-prado.es/article/cfp_interactivos_dublin_12

CFP: Mediated Urbanism - Int’l Communication Gazette (due May 31)

In this special issue we wish to address the digitally sustained urban environment in terms of public life. Our approach in the issue is to combine the perspectives of city planning and design, on the one hand, with the perspective of people’s activities as urban audiences, on the other.

Abstracts due May 31, 2012.

Double Special Issue of the International Communication Gazette to be published by Sage Publishers on Mediated Urbanism.

See full CFP here: http://www.cost-transforming-audiences.eu/system/files/CFP_ICG_Mediated-urbanism.pdf

Aca-article: Urban Informatics Research and Insights for Libraries, Cultural Industries and Innovation Systems

Urban informatics explores the intersections between people, place and technology, and their implications for creativity, innovation and engagement. This paper examines how the key learnings from this field can be used to position creative and cultural institutions such as galleries, libraries, archives and museums to take advantage of the opportunities presented by these changing social and technological developments.

By Marcus Foth, Australian Business Foundation Research Fellow on Innovation and Cultural Industries 2011 and Mark Bilandzic and Greg Hearn, Urban Informatics Research Lab at Queensland University of Technology, Australia.

Access full paper here, 44 pages.

ISEA Panel: Think Beta - Participate Evolution of Smart Cities

The aim is to combine advanced new media art with research and development of innovative technologies, participation methodologies and innovative services for the design of the new urbanity.

Find paper abstracts and list of participants here.

Introduction

All thinking is in BETA - so how should the future city and urbanity be designed? The panel discusses new processes for the Participative Evolution of Smart Cities, the culture and technology of the new soft city. The aim is to combine advanced new media art with research and development of innovative technologies, participation methodologies and innovative services for the design of the new urbanity. The art objective is to arise new media and urban art scenarios in areas of re-design and re-construction. The technical objective is, to research and to develop mobile-stationary environment for smart cities as participatory and performative cultural media infrastructure for their development. It is about the requirements for future technical and cultural mass player infrastructure for the urban development of Smart Cities and the optimization of municipal services and digital infrastructures in form of media art and gaming processes. Which technical approaches from media art, urban art, conceptual art, eGovernance, e-services, e-mobility, LBS, to the user-affected eCulture and eCreativity are to be included to develop and to provide improved systems for urban development, planning and participation?

Citizen participation in urban development has a long cultural tradition in Europe. The rising complexity of urban development and infrastructure issues evoke the need of improved cooperation of governmental entities, experts and citizens. Decision making processes for future activities in the field of urban sustainability require an enhanced approach to citizen participation, artisic expression and user-friendly expert articulation. It is required to access the full potential of the new capabilities of communication networks, the broad availability of microcomputers, and the new design and e-skills. The design, development and implementation of the Betaville “software infrastructure” meet all demands of future citizen participation for a sustainable urban development.

Previous approaches did not took into account existing expertise (eg. of media art, civic arts, participation or gaming or set a single discipline perspectives unbalanced in the foreground. Which is be counteracted through the interdisciplinary configuration of the panel. Similarly, technical and organizational issues of participatory urban planning with different approaches for different user groups are to be considered. How alternative planning processes by artists, media activists, designers, researchers can be integrated should be discussed. Advanced art and environmental and socially sustainable design is to be of particular interest and will get exposed. Digital infrastructure should be directed to their local potential for participatory art and design, for development, for local knowledge processes and for the aspect of cross-generational, social and economic networking.

Think BETA Participatory Evolution of Smart Cities is chaired by the two directors Martin Koplin and Helmut Eirund of the “Think BETA Evolution of Smart Cities” interdisciplinary think tank. It has partners from Asia, Africa, North America and all over Europe. The think tank is funded by the BMBF German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung) and goes back to the co-operation between Martin Koplin of the M2C Institute of Applied Media Technology and Culture at the University of Applied Sciences Bremen and Carl Skelton from the BxmC Brooklyn Experimental Media Center of the Polytechnic Institute of the New York University.