digital cityscapes

Digital CityscapesOn augmented spaces, human

experience and a stronger sense of connectedness in the city

Mediefilosofi / Vintersymposium 2004 / Karlskrona

tau ulv lenskjold

nicolas cederstrøm

rune huvendick jensen IT University of Copenhagen

DIGITAL UNITARY URBANISM

”The 1990s were about the virtual. We were fascinated by new virtual spaces made possible by computer technologies […] It is quite possible that this decade of the 2000s will turn out to be about the physical – that is physical space filled with electronic and visual information”

Lev Manovich



”The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space […] The anexiety of our era has to do fundamentally with space, no doubt a great deal more than with time ”

Michel Foucault

Digital Unitary Urbanism• Digital Unitary Urbanism is a theoretical platform from which we aim to explore

an interest in digital technology as a means of evoking a new kind of urbanism characterized by the ability of individuals and social groups to appropriate and co-create urban space.

• The objective of Digtal Unitary Urbanism is a re-thinking of the functionalistic understanding of mobile and locationbased technologies , which has dominated the field since Mark Weisers initial vision for a new computing era (ubiquitous computing).

• The concept of Digtal Unitary Urbanism is based on a utopian and idealistic approach as well as a socio-cultural investigation of the current technological develompments.

• Key theorists: The situationists, Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, Bruno Latour among others.



Augmented Urban Space 1• Augmented space can be understood as the spacial potential of mobile and

contextaware technologies.

• Augmented space is layering of text, sound and images onto the physical fabric of the city. (Networked) screens, loudspeakers, projections, personal devices etc.

• Thereby our impressions of the surrounding world are altered or enhanced.



Egg of winds (Toyo Ito) Urban Tapestries (Proboscis)

Augmented Urban Space 2• Augmentation of space is a new name for a creative human practice

that has been around since the first cave paintings 30.000 years ago.



”If before we would think of an architect, a fresco painter, or a display designer working to combine architecture and images, or incorporating different symbolic systems in one spatial construction, we can now say that all of them were working on the same problem of augmented space” (Manovich 2002)

Cave painting (Altimara)

Urban graffiti (NY)

Augmented Urban Space 3

• If Cityscapes in a traditional sense is understood as the actual (or depicted) view of a city or simply as the scenery of the city, Digital Cityscapes is an augmented urban space defined by an extension towards a higher degree of complexity, transformability and maybe most of all interactivity.

• This technological development raise questions of how it will effect our experience of the city?

• Our claim: a potential for re-connectedness to social and physical surroundings.

• As a way to conceptualize two modes of experiencing the augmented urban space we will now turn to the notions of Annotated and Ambient space





Annotated spaces 1

Characteristics:

• Digital information is tied to a specific physical location. It adds new meaning to a certain place, object or event that has occurred (or is happening simultaneously)

• Digital information is most commonly accessed through a handheld device: Mobilephone, PDA, labtop etc.

• As opposed to analog annotation, digital annotation almost always enables active participation: One can comment on existing information.

• On an city scale distinct annotated spaces are often connected to the creation of paths or tours (de Certrau) through the urban fabric by adding an extra informational layer to the experience of moving through the city.


Annotated spaces 2

Keywords: map, tour, movement,

interactive stories, neighborhood

PDA-interface in Annotate DUMBO.

Annotate space DUMBO (Andrea Moed.): Stories are presented through text, images and audio files that participants can download from the Web to their handheld computers and take with them to the place of interest

GeoNotes (Persson): GeoNotes is thus the equivalent of legalizing graffiti, tags and posters […] In physical urban space, such anarchy would devastate the architectural space of the city, leading to decadence, vandalism, wreckage and violence. With GeoNotes the anarchy – which is digital – can co-exist with the regulated and ordered city space – which is physical.

Keywords: Graffiti, situation chat, everyday information


Annotated spaces 3

Keywords: public authoring, reverse excavating,

movement, interactive stories, neighborhood,

traces of presence, human desire to ‘map’ territory

Network architecture Urban Tapestries

Urban Tapestries (Proboscis): The Urban Tapestries software platform allows people to author their own virtual annotations of the city, enabling a community’s collective memory to grow organically, allowing ordinary citizens to embed social knowledge in the new wireless landscape of the city.

“I've lived around here for over 20 years & the area is full of memories that only I can access, I love the idea of other peoples memories hanging in the air that I can access too”

Ian, beta-tester



Annotated spaces 4

Conclusions:

• Annotated spaces are produced through a conscious action (act of will) to process and relate digital information (i.e. text, sound, images) to a physical context and visa versa.

• Human experience in annotated spaces can be both a physical and a social augmentation (or mapping) of space: i.e. discovery of a statue one did not notice before. Or traces of other peoples activity at a specific site.

• More often than not information in annotated spaces is communicated asynchronous. Exceptions are real-time annotations or situation chats, where people are interacting within a specific context as an event unfolds.



Ambient spaces 1

Characteristics:

• Digital information is communicated directly in physical space. Different kind of interaction. More natural or ’rich’?

• Creates an experience of immersion, of being surrounded by digitally generated information.

• The form of expression becomes a center of attention; text, pictures, sound. Sound being able to ’fill a space’ in a way that pictures and text can not.

• Ambient spaces are often shared / social spaces, experienced by more than one person at a time.



Ambient spaces 2What do we mean by ’communicated directly in physical space’?

Glitch (Gaye, Jacobs): an array of speakers are hidden in public places. the speakers loudly broadcasts interference glitches caused when passersby receive incoming messages and phone calls. the prototype draws attention to the amount of personal communication taking place in a given space

Keywords: interruption, provocation, reflection, friction



Ambient spaces 3Audiotags (Gaye, Jacobs): audio tags are left at hidden places in public spaces. personal messages that have been previously recorded are whispered to by-passers as they lean towards it.

Texting Glances (Media Lab Europe / NTRG): ambient "waiting" game establishes a symbiotic relationship between a transient audience, a waiting place, and a story engine that matches SMS inputs to image output.

Keywords: collaborative storytelling, place / non-place, gaming

Keywords: street art, intimacy, serendipity



Ambient spaces 4Sonic City (Gaye, Mazé, Holmquist): enables users to create electronic music in real-time by walking through and interacting with the urban environment.

Hello.Wall (Ambient Agoras): communicates ambient information via different patterns. It provides awareness and notification to people passing by.

Keywords: creatvity, personalisation, the city as interface

Keywords: informative art, calm technology, social activity



Ambient spaces 5

Conclusions:

• Human experience in ambient spaces is primarily linked to perception. Experience can be more passive / unfocused than in annotated spaces.

• One can be exposed to information in ambient spaces without asking for it.

• Boundary between physical and digital space is blurring.

• Ambient spaces may have a more real-time feel to them.



Summary

Digital Unitary Urbanism vs. above mentioned projects:

• Projects can be said to (re-)connect people to their physical and social surroundings.

• Connectedness is another word for what Digital Unitary Urbanism is all about (co-creation and appropriation of urban space). As opposed to the notion of Disconnected Urbanism (Paul Goldberger).

• Different kinds of connectedness:

Urban Tapestries: social capital, sharing

Glitch: social friction, reflecting

Other projects: telling, sensing, feeling, playing….



Discussion 1

What is (re-)connectedness? A condition of being in the city? A personal, aesthetic experience? An active, collective community?

What are the qualitative differences between the projects we have described (augmented urban space) and for instance Karlskrona2 (virtual urban space)?

How will the effect of augmented spaces on our everyday lives differ from the effect of virtual mediations / cityscapes?

Urban Tapestries (Proboscis) Karlskrona2 (Superflex)



Discussion 2

How do the development of mobile and contextaware technologies challenge the suprimacy of virtual reality in the emergence of digital media?

Will future discussions turn (back) to the reality of physical space? What kind of reality is unfolding in augmented spaces?

How will the proces towards augmented spaces fit into the debate on technology’s positive / negative societal effects? (Virilio, Augé and others)



Litterature

• Manovich, Lev (2002): The Poetics of Augmented Space – Learning from Prada.

• Casey, Edward S. (1997):The Fate of Place.

• Lenskjold, Tau U.; Cederstrøm, Nicolas; Jensen, Rune Huvendick (2004): Digital Unitær Urbanisme (unpublished masters thesis): http://www.itu.dk/people/huvendick/Speciale.PDF

http://www.itu.dk/people/huvendick/Speciale.PDF










Projects

Urban Tapestries

http://www.proboscis.org.uk/urbantapestries/index.html

GeoNotes

http://www.sics.se/~espinoza/documents/SocNavCh6.pdf

Annotate DUMBO

http://www.panix.com/~andrea/annotate/

Tejp (Glitch and Audiotags)

http://civ.idc.cs.chalmers.se/projects/pps/tejp/

Texting Glances

http://storynetworks.mle.ie/

Sonic City

http://www.music.mcgill.ca/musictech/nime/onlineproceedings/Papers/NIME03_Gaye.pdf

Hello.Wall

http://www.ambient-agoras.org/

http://www.proboscis.org.uk/urbantapestries/index.html

http://www.sics.se/~espinoza/documents/SocNavCh6.pdf

http://www.panix.com/~andrea/annotate/

http://civ.idc.cs.chalmers.se/projects/pps/tejp/

http://storynetworks.mle.ie/

http://www.music.mcgill.ca/musictech/nime/onlineproceedings/Papers/NIME03_Gaye.pdf




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