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Moving from one place to another.
photo-hyperspace328
Mobile communication technologies create increasingly hybrid forms of presence where rather than being transported to another shared space the person remains aware of their presence in the immediate space whilst communicating in a hybrid media space. This is significantly different from the effortful and temporal nature of transition in physical space; walking through a door, climbing a staircase and crossing a bridge. All of these movements between one space and another require the person to physically move in order to be somewhere else and as they undertake this movement to experience a period ‘between’ one space and the other. In the use of media in urban public space the individual merely switches their sensory and mental attention between the media device or screen and the features of the real world. In this way the person toggles their involvement from the physical space to media space like an on/off type effect. This has an impact inn how people move in the space since rather than simply moving faster or slower the rhythm of motion starts and stops, as the person’s interaction with media switches between attention to the media and attention to the physical environment. The person may choose when to switch, such as deciding to make a phone call or send a message and seek out a suitable space in the environment to do this. Often this means moving to a place out of the dynamic flow of pedestrian traffic; a corner or niche to stand in or a bench to sit. But the media use may be asynchronous with the space, such as when someone receives an SMS message or an LBS alert about a location. The switching is then asynchronous with the rhythm of the space they are in; it adds a secondary, non-spatially defined temporality to the space which is often at odds with the rhythms in the physical place. Thus phenomena are observed where people literally bump into things or people, where they suddenly stop in the pedestrian flow of a crowd. As users start to interact more with screen based media, as opposed to more auditory media such as mobile phone calls, this effect will be enhanced since not only their auditory attention but their visual attention will be switched to the media and not the characteristics of the physical space they are present in.

Taking to the streets and squares.

Temporary public spaces as sites of shared sense of purpose in protest.


Much has been made of the role of social media in supporting citizen action in the recent oustings and unrest in Middle East. But it must not be forgotten that much of the protest took place, not with individuals at home on laptops or computers, but out en masse in public space. Maybe media such as twitter enables such 'mob' networking on the move and sustains and encourages a feeling of common sense of space through synchronous communication with a wider background community. But the urban public space created a framework for gathering and for demonstrating a presence and a will to be counted. Much of the protests have been bylined with references to this - how protesters 'take to the streets' or 'reclaim the square' showing how spatial the right to free speech is in practice, since location is so often central to the message.
This is manifested in the day-to-day activities revolving around the occupation of a public space, reflected in the blog by Eman AbdElRahmanwho says

'there is another side to the ongoing revolution in Egypt, which is the daily life of those people sitting in on Tahrir Square. For the past 12 days, they have remained on the square, eating, drinking, chanting, cheering - simply living there day and night. Life here has its own rhythm now, and the spirit on display is of a mini Utopia.'

Of course temporarily living in a public space also has practical implications, as blogged by Eman AbdElRahman:

@Maysaloon from Syria on Twitter:

Had a thought today, what are all those people in Tahrir Square doing for sanitation? I don't see any cubicles anywhere…

And so I replied:

Either they use nearby mosques' or underground public toilets, or nearby buildings, or shops. Some even return home & come back.

For instance @TAFATEFO tweeted while staying on Tahrir Square himself:

واحد قال في الميك انه ممثل أصحاب الـ 3 عمارات اللي في الميدان .. وانهم فاتحين الدورين السادس والسابع للي عايزين ياخدوا دش أو يناموا

Someone said on the loudspeakers that he is a representative from the 3 buildings on the square. They said they opened their 6th and 7th floors to anyone wants to take a shower or sleep.

From the images it seems that the protestors took care of Tahrir Square during their occupation.
(Photo by Monasosh on Flickr (CC-BY 2.0).

More generally, the role of public space has been documented in photos (both professional and personal) and also on mapping visualisations: BBC slideshow of the square in the space of a day, hypercities twitter visualisation real-time, BBC Map of unrest on Tahrir (Liberation) Square, Egypt, Map of social media related to the protests in Egypt since January 25, 2011, Pearl Square, Bahrain, NY times images, and also out of the spotlight Ba Dinh Square in Vietnam
In Tunisia the new regime already memorialised one of the instigators of the uprising, renaming '7 September Square' (the day the previous leader came to power) as Mohammad Bouazizi Square.

Rethinking the Marketplace

First steps to the book chapter as part of the Eat, Cook, Grow book.
The Place of the Market
We live in a digital, networked society where immaterial transactions frame many aspects of our everyday life. But in an internet of things our products and artefacts still have material presence; they have to be somewhere, they need to be physically displaced to arrive somewhere else, they cannot be easily duplicated and they have a life-cycle. As we grow increasingly accustomed to digital things this has an impact on how we relate to and interact with material objects. A critical characteristic of all things that we consume is that they need to travel from the place they are produced to the place in which they will be consumed, sometimes with some form of preparation process occuring in between. So, in order to eat an apple there needs to be a tree, a person who picks the apple, someone or something that transports the apple to where it will be prepared and then to the person who will eat it. This process may cover a simple few metres or may involve thousands of miles and many weeks. Since western industrialisation this process of the exchange of goods has typically been one which requires a market. The market is the structure through which goods are transferred from the producer to the consumer and typically this process involved many actors. However it involves not just an exchange of ownership and money, but also physical movement from its source to its consumption. The critical feature of such developments is that it created a disassociation between consumer and producer, between farmer and the urbanite. In the vast majority of cases the person who buys their food at a supermarket will never have had any contact with the source of the food, and in most instances will not even be aware of the country in which they food was produced. The consumer accepts the benefits of cheap, accessible and available food in the context of their urban life, without having to be involved in energy demanding distribution processes and highly regulated mono-culture farming. The market removes these issues from their control and provides the easy and homogenised interface to their experience of food.

Flow, Interface and Response (an agenda for architecure)

Architecture as Interface and flow
Architecture should be about creating interfaces and flows between people (both individuals and communities), the environment (both in terms of ecology and also the existing built environment) and through technology (both as hybrid digital space and as tool ). This should be reflected in the outcome where the built project is not seen as an isolated material object, but a mapping of social flows and techno/ecological systems. Instead the architect needs to be able to work in a way that responds and interprets to the many needs, desires and also tensions in a participatory manner. The involvement of any architect in this process is also one that is not complete once the project is completed, but which sees any built project as part of a life-long cycle. Out of this a new responsiveness is needed which sees architecture not as simply as focused on the design of the built world, but as an approach to responding to how we interact, act and structure our experience of the spatial world.

Materialising Social Practices and Ecologies
Architecture is about designing spaces that can be inhabited and create opportunities for social encounter and that are responsive to the local and global environmental ecologies. Architectural design and research should be able to capture, analyse and interpret the often intangible and changeful qualities of social practices and environmental ecologies and materialise these in a design approach. This means responding to patterns of movement, social encounters and tensions, technology practices and environmental ecologies using applied methods from related disciplines such as sociology, geography and anthropology. Overall the design process should be a dialogue and translation of these issues into a coherent and not a dominant or imposed response.

Responding to Technologies, Mobilities and New Urbanisms
The multi-faceted changing nature of the urban space means we need to adopt new strategies for how we respond to these issues as architects. These include new mobilities which cause us to reflect on the static and dynamic in architectural space, and the context of globalisation for understanding how the concept of the city pervades all aspects of design. A further key focus is digital technology, which becomes invisibly embedded in everyday things, even more activities become mediated, and networks extend rather than replace architecture. The field of interaction design reflects not only how people deal with machine interfaces but also how people deal with each other in situations where interactivity has become ambient. It shifts previously utilitarian digital design concerns to a cultural level, adding notions of premise, appropriateness, and appreciation. This calls for new approaches to the concept of materiality in the context of architectural design and a reassessment of the notion of aesthetics.

Flashmobs, Foursquare and Facades

Vermessungs des Urbanen 3.0 organisatoren

Wie ist die Entwicklung hybrider Räume aus Sicht der Forschung, des Designs und der sozialen Kommunikation einzuordnen, und wie ist die Emergenz neuer Verhaltensmuster in diesen Räumen zu bewerten? Heute steht die physische Natur des städtischen Raums einer Dynamik der Informationsflüsse und neuer Mobilitäten gegenüber. Den Beitrag wird die Eigenschaften dieser Medial Raüme und der sozialen Verhaltensweisen verbunden mit der Verwendung Lokative Medien im städtischen öffentlichen Raum der Stadt mit folgenden Schwerpunkten untersuchen:

Flashmobs
Diese hochgradig choreographierten Performances im öffentlichen Raum zeigen, wie Medien und Technologie neue kollektive Verhaltensmuster ermöglichen. Wie kann der statische Charakter des gebauten Raums auf diese Formen der Mikro-Koordination sozialen Verhaltens reagieren?

Foursquare
Die Verwendung von foursquare.com dokumentiert einer neue Sozialität und Mobilität im städtischen Raum, in dem sich Menschen bewegen und anderen Menschen begegnen: auf Bahnhöfen, Flughäfen, in Cafes, Geschäften und Diskotheken. Lokative Medien ermöglichen neue Formen der Begegnung Fremder im im urbanen Raum. Wie können wir Räume für diese Art von Begegnungen gestalten?

Medien-Fassaden
In städtischen Transit-Räumen gibt es eine wachsende Zahl von Bildschirmen und teils interaktiven digitalen Interfaces, die auf die Anwesenheit von Personen oder auf Eingaben reagieren. Mirjam Struppek hebt in ihren Arbeit die zentrale Rolle der Urban Screens hervor und beginnt, Medien-Fassaden als kreatives Design-Problem in den Blick zu nehmen. Wie können wir im hybriden Raum eine Beziehung zwischen gebauten und medialen Räumen schaffen?

(EN)
It puzzles me that when I look and move around I experience very few obvious changes in the physical nature of urban space. maybe I expect too much. For sure I carry a device with me that augments the space, but the screen is still my interface, it doesn't spill out into the city. The city and the built space itself remains surprisingly neutral (dumb?). The physical world does not respond to my passing or presence. In fact when I try to really grasp how space has been changed it is in these three areas:

flash mobs. These highly choreographed performances in public space show how media and technology can inform new ways of behaving in public space that's moved way beyond rheingolds smartmobs. They come into being through a whole plethora of media platforms, twitter, facebook and sms and demonstrate a temporality that the physical space of the city cannot (will not?) respond to. It can only be a passive observer or stage. How can the static nature of out built environment and space start to respond to these forms of serendipity and micro-coordination of social behaviour? Can hybrid space start to perform, to come together and disperse when its use is over?

foursquare.
The use of foursquare.com represents a new practice of recognising and naming presence in space on technology’s terms. Take a look at foursquare listings at any place and you will find as diverse a set of descriptions for places as you could imagine. It documents the sociality and mobility of places we are present in, where people pass through and encounter others, in train stations, airports, sandwich bars, stores and nightclubs. These are places of shared encounters and experiences, not addresses or locations, and our presence in the physical environment is a presence in this hybrid space. So as locative media re-values the sociality of presence with strangers in urban public space, how can the spaces start to allow for these passing encounters? We simply need a few more places to be ‘slow’ and to stop (without having to pay for a coffee), where we can be present in both digital space and the physical space without causing disruption due to our civil inattention. Is it as simple as more benches, more meeting points? What are the implications of networked social interactions for the design of the built environment of cities, specifically public urban spaces?


facades.
The emerging prevalence of urban screens and media facades cause us to reinterpret both the presence and ‘located-ness’ of technology and in particular the moving images in public space as well as the corresponding effects on patterns of social presence and interaction. Whole façades are superimposed with images and sometimes projections or even screens. Do we need windows in public buildings. anymore? If not, how do we design for spaces that need not look out, but that offer other ways of both enclosing and making interfaces between one space and the next? Our colleague Mirjam Struppek’s work highlights the key issue of urban screens and starts to reclaim screens as a creative design problem. On a broader level, how do we connect our physical spaces with our digital spaces? How do we create a less disjointed hybridity, drawing together the physical requirements of the built space to connect outside and inside, and the media spaces which demand a different kind of accessibility; one which is only concerned with non-visual, unbroken links to the network?

Extreme Sheep LED Art

this is interactivity....

gps trace

My latest GPS trace. The curves to the left of the image trace my journey across USA by plane, from Chicago to San Francisco. The breaks in the trace were because I didn't have a window seat.....But the curves are quite beautiful - strange to think they relate to a journey of 1000's of kilometres.
In this image the extreme points are Helsinki to the North, Southern Egypt to the south, Berlin to the East, and San Fransisco to the West.