Ik organiseer dit evenement samen met Michiel de Lange vanuit ons samenwerkingsverband The Mobile City. Hieronder de officiële aankondiging (in het Engels):

http://www.socialcitiesoftomorrow.nl

Bestel het boek bij Amazon

From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen

Urban Informatics, Social Media, Ubiquitous Computing, and Mobile Technology to Support Citizen Engagement
Marcus Foth, Laura Forlano, Christine Satchell and Martin Gibbs

Web 2.0 tools, including blogs, wikis, and photo sharing and social networking sites, have made possible a more participatory Internet experience. Much of this technology is available for mobile phones, where it can be integrated with such device-specific features as sensors and GPS. From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen examines how this increasingly open, collaborative, and personalizable technology is shaping not just our social interactions but new kinds of civic engagement with cities, communities, and spaces. It offers analyses and studies from around the world that explore how the power of social technologies can be harnessed for social engagement in urban areas.

Chapters by leading researchers in the emerging field of urban informatics outline the theoretical context of their inquiries, describing a new view of the city as a hybrid that merges digital and physical worlds; examine technology-aided engagement involving issues of food, the environment, and sustainability; explore the creative use of location-based mobile technology in cities from Melbourne, Australia, to Dhaka, Bangladesh; study technological innovations for improving civic engagement; and discuss design research approaches for understanding the development of sentient real-time cities, including interaction portals and robots.

About the Authors

Marcus Foth, Founder and Director of the Urban Informatics Research Lab, is Associate Professor and Principal Research Fellow with the Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation at Queensland University of Technology.

Laura Forlano is a Postdoctoral Associate at Cornell University.

Christine Satchell is Senior Research Fellow at the Urban Informatics Research Lab.

Martin Gibbs is a Lecturer in the Department of Information Systems at the University of Melbourne.

The Ideas and Ideals in Urban Media Theory

Over the last decade a new set of media, technologies, software, and cultural practices has emerged that changes how we experience the city and shape our urban culture. They range from the mobile phone to GPS navigation; from iPhone apps to “smart”systems that optimize traffic circulation; from listening to an alternative soundtrack on an mp3 player to using a smart phone to locate friends or nearby sites that matchesone’s interests.

There is no single name or discourse for these technologies. Labels range from“ubiquitous computing” to “locative media,” from “ambient intelligence” to “theInternet of things,” and from “the sentient city” to “urban informatics.”1 Nor do thesetechnologies have a single point of origin or trajectory of deployment—althoughmany do have their genesis in military research programs.2 Some are rolled out bygovernment agencies that want to bring order to and control urban space. Others aremarketed by profit-driven telecommunication companies trying to provide their customerswith personalized services. Sometimes community workers take up the technology,hoping it can enhance mutual understanding between different culturalgroups. There are even artists who work with these very technologies to critique theirrole in promoting a consumer based society or bringing about a “society of control.”And then there are the actual users of the technologies that often appropriate themin slightly different ways than intended by their designers or marketers.

What all these urban media—the catchall term that I will use in this chapter—havein common is that they no longer adhere to the anything-anytime-anywhere-newmediaparadigm of the 1990s.3 Rather, they are centered on location-sensing capacitiesand aim to intervene in or add to a specific here-and-now. Their exact interventionsdiffer, but as the examples given above show, urban media are making deep inroadson a diverse range of activities of place making—be they the top-down deploymentby government agencies or the bottom-up appropriation by urbanites in their everydaylife.4

In relation to the main theme of this book—the opportunity and challenges forsocial participation and engagement—two different ways of theorizing urban mediaurge themselves on us. One would be to focus on the affordances of urban media andwhat these could mean for civic life.5 The main question then would be, How doesthe utilization of these urban media—as the outcome of an intricate process of designand appropriation—reshape our urban society?

In this chapter, however, I would like to turn that question more or less around.Rather than looking at the way technology reshapes urban culture, I want to investigatehow ideas and ideals about the city also reshape technology. What role do ourideas of what a city should be play in the design and appropriation of urban media?Technological and Urban ImaginariesThe shaping and appropriation of technology in relation to society represents acomplex process that involves many different actors—from designers to governmentpolicymakers and investors, as well as users—all of whom have their own preferencesand interests. The material characteristics of the technologies themselves factor intothis relationship as well. Here I want to point to one specific yet important elementin these complex assemblages: the performative role of what I will call the urbantechnologicalimaginary.

As Ann Galloway has convincingly shown in her. “A Brief History of the Future ofUrban Computing and Locative Media” (2008), it is impossible to reduce the introductionof new technologies to a single idea by a single actor or institution that is rationallyrolled out, step by step. Galloway points to different “forums for negotiating”that play a part in deciding “what we want and what we don’t want,” among whichshe numbers open markets, institutional regulation (courts, government agencies,NGOs), special-interest groups, and grassroots activism.In this negotiating process, Galloway explains, expectations play a very importantpart. Differing visions on technology—deliberately utopian or dystopian—are utteredin this process, and these may become performative. These visions, hopes, and fears—rational or irrational, fact based or emotionally appealing—may directly affect governmentpolicy decisions, design criteria, investment by venture capitalists, people’sstances toward a new product, and so on. Similarly, Flichy has called these performativeexpectations the “technological imaginary” (Flichy 1999; Marvin 1988).In the field of urban development we find similar “imaginaries” at work. Is not thewhole history of urban planning—from Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities to Disney’sgated community, Celebration, in Florida or Korea’s “smart and sustainable city,”Songdo—a history of (sometimes misguided) attempts to turn imaginary urban utopiasinto forms and volumes, bricks and mortar? “Urban imaginaries,” writes Jude Bloomfield(2006, 46), “focus on sensory and emotional experience and practices, on theimprint of collective memory on imagining how the city could be, on the different,often conflicting social constructions of the city’s future.”

In the development of urban media the technological imaginary and the urbanimaginary come together to form a technourban imaginary. Central issues in thedebates in which the technourban discussions are shaped include: What exactly is acity? How do we expect it to function? Who has which rights? How should we ascitizens—with all our differences—live together in an urban society? How can we usetechnology to realize these ideas? Or how do new technologies jeopardize these ideals?More formally, the technourban imaginary is shaped around both ideas of what acity is (Is a city primarily a bunch of infrastructure or should it be understood essentiallyas a community?) as well as around urban ideals (What kind of community dowe want the city be; how and to whose advantage should the infrastructure bemanaged?). Technourban imaginaries often combine these two framings in a particularapproach of what a city should be.These particular technourban imaginaries play a role in the design of many urbanmedia technologies. Sometimes they are made explicit in the discussion around theirimplementation. At other times they are left implicit. Often they relate to particulardisciplinary framings of technology and society, and they almost always build on (orexplicitly want to counter) historical framings of urban culture. In the rest of thischapter I would like to bring out a few of these technourban imaginaries at work inthe design and appropriation of urban media and investigate how they relate to participationand citizen engagement.

U-City

The first technourban imagination I want to discuss here can be found in a designapproach called “u-City.” This term—short for “ubiquitous city”—has been coined bythe Korean government in an attempt to promote an industry around the design of“smart cities.” The central idea is that urban computing should make urban life morecomfortable, efficient, and easier to manage. The focus is on systems of smart trafficmanagement, or smart objects such as tires that give off warnings when the pressureis too low. Another interest is the development of personalized services like receivinga message when your children have arrived safely at school. Hwang (2009) calls thisidea “The City as a Service.”

We see similar promises in other discourses on ubiquitous computing, uttered atconferences, through advertising, and in professional publications, where new technologiesare brought to the market to either increase efficiency or help personalize thecity through friend finders or recommendation systems. The goal is to put people incontrol of their surroundings. Ubiquitous computing, it is argued, will create “seamlessexperiences” where computers operate calmly in the background.6This particular way of understanding the city can be linked to a historic modernistidea of urban technology in which the city is envisioned as a collection of efficientlymanaged, ever-improving technological infrastructures whose successive rollout willbring us a better life. In their book Splintering Urbanism (2001), Stephen Graham andSimon Marvin trace this idea back to the mid-nineteenth century and connect it withthe scientific positivism of that era. Dazzling new technologies like electricity or moremundane ones such as sewer systems would lead the way to a better life. Ambitiousmunicipalities, they write, wanted their cities to be a “blaze of light,” “rearing out ofthe darkness of the surrounding non-electrified regions” (p.46).7These discussions on the benefits of the new infrastructures were held in concertwith the first debates on the ills of the modern industrial metropolises that gave birthto the discipline of urban planning. This new professional field hoped to solve socialproblems like slumming, bad hygienic conditions, and the threat of social revolt bythe emerging underclass by bringing a new unitary spatial order to the city. Howexactly that was to be carried out varied according to which urban imaginary theseplanners subscribed to. Ebenezer Howard envisioned garden cities with a cooperativepolitical and economic structure, whereas Baron de Haussmann wanted to bring orderto the existing city with his broad boulevards that simultaneously were to increasehygiene as well as the authorities’ ability to assert military control over the masses.At the same time, and on an important point, the u-city discourse of the twentyfirstcentury also differs from the modernist infrastructural movement of the nineteenthcentury. Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin point out that in the modernindustrial city, the ideals were universal access to infrastructure networks such as theelectrical grid or the road system. These infrastructure networks integrated all citizensinto the same technological system on the same level. Perhaps the most importantaspect of Haussmann’s urban imaginary, they state, was the idea to use infrastructuralinterventions to create a unitary city.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, utilities and infrastructure are nolonger seen as public services equally accessible by all, or as integrators that hold allthe smaller elements together in a bigger system. Rather they are seen as marketablecommodities sold to specific consumer groups. The modernist unitary ideal has givenway to a post-Fordist and neoliberal one. For instance, a “smart toll road” will adaptits pricing scheme to demand: the busier the traffic, the higher the toll.Such technological systems might make the city more efficient and tailored toindividuals, yet these systems also address their users very differently. Whereas themodern infrastructure addresses its users as equal citizens, these personalized infrastructuralservices address them as “individual customers.” This could create newforms of inequality. Graham (2005) speaks of an emergence of “Software Sorted Geographies”and Lieven De Cauter (2004) warns of the emergence of a “Capsular Society.”Such developments could even create a shift in the relations between citizens and thecity. Do people still see themselves as citizens—with all the rights and duties involved?Or are they starting to think of themselves as customers, which sets up a differentrelationship between the “customer” and the owner of the system as well as betweenusers themselves?8

Although this critique is valuable, driving it to extremes also risks overlookingopportunities that dynamic pricing systems and flexible services may allow for civicengagement. The problem that Graham and Marvin have diagnosed is not so muchthe technology itself, but the urban imaginary of a neoliberal city of services. Yetcouldn’t these same infrastructural technologies also be deployed in the service ofother urban imaginaries—for instance, an environmentally sustainable city?Take for instance the Smart Cities project at the MIT Media Lab. The way the cityis framed is again as a collective of infrastructures: “Buildings and cities can usefullybe compared to living bodies. They have skeleton and skin systems that provide shelterand protection to their inhabitants, metabolic systems that process inputs of materialsand energy to support daily life, and now artificial nervous systems consisting ofsensors, networks, and ubiquitously embedded computational capacity.”9 Yet here theapplication of ubiquitous computing is applied to making the city environmentallysustainable. The project includes a design for a new city car that can be rented througha dynamic pricing system. Popular routes and times of day are more expensive thanother times and routes. The goal here is not to maximize profit or to provide exclusiveservices to the rich, but rather to allocate scarce resources such as natural resourcesand mobility as efficiently as possible.

Urban Flaneurs and Situationists

The second technourban imaginary that I want to discuss here is one often found inthe world of locative media art (Tuters and Varnelis 2006). In this imaginary, two oldurban tropes play an important role: Walter Benjamin’s flaneur and Guy Debord’sSituationist International movement.Over the last decade, many artists and designers have criticized the commercialapplications of urban media, such as those based on the ideal of the u-city. They pointout that the urban-technological imaginary of a personalized city tailored to one’sprivate preferences, while blocking out undesired places or people, endangers some ofthe essences of their own urban ideal: a city in which play, serendipity, and curiosityplay an important role.

On the centennial celebration of the Futurist Manifesto, American researcher EricPaulos published the “Manifesto of Open Disruption and Participation” (2009), whichmade the case for such a conceptualization of urban culture: “We claim that the successfulubiquitous computing tools, the ones we really want to cohabitate with, willbe those that incorporate the full range of life experiences. We want our tools to singof not just productivity but of our love of curiosity, the joy of wonderment, and thefreshness of the unknown.” In the domain of locative media art10 we have seen anumber of experiments that match Paulos’s call and have turned the urban imaginaryof efficiency and personalization inside out. The project You Are Not Here—A DislocativeTourism Agency, for instance, lets its participants experience the city space in anextended way. In this project a map of Baghdad is projected on the city grid of NewYork and participants are invited to make their way to a number of “Baghdad touristspots” through the streets of New York. When they arrive at the corresponding locationin Manhattan, they will find a sticker with a phone number. When dialed, theywill hear a story about Baghdad.

The recent interest in “psychogeographic” artist interventions like this one is alsoapparent in art festivals that have emerged over the last few years, such as the Confluxfestival in New York that wants to investigate “everyday urban life through emergingartistic, technological and social practice. . . . Over the course of the long weekendthe sidewalks are literally transformed into a mobile laboratory for creative action.With tools ranging from traditional paper maps to high-tech mobile devices, artistspresent walking tours, public installations and interactive performance.”11As Dimitris Charitos, Olga Paraskevopoulou, and Charalampos Rizopoulos (2008)have pointed out, projects like “You Are Not Here” clearly reflect the ideals of the1950s–1960s Situationist International. This group of artists, writers, and architectscentered around Guy Debord worked to counter the rationalist city models tailoredto the consumerist logic of the “society of spectacle” with an approach centered onsubjective experiences of the city, including areas and experiences marginalized in thedominant way of thinking about urban culture.12

Williams, Robles, and Dourish (2009) have pointed out that the Parisian poetBaudelaire and the German philosopher Walter Benjamin also form an importantsource of inspiration for many urban media practitioners. Here the image of the“flaneur” is often invoked as the “solitary and thoughtful stroller” that wandersaround the city casting his glance at the turbulence of the crowds, picking up itsidiosyncrasies as seeds for his own thoughts and feelings. Or as Kracauer has put it:“To the flaneur the sight of the city were like dreams to a hashish smoker” (quotedin McQuire 2008, 42). Williams, Robles, and Dourish (2009) note a similarity betweenthis fin de siècle mode of being and a design approach encouraged by Paulos andBeckman, who write: “We marvel at mundane everyday experiences and objects thatevoke mystery, doubt, and uncertainty. . . . How can we design technology to supportsuch wonderment?” (quoted in Williams, Robles, and Dourish 2009, 7)?

Although a design approach based on the principles of wonder, surprise, confusion,or dislocation may indeed enrich the experience of the city, it is not without its critics.Williams and colleagues (2009) find the position of the flaneur too detached. Onewonders from a safe distance about urban phenomena, but the flaneur is never reallyengaged or called into action. Flanerie “privilege[s] passive voyeurism and imaginationtending towards illusion. The alternate mobilities, inhabitations and appropriationsalive in the city (homelessness and immigration, among other things) are left for examinationby someone else” (Williams, Robles, and Dourish 2009, 7). Kazys Varnelis (2009)has attacked the rise of interest in Situationism on similar grounds by suggesting “Situationism’sfatal flaw is that . . . its goal was always to valorize individual experience overthe collective.” There is thus a fine line of which designers working from this approachshould be aware. While indeed locative media could aim to provide alternative experiencesin the city, there is also the issue of how to truly engage the user.

The City as an Operating System

The third technourban imaginary I would like to bring out makes use of a metaphorin which the city is compared with computer systems. Here, the city is understood asan “operating system” or an “information processing system.” This approach to citiesunderstands them as complex systems in which the city mainly functions as a marketplacewhere people exchange goods, information, and cultural practices.13Agency is usually located at the level of the individual who is driven by his or herown goals and desires, yet on an aggregate level particular customs, legal codes, orinstitutions may emerge over time, thus hardening specific practices and power relationsin stone, law, or today, software code. Once emerged, these same customs, codes,or institutions may enable or restrain future actions and goals of urbanites.14 Theyform the kernel of a civil society, so to speak.

Although the metaphor of the operating system itself is new, this way of framingthe city also has its roots in earlier debates on urban culture. It is for instance relatedto the thoughts of Chicago School researcher Louis Wirth. In the late 1930s, in hisinfluential article “Urbanism as a Way of Life” (1938), he laid out how the density ofthe city leads to cultural specialization, a spatial segregation of lifestyles, and a breakdownof rigid social structures.

Now, critics claim, a new urban operating system is on the rise. Wirth’s OS wasbased on a combination of high density and the spatial proximity of different groupsof urbanites who, for the most part, remain strangers to each other. The “urban OS”of our time is written in software code, can sense individual actions in real time, andcan aggregate these into data that can be used to actuate all sorts of actions. This,Anthony Townsend (2000, p5) claims, changes the metabolism of urban life. Forinstance, through the mobile phone “decision-making and management of everydaylife is increasingly decentralized,” which means that the city system becomes “morecomplex and less predictable.” Townsend call this new complex system the “real-timecity” “in which system conditions can be monitored and reacted to instantaneously[and at a distance].”

This idea of the city lies behind much of the work of MIT’s SENSEable City Lab. Inmany projects, the labs make use of the tracking affordances of urban media, tracingthe whereabouts of people, city buses, or other objects throughout the city. This datais fed into a system that aggregates this information in real time and can be used indifferent contexts. For instance, public transport could be adjusted to real-time movementsof people in the city. Here the city is conceived as an operating system that—through various real-time sensor networks—generates all sorts of (aggregated) datastreams. One of the goals of urban media designers is then to build relevant services—for either consumers or citizens—that make use of and build on these real-time datastreams.

In the future these developments may lead to semantic knowledge bases. In anarticle on the SENSEable City WikiCity project, the researchers project a future inwhich you can ask your urban informatics device questions like “what is the bestplace—with regard to my current location, weather forecast, environmental conditionsand other factors—to fly a kite today” (Calabrese, Kloeckl, and Ratti 2009)?Now that may seem like a somewhat trivial affair, but of course this depends onthe sort of questions you might use to personalize the city. Change the questions, andthis approach may even empower new groups. Over the last few years, reports havesurfaced about African farmers who receive market prices at different locations fortheir produce by SMS and so are able to negotiate better prices. Small shopkeepers—again in Africa—order their supplies by SMS rather than driving to bigger cities, or usethe phone to schedule appointments with clients. People who work in the informalor semiformal economies can organize their life and their use of the city more efficientlyand increase their knowledge of social processes and market conditions.

The City as a Commons

A fourth technourban imaginary frames the city as a commons—a set of resources thatbelong to the collective of citizens. Technology is then brought in to provide tools forcitizens to collectively take care of their city. Examples are the use of wikis to allowfor collective planning exercises (see Schuilenburg and De Jong 2006), or the use ofreputation systems that allow for trust in collective action with unknown others (seeRheingold 2002).

Artist Usman Haque’s installation Natural Fuse is an interesting example that bothillustrates and questions this approach. Participants in Natural Fuse receive a flowerbox equipped with watering equipment as well as with a bottle of vinegar. They alsoreceive an electrical appliance such as a lamp, radio, or fan. The flower boxes andelectrical appliances are linked to each other and (via the Internet) to the similar setsbelonging to other users.

The central idea is that the CO2 digestion of the plants in the network offsets theCO2 emissions caused by the use of the electrical appliances. If all the participants inthe network use less energy than their plants compensate for, the system will waterthe plants and they will grow. However, if all users in the system consume more energythan can be compensated for, the system will start to kill plants by releasing thevinegar in the soil of the plants.This means that if individuals use too much energy, other people’s plants will bekilled. On the other hand, if they choose to conserve energy, that means someoneelse in the system may make use of the CO2-absorption capacities of their plants,allowing others to temporarily use more energy. A switch on the set illustrates thischoice. Users can set their system to “selfish” and thus consume more energy thanthey offset with their plants, or they can set the switch to “selfless.”Natural Fuse thus turns the energy management into a commons—a space andresource shared by and accessible to all participants. The idea of the commons is basedon the old British custom of the communal pasture where all herdsmen in the communitywere allowed to graze their cattle.

However, the collective management of a commons runs at a great risk. It will onlywork if participants are willing to cooperate and allow for mutual accommodation. Ifparticipants only follow their own rational self-interest, the commons risks overgrazing.As Garrett Hardin (1968) has written, “The rational herdsman concludes that theonly sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. Andanother. . . . Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compelshim to increase his herd without limit—in a world that is limited.”Can we thus conceive of an urban media system that promotes the collective wellbeing?Could we conceive of some sort of peer-to-peer governance model that couldprevent overuse of scarce resources?

This is (as I have demonstrated elsewhere) the question that Natural Fuse addresses;it illustrates the opportunities of an “urban energy commons” as well as the problemof the tragedy that bears the same name. It challenges our thinking about the viabilityof a networked urban commons. Yet it does not provide any definite answers: Wouldcreating awareness through direct feedback mechanisms about the impact of rationalselfish behavior be able to prevent it? Or would we instead need complex reputationsystems? Or perhaps sentient bookkeeping systems in which our allotted ratios arekept or traded? Can we do this through peer-to-peer technologies, or do we needcentral institutions that act as trusted third parties (De Waal 2009a)?

The City as a Community of Strangers

The next technourban imaginary that I would like to bring out is the idea of the cityas a community of strangers. Since the rise of the modern industrial metropolis, theoristssuch as Simmel, Sennett, Jacobs, and Lofland have pointed out that the maincharacteristic of urban life is to be surrounded by strangers who will remain strangers.Yet at the same time, one has to share resources and live together with these strangersand relate to their differences in some way or other (Simmel 1969; Sennett 1969;Lofland 1973; Jacobs [1961] 2000; McQuire 2008).Both Jacobs and Lofland have demonstrated how the working of the city streetscan build trust between strangers. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobsdescribes how out of the many trivial repeated interactions of everyday life, a senseof trust between strangers is built up over time. Waiting together at the bus stop,exchanging small talk in the corner store, it is these kinds of interactions throughwhich people become “familiar strangers” to each other. Jacobs states that “the sumof such casual, public contact at a local level . . . is a feeling for the public identity ofpeople, a web of public respect and trust and a resource in time of personal or neighborhoodneed” (p. 67).

Jacobs has been critiqued for a nostalgic take on her cozy West Village city life,whereas such mechanisms in the city at large were thought to be impossible to maintain.Social geographers and urban sociologists such as Blokland and Ray (2008) haveconvincingly shown that such public familiarity is indeed a lot harder to find todaythan a few decades ago (also see Blokland 2005). Urbanites have become more mobileand their patterns of daily life are less synchronous, decreasing their opportunities forrepeated interaction.

In the domain of urban media there is, however, a large interest in remediating ortranslating the idea of public familiarity with the help of digital media. In a way socialnetworks like Twitter and MySpace do allow a sense of public familiarity even thoughone is not in the same place or same time. On the other hand, it could be argued thatsuch networks are mainly made up of people who already know each other and thusdoes not do much for the building up of public familiarity—even though it is technicallypossible to “follow” or “befriend” strangers based on a geographic location.Perhaps one of the best-known examples that builds on this idea of public familiarityis the project “Familiar Strangers” and the Jabberwocky application that came outof it. Jabberwocky is a mobile phone application that allows users to see if any familiarstrangers are around—people that one has encountered before at other times andplaces. The authors of the paper hope that in this way a sense of feeling at home oreven trust and solidarity can be promoted: “We believe that the extensions to thisrelationship using small personal wireless objects and applications on existing mobilephones can allow individuals to more acutely gauge their social relationship to people,places and the crowds around them over time. We also believe that such tools arecapable of encouraging community solidarity, even transitory solidarity” (Paulos andGoodman 2004, 3).

The City as a Public Sphere

The last technourban imaginary I would like to discuss is the idea of the city as anactive public sphere. This imaginary too departs from the notion that the city consistsof strangers who must live together: the focus is now on how the city allows them tobe confronted with each other, to exchange ideas, and to debate the future of the city.Often this ideal is juxtaposed with the suburban ideal of homogeneity. Urban citizensamong others, Richard Sennett claims, should not retreat to their comfort zones, butinstead should embrace the complexities, differences, and conflicts that urban lifebrings about (Sennett 1970, 1977, 1990, 2001).

Over the last decade we have seen many urban media projects that in one way oranother seem to answer Sennett’s call (albeit sometimes indirectly). There is forinstance a whole range of geoannotation projects that allow citizens to mark up urbanspace with their own ideas, histories, or thoughts. Often the hope is expressed thatthese projects will lead to an exchange of insights.In an article in the 2006 Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Lily Shirvanee expects that thesharing of experiences through locative media could lead to what she has called “socialviscosity.” The stories collected could work as crystallization points for (imagined) communitiesor starting points for processes of exchange, deliberation, or contestation.Shirvanee suggests that “this viscosity of space is perceived as a bond that may exist notonly between people with established relationships who can find each other ‘on thestreet’ in a mobile context, but also between strangers, thereby inspiring a new communityand, possibly, creating the potential for a more democratized public space.”An example is the project Textales that uses an urban screen to bring about a sitefor contestation in the city. The initiators organized workshops in which participantswere asked to make pictures of political issues that affected life in their neighborhood—such as housing inequity. These pictures were shown on an urban screen inthe neighborhood and passersby could comment on the pictures by sending a textmessage that would be displayed on the screen. In an article on the project Annayand Strohecker (2009) directly refer to theories on democracy and deliberation andhope that a project like Textales can help to form “issue publics” around particularconcerns in which a “collective epistemology” might arise “that helps us to considerour own viewpoints and those of our fellow citizens.”

Conclusion

I have now shown six technourban imaginaries at work in both the design and appropriationof urban media. This list is not meant to exhaustive. Rather I wanted to bringout a number of different and sometimes conflicting perspectives on what the cityshould be and how technology is thought to bring that ideal about. I wanted to showthat whereas we often focus on the impact of technology on urban culture, the reverseis also true. Many urban media are purposely designed to remediate traditional ideasabout urban culture.

Also, the neat categorization I have made here serves an analytic purpose only.Several of these technourban imaginaries could be combined. In fact, it could beargued that projects whose main focus can be reduced to a single framing of what acity is are often problematic. For instance, advocates of the city as a set of personalizedinfrastructures might miss important points about the fact that a city is also a communityand thus contributes to the balkanization of urban culture.

Similarly, many art projects that do address the city as a (political) community havetheir own critics. Many of these projects are noncommittal. Their duration is oftenshort, their audience is a small self-selected crowd, and only seldom is there follow-upthat might turn these art projects into a more sustainable addition to the experienceof the city. Could they be integrated in the infrastructure of the city in a more durableway? In short, designers of urban media would do best to address several framings ofthe city at once. This criticism—although important—does not mean that these artprojects are meaningless. What many of them at least do well is tease out the technourbanimaginaries at work in the shaping of urban media. These can be valuablecontributions to the general debate.

Only by bringing out these often-implicit urban ideals can we engage in the discussionof how these urban media can best serve society. That is what I have tried to dohere. By highlighting the urban ideas and ideals at work in discussions on urbanmedia, I hope to show that the process in which these technologies are designed andappropriated is an open one. And even though one or two of these urban-technologicalimaginaries may dominate the debate and design of new services, there are alsoalternatives.

NotesThis contribution builds on and elaborates some of my earlier work on this theme, especially De Waal 2009b. I also build on the notion of latent ideals in urban media as described in Williams, Robles, and Dourish 2009.1. See for instance Galloway 2008 for an extensive list of different labels.

2. An important impetus for the development of urban media was the decision of the U.S. militaryin 2000 to make an unscrambled version of the GPS system available to the general public.From then on, the signal has been accurate enough to pinpoint users of GPS devices on streetlevel rather than somewhere in a neighborhood. Many Location Based Media now make use ofthis location-sensing technology.

3. This shift from “placelessness” to “situatedness” has been theorized by Tuters and Varnelis2006, Varnelis 2008, as well as Shepard and Greenfield 2007. On a formal level, Mark Tuters andKazys Varnelis (2006, http://networkedpublics.org/locative_media/beyond_locative_media) havepointed out two main characteristic affordances of what they call “locative media” that enablethis shift from “placelessness” to “situatedness.” One is the capacity to annotate places, “virtuallytagging the world.” The other affordance has a phenomenological quality that enables “tracingthe action of the subject in the world.”

4. As Lefebvre has shown, the experience of place is always a negotiation between the physicaltop-down design and ordering of space by governments, architects and developers, and thepersonal trajectory of its inhabitants—their history, memories, and symbolic interpretations ofthe space. Urban media can thus be understood as an extra layer somewhere between Lefebvre’stop-down representation of space and his bottom-up representational space.

5. Hutchby (2001) has defined affordances as the “functional and relational aspects which framewhile not determining the possibilities for agentic action in relation to an object. In this waytechnologies can be understood as artefacts which may be both shaped by and shaping of thepractices humans use in interaction with, around and through them.” The term affordances“stress[es] that the range of possibilities for interpretation and action is nowhere near as openfor either ‘writers’ or ‘readers’ as the technology as text metaphor implies. . . . We have to acceptthat technological artefacts do not amount simply to what their users make of them; what ismade of them is accomplished in the interface between human aims and the artefact’s affordances”(p. 450).

6. Mark Weiser’s influential article “The Computer of the 21st Century” (1991) and his publicationco-authored with Seely Brown, Designing Calm Technology (1995), are often referred to inthis debate. See also Anne Galloway’s (2008, 113) take on the history of ubicomp, in which sheexplains how “the desire to have computing so seamlessly and efficiently embedded in our dailylives is grounded in a profoundly utopian vision connected to cultural and historical notions oftechnological ‘progress.’” At the same time she argues that Weiser’s claim has often been misunderstood.Although he argues for an “invisible” technology, he also stresses the importance ofseamful experiences.

7. Graham and Marvin (2001) connect this positivist outlook on urban infrastructures withbroader social developments. For instance, the urban reform movement inspired by this idea“was led by sanitarians, engineers, urban planners, and the growing middle class” and they“equated the efficiency of infrastructural systems with the quality of the entire civilization”(p. 44). The regulation of water for instance played an important part. The scientific discoveryof bacteria and the privatization of bodily hygiene played was important for the ideas about thesanitized, hygienic city, and the emergence of underground waterducts.

8. See also my earlier contribution about this debate (De Waal 2009b).

9. William Mitchell, Welcome!, http://cities.media.mit.edu/.

10. The term “locative media” started to surface around 2003 as a label for art projects that usedlocation-based technologies such as GPS receivers. Genealogies of locative media often trace theterm to an artistic workshop organized in 2003 by Marc Tuters and Karlis Kalnins together withthe RICX Media Centre in Latvia (see http://locative.x-i.net for a description of the workshop).The phrase “locative media” was initially invoked to demarcate this technological art practicefrom two other fields. The first was the artistic practice of “net.art” that focused on the placelessexperience of cyberspace through the computer terminal. Locative media art was to break downthe barrier between the physical world and a virtual world. It aimed to use technology to connectthe database world of the Internet with the experience of real places. Second, the term “locativemedia” claimed the use of these technologies for art practice rather than for commercial servicesthat had started to develop under the name of “location-based services.”

11. See the Conflux website, “About,” http://confluxfestival.org/2009/about/.

12. Others also point out links with Constant’s infrastructural urban utopia New Babylon orArchigram’s advocacy for using technology to empower people to shape their own urban infrastructure(McQuire 2008). Similarly, the experimental interest of locative media art can also belinked to the vocabulary of 1960s architects such as Team Ten, who “were the first to seek a kindof town planning and architecture that could bring about pleasure, uncertainty, relaxation . . .and even disorder” (Rouillard 2007, 17).

13. See for example Anthony Townsend (2009, xxiii): “In the pre-electronic era, face-to-faceproximity and the clustering of functions was the most efficient means of replicating, transmittingand searching for information in social and economic networks. Over time, new toolsaugmented this function, but in a sense the city itself is our original greatest informationtechnology.”

14. This vision is brought forward in De Landa 2006.

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De hand van de maker

Gepubliceerd in 609 – cultuur en media #9, November 2011. Een verkorte versie verscheen ook op De Nieuwe Reporter.

De interactieve documentaire heeft de laatste paar jaar een opmerkelijke ontwikkeling doorgemaakt. Tot niet zo lang stond bij deze online documentairevorm veelal de kijker centraal. Die zou zijn eigen verhaal kunnen samenstellen, of zelfs onderdeel worden van een community. Maar wanneer we kijken naar de interactieve documentaries die dit en vorig jaar zijn geselecteerd voor IDFA’s Doclab (de competitie die het festival heeft opgezet voor interactieve documentaires), valt juist op dat het vrijwel allemaal ‘auteursprojecten’ zijn. De rol van de kijker is zeker niet uitgespeeld: hij kan hier en daar nog steeds keuzes maken, of mag bijdragen leveren. Maar hij wordt daarbij wel veel dwingender dan voorheen rondgeleid in een online wereld waarin de hand van de maker steeds duidelijk voelbaar is.

Neem Welcome to Pine Point, gemaakt door Michael Simons en Paul Shoebridge (beter bekend als het duo achter het tijdschrift Adbusters). Voor hun interactieve documentaire reconstrueren zij de wereld van het inmiddels van de aardbodem verdwenen Canadese mijnstadje Pine Point. Toen daar twintig jaar geleden de mijn werd gesloten, werd ook het dorpje zelf opgeheven. De huizen werden op vrachtwagens getakeld, en twintig jaar later zijn in het hoge Noorden van Canada vrijwel alle sporen van de tijdelijke mijnbouwnederzetting uitgewist. Behalve natuurlijk in de herinnering van de oud-bewoners. Het dorp leeft nog altijd voort in plakboeken, homevideos en sterke verhalen, als ook op een ‘memorial website’ die wordt bijgehouden door een invalide ex-dorpsbewoner.

Al die elementen worden bij Welcome to Pine Point samengebracht in een interface die zelf ook wel iets van een plakboek heeft. Korrelige homevideo’s volgen op diashows van historische foto’s. Jarentachtig MTV-style videoclips worden afgewisseld met radio- interviews. De makers loodsen de bezoeker er vlot doorheen. Het enige dat de kijker (of beter: de ‘klikker’) hoeft te doen, is zo nu en dan op ‘Next’ te drukken. De opbouw van het verhaal maakt steeds voldoende nieuwsgierig om dat ook daadwerkelijk te doen. Zo voeren de makers de kijker steeds verder terug naar het zorgeloze tijdperk ‘before seatbelts and sunscreen’ dat samenviel met de hoogtijdagen van Pine Point.

Het ‘auteurschap’ van de interactieve documentaire komt daarbij op twee manieren tot uiting. In de eerste plaats is dat de vormgeving van de wereld die de makers hebben geconstrueerd. In Welcome to Pine Point zijn dat de uiteenlopende personages die worden opgevoerd en de animaties en tekeningen die de wereld in een geheel eigen stijl weergeven. In de tweede plaats is dat de interface waarmee de kijker die wereld kan verkennen, die in dit geval gebaseerd is op de metafoor van het plakboek. Bij elkaar leiden wereld en interface tot het gevoel dat de maker de kijker op sleeptouw neemt in zijn wereld. De kijker heeft wel enige vrijheid het tempo en de richting te bepalen, maar ook weer niet al te veel. In de combinatie van wereld en interface ligt ook de zeggingskracht van het project besloten. Het gaat de makers niet om een feitelijke reconstructie van het dorpsleven in Pine Point. Het project gaat ook over de sociale kracht van de gedeelde herinneringen, en over de spanning tussen de herinnering en een feitelijk verleden dat enkel nog via de in het plakboek neergeslagen herinneringen toegankelijk is.

Welcome to Pine Point staat niet alleen binnen de interactieve documentaire. Ook projecten als Highrise, In Situ, Prison Valley, Soldier Brother of This Land zijn nadrukkelijk auteursprojecten. De interactieve mogelijkheden zijn ook bij die projecten eerder subtiel dan overweldigend. Vooral in Frankrijk en Canada maken deze online auteursdocumentaires een periode van bloei door, mede dankzij de financiële steun van organisaties als de National Film Board of Canada, omroepen als ARTE en kranten als Le Monde. ‘In het verleden maakten we hele complexe projecten, met vijf verschillende tijdlijnen, en het idee dat de bezoeker dan wel zijn eigen verhaal zou maken’, zegt David Carzon, hoofd internet bij de Frans-Duitse cultuurzender ARTE. De kijker kon dan zelf een route bepalen door het project, of een eigen montage maken van verschillende clips In theorie was dat een aardige gedachte, in de praktijk misten dergelijke projecten vaak een ‘aandrijvingsmechanisme’: een spanningsboog of spelelement dat de kijker verleidt na twee keer op een filmpje te hebben geklikt, ook nog het derde te bekijken. ‘Kijkers raakten al snel de draad kwijt’, zegt Carzon. Een online project heeft een drijvende kracht nodig, iets dat de kijker voortstuwt door het verhaal heen, dat hem nieuwsgierig maakt naar het volgende onderdeel. ‘Bij ons is dat vaak de visie van de maker’, zegt hij. ‘Zijn visie of idee moet zo prikkelend zijn dat je daar als kijker in mee wilt gaan.’

Het idee van een documentairemaker die een ‘community’ organiseert, lijkt daarbij naar de achtergrond verschoven. ‘Dat zien wij ook’, stelt Erik Heeswijk, hoofd digitaal van de VPRO. ‘Een community is vooral zinvol als de documentaire zelf een activerende boodschap heeft.’ De documentaire Beperkt Houdbaar van Sunny Bergman bijvoorbeeld zette via de televisie de maatschappelijke discussie over ons schoonheidsideaal op scherp. Op de website werd die discussie verder uitgediept, en er werd zelfs actie gevoerd. Voor de meeste documentaires is zoiets niet haalbaar, denkt van Heeswijk. Voor een eenmalig programma van 50 minuten is het simpelweg veel te complex om een hele community op te willen zetten. Bovendien: geen onderwerp zo gek of er is al wel ergens op internet een ontmoetingsplek. De strategie van de VPRO is nu eerder om dergelijke communities via sociale media te mobiliseren.
Dat betekent niet dat projecten die het publiek een belangrijke rol geven, volkomen passé zijn. Maar ook in die categorie neemt de rol van de maker als ‘auteur’ of beter: ‘curator’ toe. Een project als The Burning House bijvoorbeeld (zie kader) roept bezoekers van de site op om die objecten te fotograferen die ze nog snel bij elkaar zouden pakken wanneer ze hun in brand staande huis zouden moeten ontvluchten. Daarbij heeft de maker zelf het esthetische kader bepaald: alleen foto’s van losse objecten tegen een neutrale achtergrond zijn welkom. Ook selecteert hij streng op inhoud. Foto’s die niet voldoen aan zijn esthetische criteria, komen niet op de site.

Ook op het gebied van de vormgeving heeft de interactieve documentaire de afgelopen jaren een belangrijke ontwikkeling doorgemaakt. Die is de laatste jaren (al geldt dat niet voor alle projecten) veel filmischer geworden. De projecten lijken minder dan voorheen op ‘gewone’ websites: pagina’s vol met tekst, foto en filmpjes, achtergrondinformatie over en logo’s van betrokken organisaties. In plaats daarvan begint er vaak gelijk een filmclip of animatie die het thema op een aansprekende manier neerzet, een vraag oproept, of met een persoonlijke ontboezeming van de maker nieuwsgierig maakt naar de rest. ‘Je moet bezoekers niet overvallen met allerlei keuzes, nog voordat ze weten waar het project over gaat’, zegt Rob McLaughlin die tot begin dit jaar directeur digitale content en strategie was bij de National Filmboard of Canada. ‘Je moet het publiek bij de lurven grijpen en ze onmiddellijk meevoeren naar de wereld van het verhaal dat je wilt vertellen.’

Alhoewel filmische en fotografische elementen dus steeds nadrukkelijker aanwezig zijn, is het in – in oude media termen – tegelijkertijd ook lastig te beschrijven waarnaar de kijker precies kijkt bij deze categorie interactieve documentaires. Welcome to Pine Point voelt als een boek waarvan je de bladzijden omslaat, maar dan met geluid en bewegend beeld. En soms als een radio-documentaire met een diashow erbij. Of als een televisieprogramma waarbij de kijker zelf het tempo (maar niet per se de volgorde) mag bepalen. Welcome to Pine Point is nu te zien op het computerscherm, maar het zou op de iPad nog beter tot zijn recht komen. Het is een project dat enerzijds verschillende mediatypen in elkaar over laat vloeien, en tegelijkertijd geheel op zichzelf staat. Er is geen bijbehorende televisieserie, film, game of achterliggende website. Je bekijkt het project op een-en-hetzelfde platform. Nu is dat nog het computerscherm, straks zijn ze ongetwijfeld ook te zien op tablets als de iPad. Of – een andere ontwikkeling waar veel van wordt verwacht maar die vooralsnog niet heeft doorgezet – de ‘connected tv’. Dat houdt in dat je programma’s kunt bekijken op het grote scherm van de televisie, terwijl je vanaf de bank een tablet als de iPad gebruikt om door het programma heen te navigeren.

De interactieve auteursdocumentaire lijkt zich zo (voor een deel) in een andere richting te ontwikkelen dan het televisiedrama. Bij fictieprojecten is op dit moment een specifieke manier van ‘transmediaal’ produceren populair. Met transmedia wordt dan bedoeld dat makers hun verhaal via verschillende media vertellen. Er is een wekelijkse serie op televisie, maar de hoofdpersonen hebben ook een weblog of Twitter- of Hyves-account waarop een deel van de plot wordt onthuld. Of belangrijke clous voor het verhaal zitten verstopt in op Youtube geplaatste commercials van fictieve bedrijven die in de serie voorkomen. Fans van de serie worden uitgedaagd om – vaak in collectief verband – op zoek te gaan naar de verstopte aanwijzingen. ‘Documentaires lenen zich minder goed voor zo’n format’, zegt McLaughlin. Een dergelijke aanpak is vooral geschikt voor langlopende dramaseries, waaromheen echt een fancultuur ontstaat van fanatieke kijkers die alles over hun favoriete karakters willen weten. Natuurlijk betekent dat niet dat interactieve documentaires niet meer aanvullend of in samenhang met televisie-uitzendingen gemaakt worden. Maar wel is het opvallend dat vrijwel alle hier genoemde interactieve documentaires als stand-alone ervaring zijn vormgegeven: je bekijkt ze op één apparaat, en er wordt niet verwacht dat de kijker heen en weer zapt tussen verschillende media.

Wat wel kan, is om binnen zo’n stand-alone online project verschillende genres met elkaar te combineren, zegt Bruno Felix, directeur van Submarine. Voor de VPRO maakte Submarine twee jaar geleden Collapsus, een online documentaire over de toekomst van onze energievoorzieining. ‘We wilden kijken of we een ontoegankelijk onderwerp ‘sexy’ konden maken’, zegt Felix. ‘Fictie leek ons daarvoor een geschikt genre.’ Door het vertellen van een spannend verhaal, wilde Submarine de energieproblematiek inzichtelijk maken. In Collapsus vertaalde zich dat in een interface waarbij de kijker kan schakelen tussen drie schermen. In het middelste venster volgt de kijker een thriller, en wanneer hij wil kan hij naar het linker- of rechtervenster uitwijken. Links kan een game gespeeld worden. Rechts worden fictieve nieuwsuitzendingen over de ontwikkelingen in het gedramatiseerde verhaal vertoond. In die nieuwsuitzendingen zijn fragmenten opgenomen van interviews met deskundigen die zijn geïnterviewd voor een aflevering van Tegenlicht. ‘In een televisie-aflevering zou je nooit zo heen en weer kunnen schakelen tussen fictie en documentaire’, zegt Felix. ‘Online kan dat wel.’ Het hoofdverhaal blijft redelijk lineair, maar binnen de interface kan de kijker heen en weer ‘zappen’ tussen de drie mediavormen spel, fictie en documentaire.

Op de vraag of het publiek enthousiast is over de online auteursdocumentaires lopen de reacties uiteen. De meesten benadrukken dat het vooralsnog om een experimentele fase gaat. Er begint langzaam aan een nieuwe vorm te ontstaan, maar het is nog niet helemaal duidelijk of, hoe en wanneer het grote publiek dat precies zal omarmen. Zijn tablets als de iPad de geëigende omgeving voor deze nieuwe documentairevorm? Of de connected-tv, als die er straks komt? En wie gaat dergelijke projecten eigenlijk aanbieden? Moeten ze als boeken los worden verkocht, bijvoorbeeld in een appstore of als films in een pay-per-view-platform? Is het een nieuwe vorm waarmee kranten hun abonnees kunnen bedienen? Of zouden ze juist via een publiek kanaal toegankelijk moeten zijn?

In Canada heeft de National Film Board besloten zelf dergelijke projecten te produceren en te vertonen op een eigen online kanaal. Daar is inmiddels ook een nieuw publiek gevonden voor de projecten. McLaughlin zegt dat sommige van hun online projecten online nu al evenveel of meer bezoekers trekken dan het traditionele documentaireslot op de Canadese televisie. In Europa ligt dat moeilijker. ‘Je ziet dat in een aantal landen publieke omroepen op internet een terugtrekkende beweging maken’, zegt Caspar Sonnen, curator van het IDFA Doclab. Dat komt deels door de politiek. Dankzij onder meer de lobby van commerciële uitgevers worden de mogelijkheden voor publieke omroepen om op internet innovatieve projecten op te zetten, ingeperkt.

Ook in Nederland is dat inmiddels het geval, erkent Erik van Heeswijk. ‘Voor experimenten als online only documentaires is het nu wel roeien tegen de stroom in.’ Toch wil de VPRO er mee door. ‘Nederland liep als documentaireland altijd voorop’, zegt Bruno Felix, ‘De Nederlandse documentaires gaan de hele wereld over, en het belangrijkste documentairefestival ter wereld vindt plaats in Amsterdam. Het zou mooi zijn als we die voortrekkersrol ook op het gebied van de online documentaire zouden kunnen spelen.’

 Voorbeelden van projecten, geselecteerd voor IDFA Doclab 2011

In Situ

http://insitu.arte.tv/

Providence / ARTE

In Situ is een documentair project in de traditie van vroeg twintigste-eeuwse experimentele city symphonies als Berlin – Die Sinfonie  der Großstadt. Ritmisch en poëtisch gefilmde sfeerbeelden van de hedendaagse stad (onder meer Berlijn en Parijs) worden dit keer afgewisseld met korte documentaires van kunstenaars en activisten die van de stad hun werkterrein hebben gemaakt. Het project is zeer filmisch van opzet, met een lineair verloop. Wie wil kan zich online bij In Situ ‘ouderwets’ zonder klikken mee laten voeren van een begin tot een eind. Het zijn de atmosferische beelden en muziek die het project dragen, en de interactie is met opzet bescheiden. Toch voegt die wel wat toe. Enerzijds maakt de tijdlijn onderin beeld het mogelijk de film te versnellen (skip naar de volgende scene) of te vertragen (een extra uitstapje naar het werk van de kunstenaars). Anderzijds zijn er af en toe subtiele interactieve elementen die het idee van de stadsymfonie moeten versterken. In een scene in de metro kun je bijvoorbeeld op de hoofden van verschillende reizigers klikken om hun gedachtes te beluisteren. Zo worden ook de veelstemmige subjectieve ervaringen van de stad in een mooi ritme gevangen. Grootser opgezet is een community-portal die rond het project zou moeten ontstaan. Iedereen mag op een kaart zijn eigen artistieke interventies toevoegen. Langzaam begint die nu vol te lopen met foto’s en filmpjes met voorbeelden van ‘kunst-in-de openbare-ruimte’ uit heel Europa.

Soldier Brother

http://soldierbrother.nfb.ca/

National Fillm Board of Canada

Soldier Brother begint met de stem van Kaitlin Jones, Zij is een kunstenares uit Toronto, wier broer is uitgezonden op een militaire missie naar Afghanistan. Terwijl het beeldscherm zich langzaam vult met een aantal voorwerpen die aan haar  afwezige broer herinneren (een skateboard, een doos sigaren, een scheerkwast, zijn verzameling single malt whisky’s), vertelt Jones hoe haar broer op 10-jarige leeftijd al jacht maakte op eekhoorns met het pistool van haar vader. Daarna kan de kijker zelf de verschillende voorwerpen onderzoeken. Een klik – die bijna voelt alsof je het object even oppakt en van dichtbij bekijkt – brengt het voorwerp dichterbij en leidt tot steeds een nieuwe herinnering van Kaitlin aan hun gedeelde jeugd. Mooi is dat de bekeken voorwerpen daarna uit het tableau verdwijnen. Zo onderstreept de interface hoe de herinneringen langzaam vervagen, en krijgt de kijker ook het gevoel ‘voortgang’ te maken in het project: op een gegeven moment is het scherm leeg en is de voorstelling afgelopen. Dwars door het bekijken en beluisteren van de aan de voorwerpen gekoppelde herinneringen, speelt zich nog een lineair verhaal in het heden af. De kijker wordt deelgenoot gemaakt van  een langzaam op gang komende stroom aan sms en facebook-berichten tussen Toronto en het Afghaanse legerkamp. Je wordt hier zelfs heel direct bij betrokken: op een gegeven moment vraagt Kaitlin de kijker zijn mobiele telefoonnummer in te voeren, omdat ze een ‘luisterend oor’ nodig heeft. Daarmee verlegt het verloop van het verhaal zich van het computerscherm naar de meer intieme omgeving van de mobiele telefoon.

The Burning House

http://theburninghouse.com/

Foster Huntington

Je huis staat in brand en de rook kringelt al onder de slaapkamerdeur door. Je kunt nog snel twee of drie voorwerpen bij elkaar grissen, voordat je je huis uitrent om je zelf in veiligheid te brengen. Wat neem je mee? Die wat clichématige vraag levert bij het als weblog vormgegeven The Burning House een mooie reeks zorgvuldig gestileerde foto’s op. Intrigerend zijn de subtiele verschillen in de inhoud van deze foto’s. Die varieert van emotionele items als teddyberen en de ‘broche die nog van oma is geweest’ via moderne incarnaties van neergeslagen persoonlijke herinneringen (de ipod en de laptop verdringen langzaam aan het foto-album) tot triviale items als een aansteker en een pakje sigaretten. En uiteraard vergeet niemand zijn of haar poes. De foto’s zijn bijdragen van lezers van het blog. De kracht van het project zit in de restrictie die de maker zichzelf en zijn publiek oplegt: alleen foto’s van een beperkt aantal voorwerpen tegen een neutrale achtergrond zijn welkom. Zo is de rol van de maker vooral die van de curator: niet alle foto’s worden ook automatisch geplaatst, alleen diegenen die aan zijn esthetische criteria en visuele concept voldoen. De maker reist momenteel zelf in een oude VW-bus door Amerika om ook de bezittingen te fotograferen van mensen die niet zo digitaal onderlegd zijn dat ze vanzelf een foto zouden uploaden. Uiteindelijk moet het project weer uitmonden in een fotoboek.

Farewell Comerades

http://farewellcomrades.tv/

Gebrueder Beetz

De website van Farewell Comerades is onderdeel van een grootschalig Europees crossmediaproject over de geschiedenis van Oost-Europa onder het communisme. Naast de website staan er vanaf dit najaar een televisieserie, een boek en een tentoonstelling op het programma. De website zelf toont een reeks ansichtkaarten die in het voormalige Oostblok zijn verstuurd tussen 1975 en 1991. Sommige hebben een revolutionair thema: een schets van voormalig Soviet-leider Lenin of een modern regeringsgebouw in Kiev met fier wapperende rode vaandels ervoor. Maar er zitten ook vakantiekaarten tussen die de schoonheid van de socialistische natuur laten zien (ruige bergketens met besneeuwde toppen, al dan niet met skiënde kameraden erop). Wie op de kaarten klikt, ziet de persoon aan wie de kaart is gestuurd, en een kort videoportret van deze persoon. Ook kun je grasduinen in zijn of haar persoonlijke archief: oude foto’s, filmpjes, en documenten uit de communistische tijd. Door de kaarten, foto’s en filmpjes te bekijken ontstaan zo langzaam een beeld van het alledaagse leven achter het IJzeren Gordijn. De kaarten zijn bovendien gelinkt aan historisch archiefmateriaal uit dezelfde periode. Er is geen verhaal- of spelmechanisme dat het online project als geheel voortstuwt. De makers hopen dat de kaarten en de erbij behorende persoonlijke verhalen de kijker vanzelf nieuwsgierig maken. Wel bieden de ansichtkaarten weer volop mogelijkheden om de content te delen via sociale media.

Beyond 911

http://www.time.com/time/beyond911

Time Magazine

Tien jaar na ‘elf september’ pakt Time Magazine online groots uit met een uitgebreide verzameling interviews met bij de aanslagen betrokken personen. Deze reeks gesprekken wordt ontsloten met een raster dat is opgebouwd uit tientallen krachtige, contrastrijke zwart-wit portretten op pasfotoformaat. Aan hun uniformen en maatpakken herken je gelijk een aantal ‘archetypische’ rollen uit dit historische drama: brandweermannen, soldaten (al dan niet met geamputeerde ledematen), CEO’s van financiële dienstverleners. Tussen deze onbekende Amerikanen valt je oog zo nu en dan opeens op een beroemd gezicht: ook hoofdrolspelers als Donald Rumsfeld en George W. Bush leenden zich voor dit project. Het raster is zo opgebouwd dat de portrettenreeks buiten het browserscherm doorloopt, wat een gevoel van oneindigheid bewerkstelligd. Toch leidt dat hier niet tot een gevoel van onoverzichtelijkheid. In de interface zijn een aantal slimme ‘montagetrucjes’ ingebouwd. Om te beginnen staan de beroemdheden niet centraal in het project. Hun portretten zitten ‘verstopt’ tussen die van de gewone Amerikanen, en dat verleidt de kijker de hele galerij af te speuren (Obama! Giuliani!) Ook wordt de kijker niet helemaal aan zijn lot overgelaten. Hij mag dan steeds zelf kiezen welk portret hij aanklikt, maar wie de portrettengalerij voor het eerst opent, ziet de ‘zoeker’ gecentreerd op het portret van Valerie Plame Wilson. Zij is de voormalige CIA-agente wiens identiteit opzettelijk werd gelekt door medewerkers van het Witte Huis. ‘We zijn meegesleept in een oorlog die niet in ons belang is’, stelt Plame in haar interview, waarin ze zeer kritisch is op zowel de Amerikaanse overheid als de media. Daarmee is de toon gezet, en wordt de kijker uitgedaagd om aan de hand van de andere interview-fragmenten (van de uiteenlopende archetypes en de hoofdrolspelers) zijn eigen positie te bepalen.

Jury Report for Nominations

Barcode.tv 
This project cleverly utilizes scanning technology, product databases and mobile devices and invites us to investigate what the things we purchase say about who we are and how we live our lives.

Beyond 9/1 by Kira Pollack
Marco Grob’s black & white photographs coupled with the intense and moving video testimony creates a simple yet powerful web mosaic.

Insitu by Antoine Viviani
With some subtle interactive features, Insitu artfully tells the story of artists, planners and philosophers attempts to breath creative life back into our cities.

WINNER:

Insitu – Director, Antoine Viviani
Cinematic, poetic and subtly interactive, Insitu explores the
way architects, artists, city planners, philosophers and artists intervene
in public space.

Both linear and non-linear, Insitu is a city poem that you can move through
and explore, interrogating efforts to breath life back into our cities and
shared public spaces.

The interactivity is surprising, playful and doesn’t distract from the
narrative experience and the production values are excellent across the
board, from the clear navigation and experience design to the video and
sound quality.

Insitu delivers both technically and creatively with a clear artistic vision
and demonstrates how new technologies in the hands of a filmmaker can be a
truly cinematic experience.

* Monday September 19th Design Academy Eindhoven
* Thursday September 29th i-Lab Rotterdam
* Thursday October 6th Univeristy of Utrecht

How do we design urban technologies that engage and empower ‘publics’ (groups of people) to act on communally shared issues? That is the main theme of a new study (in Dutch) launched by The Mobile City and Virtueel Platform.

The study was launched today  at Picnic, in a session hosted by Tracy Metz that also included  a presentation by Verbeterdebuurt.nl. The study is now available for download:

Unfortunately, at this time it is only available in Dutch, but this is what it is about: The “Smart City” paradigm in urban design promises a future in which our cities will be more efficient and sustainable through the use of digital media technologies. That’s great, but are cities really all about calculation and efficiency?

In this study we present “ownership” as an alternative design approach. How can we employ new technologies to keep our ever more complex cities livable and lively for humans? How can we design cities where citizens feel they belong, and feel the city belongs to them as well… where they have the power to act on communally shared issues? In short: how can digital media aid in strengthening a sense of “ownership” among urbanites?

Interested in this theme? In February 2012 we will organize an international workshop and conference on Ownership in Amsterdam. More details on this website and our Twitter-account soon.

See the IDFA Doclab website for more details. http://www.doclab.org/

On Wednesday September 14th I am part of a session I co-organize with The Mobile City, together with Michiel de Lange and Virtueel Platform : Future Cities: Designing for Ownership:

The “Smart City” paradigm in urban design promises a future in which our cities will be more efficient and sustainable, thanks to the advent of digital media technologies. That’s great of course, but are cities really all about calculation and efficiency? In this session we present “ownership” as an alternative design approach. How can we engage new technologies to keep our ever more complex cities livable and lively for humans? How can we design cities where citizens feel they belong, and feel the city belongs to them as well? Where they have the power to act on communally shared issues? In short: how can digital media aid in strengthening a sense of “ownership” among urbanites?
This session is the official launch of the study “Ownership in the Hybrid City”, conducted by Virtueel Platform and The Mobile City. A copy of the study will be available for all participants.

The next day, Thursday the 15th I was invited to a session organized by the European Journalism Centre, called From Database Cities to Urban Stories

Using technology to run our cities: promises and perils

Our cities are increasingly becoming data-rich environments. The ecology of apps, visualizations and location-based or context-aware media and information systems generated around urban data environments, have the potential to radically transform the way we understand, inhabit and build our cities.

The first European Journalism Centre (EJC) session will bring leading thinkers from academia and the arts to explore the implications of the instruments we use to make sense of our cities on our experience and understanding of cities, as well as on issues of governance and policy making. What are the advantages of the practices and instruments we use today to better understand the processes that govern our cities? What are the perils? What are the politics of these infrastructures? How are they positioned within larger social, cultural, environmental and political concerns? What kinds of futures can we imagine? How do we design infrastructures that help support active citizen engagement? What are the appropriate forms of urban planning, design and policy?

Whether you are interested in technology design, media production, or policy making focused on issues of urbanization and media technologies, or developing services around data, this session will give you the opportunity to enter into a conversation with various experts about the issues that you care about.