The public space of the city is dissolving and merging into the expanding media networks:
The traditional functions of public urban space are increasingly being taken over by telecommunication networks and mass media, whose input and output devices are almost exclusively located in private spaces.
Publication Hybrid Space @ Arch-Komm, Cologne, Germany, 1 May 1999
Hybrid
Space
The public space of the city is dissolving and merging into the expanding media networks: The traditional functions of public urban space are increasingly being taken over by telecommunication networks and mass media, whose input and output devices are almost exclusively located in private spaces.
This privatization of communication is leading to an increasing social divide between the groups of the ânetworkedâ and those excluded from media-based social communication. A split is currently emerging between the exclusive (global) media networks and the disintegrating (local) urban agglomerations.
This division and polarity between the âglobalâ and the âlocalâ space is increasing, with the power structures of the âglobalâ overriding the local forces. The âlocalâ and privatized (refuge) place, whether ghetto or upper-class reservation, without a functioning (communication) system of mediation, is becoming less and less important.
The project âpublic media urban Interfacesâ develops a scenario for the interplay of mass media and urban space in order to strengthen the significance of public space: it proposes public interfaces between urban and media space.
It thus occupies the vacuum between the âlocalâ and the âglobalâ and unfolds this free space by accelerating local events and allowing them to collide with the global network. Local (neighborhood) facilities in the form of combined analogue-digital environments make it possible to produce messages interactively in a public place and to disseminate them according to a dynamic editorial and broadcasting system.
These proposed spatial interfaces, embedded in the public space of the city, give everyone access to the global âmedia villageâ to broadcast and influence – directly from the local neighborhood.
The Media Babies function as spatial interfaces on a local neighborhood basis (âMedia Babies in your launderetteâ) while the Bridge Clubs are larger mass event spaces of city-wide significance. A specific protocol for the spatially graduated distribution of messages (Air TimeSpace for All Smart Card) supports the public dynamic structure of the network and equips the communication system with a self-organized heterarchy.
Vision The result of the convergence of urban and media space, whether Media Baby or Bridge Club, is a hybrid: an ambivalent space that is both analogue and digital, virtual and material, haptic and abstract, and simultaneously participates in and mediates between media (global) and urban (local) space. The project thus illustrates a new interdisciplinary design field in which the dynamic interplay between urban planning and the space of mass media and communication networks is investigated. âSoft Urbanismâ deals with the âsoftâ aspects of the city and intervenes at the level of infrastructure: by providing networks and interfaces, new fields of possibility for design are opened up and frameworks for processes of self-organization are developed. First published in German in the publication of the International Forum for Design Ulm, Annual Congress 1996.
Student
Projects
The projects of the students and graduates explore and illustrate experimental media spatial designs and their interaction with urban space.
Kontrollorgan, Carsten Becker
In our daily lives, we leave behind an ever-increasing wealth of electronic traces. Personal data is generated everywhere. Detached from us, this data flows through electronic networks and databases. Kontrollorgan gives shape to our infinitely fragmented data shadow. The program links a person’s data shadows, analyses them and generates a three-dimensional shape from them. Kontrollorgan mirrors our data shadow online and focusses it into a data portrait. Each person’s life creates a different individual shape. What relationships will develop between our digital alter ego and ourselves?
trace pattern, Ursula Damm The project deals with the discrepancy between the everyday living environment and imagined âlived-through inner spacesâ. It aims to develop an architecture that is adaptable. The starting point is movement behavior. From simple, observable variables, references are to be derived that lead to a modeling of properties as a result of interaction. People in space are therefore autonomous islands; âfield modelsâ of movement, space utilisation, communication and energy are generated.
Trace-pattern, Ursula Damm
The installation observes the movements of people in public places and their interactions during spontaneous encounters. Geometric interpretations question typical spatial relationships (territorial behaviour) in places of concentration, making them visually and acoustically perceptible. An overhead camera captures the traces of movement and whereabouts (circles) – a network of lines from which virtual landscapes can be calculated. They are an image of possible architecture and scrutinize the structure of the city and the shape of urban plans.
Superkollektor, Felix Hahn, Holger Reckter
The super collector thematizes the first resignation with the world’s largest data container. At the same time, it attempts to show a new perspective and expand the view of the Internet that is limited by the browser window. The Superkollektor is a software program that moves independently through the Internet based on a guiding concept. On its way, it collects sound files, image files and structural data associated with the term. The collected data results in a continuous flow of sounds and images that can be perceived via the installation’s loudspeaker and monitor. The relatedness of the content results in a data landscape: noise of arbitrariness interspersed with islands of information but also grotesque sound and image elements.
electric shroom, Antenne Springborn & Klaus Gasteier
âan audiovisual multiuser ambience sculptureâ The shroom is an interface for images & sounds in a chill environment, accessible to multiple users. Shapes and colors dance around on a mushroom-like plant, merging with each other and pulsating to the rhythm of the sounds they represent. The available pools of audiovisual material are surfed through by the visitors together: colored icons on three palm-sized buttons are the instrument with which the image-sound collage can be navigated. The shapes react to the dynamics of the respective sound. Four separate sound channels offer surround sound, so that it is possible to perceive spatially which channel has just been influenced.
OOZY EZINE THE TRAVELING MAGAZINE, Iris Sofka
Envisions an a user generated magazine. electronic Iayers can form an architectural situation. this is space created by information, therefore it is temporary and always changing.”
An experimental work on urban networks in connection with an electronic magazine on the Internet. The global proliferation of the Internet is turning it into a digital dung heap. How can we utilize our resources more effectively and enable different access points?
LIQUID COLUMN / SQUAD THE NEWSBUS The traveling electronic magazine is housed in a bus and can be accessed via the Internet. From this mobile information container, advertising pillars installed in the city and countryside are displayed. There the information can be read, updated, linked, downloaded and changed.
zwei Objekte/zwei Subjekte, Andreas Menn
The head-mounted systems are worn by two people. The system can be used anywhere. There is also a media bag that can be conveniently slung over the shoulder. âTwo objects/two subjectsâ form a joint communication system. The interface is always the other person. By changing their perspective and losing control of their visual orientation, they experience themselves and the space around them as a media construction – a simulation of a virtual space.
related PROJECTS
Today, media networks are inïŹuencing and interacting with real places. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is radically changing the way we live, interact and perceive our world.
Politics, economics, warfare, culture are increasingly taking place in the spaces of information-communication, media networks.
Publication Hybrids @ Interior Wor(l)ds, Umberto Allemandi & C., Torino, Italy, September 2010
Politics, economics, warfare, culture are increasingly taking place in the spaces of information-communication, media networks.
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