“That knowledge has become the resource rather than a resource, is what makes our society “post-capitalist”.
It changes, fundamentally, the structure of society. It creates new social dynamics. It creates new economic dynamics. It creates new politics.”
Peter Drucker “Post-Capitalist Society”, 1993
The way people communicate and connect around the world today, is being radically redefined by digitalization. With the acceleration of digitization as one of the most obvious consequences of the pandemic, the use of digital tools is experiencing an unprecedented rise among arts and cultural institutions and practices.
Publication @ tanz Yearbook 2022, Germany, 15 August 2022
The notion of a circular city has taken to occupy center stage as a main concept for sustainable zero-waste urban futures. And yet, as one takes a closer look, the circle expands in multiple ripples and loops, revealing the sheer complexity that envisioning – let alone developing – circular cities entail.
Lectures, Workshops, Symposium, FieldLab @ Hybrid Space Lab, 2022 – 2024
The workshop “Conflict Space” taking place at the International Symposium on Electronic Art ISEA2022 in Barcelona deals with the re-signification of a very contentious Franco monument and is part of the ‘Deep Space’ research on the politics of memory and heritage in the digital age.
Convers(at)ions engages creatively with exchanges over border phenomenology and performativity, it transforms negative spaces such as military demarcations and borders by adopting a ‘more-than-human’ perspective and taps into the potential of nature and environmental conservation activities.
What are engaging, inclusive, and sustainable hybrid formats and spaces for art and culture?
Hybrid Workshop “The Future is not Digital. Hybrid is the Future!” @ HoloLab – dive in Program for Digital Interaction, 13.30 – 18.00, 14 October 2021
In our globalized world the accelerating speed of socio-political and cultural change collides with the longue-durée of heritage sites and territories. As social and political contexts around places with a public meaning change, controversies often arise.
Publication Re-Charting Places @ Contested Spaces – Concerted Projects: Designs for Vulnerable Memories, LetteraVentidue Edizioni, Syracuse, Italy, April 2021
Focussing on rereading the cityscape, granting visibility and recognition to voices and histories previously silenced, the program focuses on fostering memory-making and processing through the development of innovative, participatory methods that do not physically touch the spaces involved.
Hybrid Platforms develops concepts and ideas for new cultural formats and is organized and curated by the NRW KULTURsekretariat and Hybrid Space Lab.
As museums and cultural institutions face the prospect of a 1.5mt-apart life and economy, how to offer meaningful visitors’ experiences whilst keeping afloat of financial needs has become a most pressing question.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of digital instruments is rapidly increasing. As the possible consequences of digitization are more sharply outlined, this opens new possibilities for spatial organization. This urges us to reconsider the guiding principles and models for the urbanization of technology we want to follow and what our city visions are. We can still choose.
Publication Post COVID-19 City
@ KHM #0 Magazine, Academy of Media Arts (KHM), Cologne, Germany, 1 July 2022
With its physical distancing measures, the COVID-19 pandemic is destroying public space as we know it. The current crisis creates the necessity – and emergency – to rethink cultural space.
The challenges of digital transformation are becoming more and more tangible in the daily lives of Berliners. There is an increasing need to get involved and take the city’s digital future into one’s own hands.
Human activity and its far-reaching interactions have always transformed territories by moving people, plants, goods and animals. As such, territories have become richly stratified – and interactions are always mutual and two-way. Countries and cities projecting their influence elsewhere have, in turn, been transformed by external inputs.
The classic means of transport – car, bicycle, public transport and walking are increasingly supplemented and integrated with upcoming forms of mobility. Which user groups are the target of the new digitally supported and data-powered mobility services such as car sharing, ride sharing, rental bikes and electric scooters?
By unlocking the potential laying at the intersection between arts, technology, memory studies and sciences, the workshop has cracked open the interwoven, historically painful meanings of the monument, envisioning its possible futures, once Franco’s remains will be exhumed from the site.
In a globalized world, the polyphony of voices gaining and demanding recognition generates the necessity and the possibility to reconsider contested heritage. The collective reckoning with controversial history and the processes of re-signification and restitution deal with complex issues that have to account for a multitude of claims. We therefore need a fresh, radically innovative outlook with a solutions-oriented approach to address the various forms of contested heritage – be they objects, monuments, sites – in a way that is fit for the 21st century.
The “Future Narratives and Immersive Experiences” symposium addresses the challenges posed by these developments by bringing together interdisciplinary co-creators in the audiovisual sector, companies with a background in media, VR / AR / MR, games, 3D sound, in the staging of productions, in communication and advertising as well as cultural and heritage institutions and players from other fields with the urge of delivering high-quality storytelling in the digital era.
Digitalization transforms our cities, with far-reaching efforts towards technology-powered increased efficiency, sustainability and at times participation. This raises new questions on privacy, data governance and (digital) design, historically unaddressed by city planning, architecture, civil society and governance. With cities worldwide striving to earn a “Smart City” reputation, it is however disputed who exactly benefits from these concepts.
The workshop creates an inspirational space to speculate on possible diplomacy applications by projecting onto diplomacy innovative digital solutions from numerous fields.
City Making Lab is a series of programs focusing on digitalization and the city. City Making Lab is a co-operation between Hybrid Space Lab and Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG). City Making Lab investigates ongoing developments at the intersection of cities and digital technology, engaging with urban mobility and public space, new patterns of space utilization for living and working, circular city, climate adaptation and healthy cities.
Lectures, Discussions, @ Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, 2019-2020
What’s the future like? For professionals in the exhibition business this is a very relevant and difficult problem. Because the future does not give us any objects yet.
Water is the necessary resource for life. Human settlements have always been dependent upon access to clean water and its relative scarcity – freshwater makes up only 2.5% of water available on the earth – has awarded it the name ‘blue gold’. If world population increases as expected, hitting the 9 billions threshold by 2050, will water resources be sufficient?
Embassay Lab Water Conscious Fashion, @ Neonyt, Kraftwerk Berlin, 16 January 2019
We are very honored that Renate Künast, politician for the Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and Member of German Parliament is opening Embassy Lab GRÜNtopia.
Green spaces are essential for the quality of life, wellbeing, and health of urban populations. Today, the focus on and interest in green urban spaces is increasing thanks to initiatives working toward Healthy Cities, environmental justice, food security, and strengthening local communities.
Recent developments such as Internet of Things, Big Data, and Machine Intelligence have ambition and the potential to algorithmically manage life, including urban nature. These developments in technology and media are supporting the development of a new hybrid architecture where Architecture and Nature fuse: NatureTecture!
Fast-paced advances in technology are creating diffuse and volatile conditions in which international actors operate. Disruptive innovations such as machine learning and big data analytics are changing governments, NGOs, the media, businesses, and in some cases entire industries. New and unexpected players entering the field are putting pressure on the traditional division of roles between politics, business, journalism and civil society.
Lectures & Workshop @ Un-Conference Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Hague, 2 February 2018
The workshop is an experimental laboratory that strongly interacts with the public. During the workshop the participants learn how to use a Do It Yourself (DIY) 3D printer and how to share the digital design information of physical objects through online communities.
Hybrid Diplomacy designates the combining of traditional diplomacy and innovative diplomacy. Hybrid Diplomacy includes the collaboration between state and non-state actors in a network diplomacy that involves next to traditional diplomats and governments, also civil society and NGOs, businesses, international organizations, and other players. Hybrid Diplomacy addresses also the multiple hybridizations in the diplomatic field, including diplomatic practices that combine communication in physical space and social media, that deal with crossover issues, and that mediate in the interaction fields of different cultures.
Recent developments such as Internet of Things, Big Data and Machine Intelligence will algorithmically organize life, including urban nature. These developments in technology and media are supporting the development of a new hybrid architecture where architecture and nature fuse.
The development of Virtual Reality (VR) is closely linked to the exploration of unknown territories. Virtual Reality, slowly emerging since the1920s, really took off in 1966 when NASA introduced this technology for flight simulation systems in its space program. As it was too expensive and too risky to train the astronauts by practising the real thing – launching them into the cosmos – methods had to be developed that could provide the trainees with a simulated experience: a small physical stimulus of acceleration, supported by and combined with visual information, was extrapolated and amplified in a ‘knock-on’ effect by the brains of the astronauts, providing them with the mental environment required to practise for the operation in (real) space.
Publication @ de Architekt, The Netherlands, June 1998