impressum

 

Conference Sessions

Shaping the Urban Mediascapes
Architecture has always been a communication tool. Slowly but surely, our media saturated culture has changed the image of the city and its urban landscape. More then ten years after Nouvel, Venturi and Ito have coined the vision of "media buildings" - the architecture in the information society, what is the current relation between architecture, media and public space? What are the contemporary views on designing the fusion of new technology and the cityscape in order to visualize the urban information flows?

Addressing the Social Value and Civic Culture through Participation
Mediated interaction and confrontation with fellow citizens can create new forms of civil culture and responsible use of public space. How can we change from consumer entertainment to participation for a wide range of users, allowing them to be involved in the production of space? Can we strengthen the long-term value of local identity and cultural diversity through open access to screens? “Screening platforms" could give the urban society the chance to engage with local culture, social integration, education and political discourse etc.

Opening the Commercial Use of Outdoor Screens
New advertising strategies constantly improved ways of addressing the audience in public space. Currently, there is a growing interest in exploring the potential of non-commercial uses of the screening infrastructure. Which economic factors now open the "moving billboards" for alternative content? Does this generate additional value for its operators and "users"? What are the challenges for newly formed public-private partnerships?

Future Technology of Outdoor Screens
How far are we from visions like “minority report”? Which technical limits currently exist to the possibilities of Urban Screens and which technologies will influence the future development of the urban media sphere? Looking at the evolving cooperative content production techniques in the digital world it might be a challenge to connect them with the real space trough the use of urban screens.

Experiences with New Content Creation and Curation
Extending the time slots on outdoor screens for non-commercial content requires investigation of new strategies and cooperation in content production. What can be learned from recent practical experiences and evaluation studies with new and old cultural content for urban Screens? Going into public space we face issues like a transient audience, visual and sonic competition and the issue of censorship. How can be dealt with the existing commercial domination and the nuances between art, interventions and entertainment to stimulate a lively culture?

 

 

 

 

 

LECTURES OF URBAN SCREENS 05

Complete program with introduction, CVs and credits:

PDF (1 MB)
DOC (212 KB)


DAY 1 (23.09.05)

KEYNOTE LECTURES

The Politics of Public Space in the Media City
Scott McQuire (Melbourne)
Paul Virilio argues that public space has given way to public image, shifting the location of the public domain from the street to the domestic display terminal. But what happens when the screen leaves home and moves back into the city? The public domain of the 21st century is no longer simply streets and plazas. Nor is it defined solely by electronic media space. Rather it emerges in the complex interaction of material and immaterial spaces. In this paper, I want to trace some different conceptions of public space, and ask what forms of access and interaction might support 'democratic' public space in the hybrid spaces of contemporary media cities.

Urban Media Surface: First Steps
Lev Manovich (San Diego)
Living your life in the modern city, you constantly interact with multiple UMI (Urban Media Interface) - from the small screen of a cell phone to a large screen of a public electronic billboard. What are the most aesthetically daring examples of UMS (Urban Media Surface) designs so far? How is our experience of a spatial form (i.e. architecture) is affected when the form is covered with dynamic and rich multimedia information? What are the historical precedents of UMS phenomena and what can we expect in the future? A report from the squares and the research labs.

SESSION 1 - SHAPING THE URBAN MEDIA-SCAPE

Media Facades in the Context of Urban Scale
Christoph Kronhagel (Cologne)
In 2004 the ag4 mediatecture company realized a 300 sqm transparent media facade for the headquarter of the mobile phone carrier T-Mobile in Bonn. In front of a glass facade an external construction with integrated light emitting diods had to be installed without disturbing the panoramic view from inside. The transparency of this medium allows a deliberate interaction of architecture and electronic media, provoking a new scale in urban development - the question of perceptioning moving pictures in urban space. The perception depends on the dimension of a media facade. Valuable technologies and media conceptions that synchronize with the cultural nature of the city are needed.

Integration of screens in architectural / urban design
Prof. Peter Lavery (Brisbane)
An overview of urban redevelopment in Brisbane Australia on a former army barracks site with differing screens informing the architectural design of building surfaces as public art spaces. Identifying different publics including commuters, specific groups in public spaces, and a newly forming residential community in a distributed environment using large screen interactivity in community development. University / government partnership in urban redevelopment and leveraging government policy on public art to create an urban screen environment.

Intelligent Skin. Houses that Oikoborg
Andreas Wenger, Vera Bühlmann (Basel)
“Intelligent Skin” develops a media façade as an expressive membrane of houses as organisms with proper individualities. Such organisming-personing-houses will develop an own „Lebenswelt“ due to their sensitivity and sensuality, intelligence, and memory. With people parasiting their proper milieus, communicational spheres might evolve into new hypercycles. What would it feel like to live in a city where houses court each other in springtime?

SESSION 2 - ADDRESSING THE SOCIAL VALUE AND CIVIC CULTURE THROUGH PARTICIPATION

Soft Urbanism: Public Urban Media
Prof. Elizabeth Sikiaridi and Prof. Frans Vogelaar (Amsterdam)
The presentation focuses on concepts, applications and projects for urban screens. It addresses the changes of public urban space due to medialization and develops scenarios for the interplay of the public urban space and the public media domain, for the creation of urban hybrid spaces. A series of projects are presented. “Soft Urbanism”, a new interdisciplinary field of design, exploring the dynamic interaction of urbanism and the space of mass media and communication networks, is introduced.

Urban Video Displays as the New Voice of Public Communications
Louis M. Brill (San Francisco)
How have communities integrated LED video signage into public spaces? How do the dimensions of art & entertainment as expressed through video displays transform a civic public space and a digital display into a singular location that enhances the value of that space as a tourist or community destination? This presentation will view the integration of the public video sphere in us within certain shopping malls, parks and building structures where large screen video has become an identity beacon in creating digital public space.

The Shape of Content on the Urban Screen
Perry Bard (New York)
Is it possible to use the urban screen to address a gap mainstream media creates? I will describe two video interventions done in collaboration with community groups who have little access to technology and discuss the problems in accessing the technology, problems with the kind of technology provided when it is provided, sustainability of such endeavors, participation, audience response. These projects were initiated as an alternative to mainstream media. They are about voice, about representation, about using the dominant technology to subvert its most obvious efforts. .

Beaming and Streaming: Developing Infrastructure for an Urban Screen through the Creative Collaborations Project
Frank Abbott, Dr. Jim Shorthose, Jez Noond (Nottingham)
Creative Collaborations is an example of building creative networks and collaboration for screen content using a DiY approach. We will describe and illustrate how examples of the development of links through new display technologies can feed into an urban screen project nurturing emerging relationships between active cultural production and cultural consumption. A partnership between Nottingham Trent University and The Broadway Media Centre, Nottingham.


TWO PROJECT SKETCHES

The Art of Interaction, Love Connection and Global Culture Broadcast
Valentin Tomic, Valerija Tomic, Kristijan Topckov, Dusan Kalicanin (Yugoslavia)
People, Outdoor LED screens and the Internet multifunctionally linked in one coherent, urban entity by three different approaches. Cultural exchanges wherein artwork and creativity makes itself approachable to broad audience, is the first project also offering a unique chance for artists to present their work all over the world. Similarly, the second one aims to make people more socialized in the public space through SCANart punkts in front of LED screens. Third one offers a daily concept of astrological counseling to people in front of led screens, supported by web site, wherein love will motivate people to meet you persons according to their unique astral charts.

1er contact - a Festival of Interactive Art in Public Space
Florent Aziosmanoff (Issy-les-Moulineaux/Paris)
The “FIRST CONTACT Festival” is an open-air exhibition in the heart of the City of Issy-les-Moulineaux (in the southern suburbs of Paris), displaying interactive installations in especially designed multimedia urban furniture. The “FIRST CONTACT Festival” is organized by Le Cube, the largest Digital Art Center in France, and sponsored by the ministry of Culture and the Town of Issy-les-Moulineaux.

SESSION 3 - OPENING THE COMMERCIAL USE OF OUTDOOR SCREENS

Art vs. Advertising – Comparative Use of Corporate Screens for Video Art
Raina Kumra (Cambridge, MA)
The history of the use of video in the city for retail purposes, the economic factors for displaying commercial pieces vs. art, examples of video art on the rise with non commercial motivations. I examine which companies seem more open to lending time on their screens to artists and why…

Commercial versus Public Service Applications
Olga Barham (Amsterdam)
Being Marketing Manager Media, BU Philips Vidiwall she will talk about the company’s experiences of dealing with screens and Philips interest in outdoor public spaces across the world.

Social and Cultural Aspects of Outdoor Video Technology
Dr. Vladimir Krylov (Moscow)
“Moving billboards” were introduced to cities to compete with traditional advertising means. They quickly acquired another important feature: outdoor public address system. Informational and entertainment blocks serve as value-added to advertising content and increase significance of outdoor networks for both federal and municipal authorities and national and local advertisers. What are the challenges to new public-private partnership?

Token screens or opportunity for difference? Art screens and the branding of the city
Julia Nevárez (New York)
This presentation seeks to better understand the use of billboards and/or screens in public space, specifically Times Square, NYC. Billboards with art content will be examined to illustrate the branding of the city to attract a professional class of residents and tourists as well as to comment on issues of difference represented in public space.

DAY 2 (24.09.05)

SESSION 4 - FUTURE TECHNOLOGY OF OUTDOOR SCREENS

Media-Facades: Use, Mutation and Technologies
Jürgen Meier (Leipzig)
Examples of experimental media facades and their concepts generated in the 90ies show the process of mutation of public media. Different levels of research were put into test in matrix and video facades. Artists and technicians are looking for grounds and boarders of content, technologies and interfaces. Users are able to move in virtual surroundings and translate their action into color façade light and network traffic. Media – architecture arises rhizomatic spaces between real live commerce and networking contents, while investors are looking for simple broadcasting solutions in urban context.

Future Urban Screens - New Concepts for Urban Screens
Florian Resatsch, Corina Weber, Daniel Michelis, Prof. Dr. Thomas Schildhauer, et al. (Berlin)
Various projects showed recently that the passers-by in public space suffer a lack of attention to public screens regardless their sizes and content. Two recently developed concepts show on the basis of examples possible ways to grab people's attention by using new ways of interaction or new points of view. The screens in "Urban Moves" use cameras and information technology to directly interact with the passers-by whereas the concept "Urban SubScreens" deals with new ideas to place screens and let people choose how to interact.

Cityspeak : From Private Expression to Public Performance
Jason Lewis, Cobber Liu, Maroussia Levesque (Montreal)
Cityspeak is a platform for creating digital graffiti. Participants use Cityspeak to engage in p2P (private to public) interactions, where private modes of communication drive public displays onto a particular location. Text messages sent by cellphone and mobile browsers are combined with real-time location-based data such as news headlines and weather conditions, and then projected into the location using the the NextText text visualization software. The resulting interaction is a multivalent exchange between individual participants, participants as a group and the location itself.

The Relation Between Large Scale LED Screens, Content Production and Technology
Adrian Velicescu (Los Angeles)
Standard has recently designed a stunning 60 000 sq ft LED media installation for Jakarta. It comprises of three lighting media wall installations that cover two of the vertical 57story facade and the top crown of the Grand Indonesia tower. In the middle of the North curtain wall there will be a 75x150 ft hi resolution screen capable of displaying moving images. Standard will design the content so the lo resolution lighting installation will be complementing and work in tandem with the hi resolution screen.

ARTISTS PRESENTATIONS

Architectural Media Space
Dr. Linda Wallace (Amsterdam)
Designing for what I term 'architectural media space' requires new ways of thinking how much commitment do passers-by have to following narratives inside the frame or across multiple screens, and what kinds of assumptions can one make about the kinds of people passing, in dialogue with their mind's thoughts in all kinds of languages these are the some of the issues I addressed in my PhD and in the works eurovision and LivingTomorrow, recently staged in Amsterdam. The latter was conceptual prototype research into the potential of high resolution video running via a database/server over the network to three screens, whereas the former prototyped the idea of multiple streams into single-frame templates. Both works addressed narrative and visual form.

(Tele)interventions in Cybrid Public Spaces
Roberta Alvarenga (Sao Paulo)
This paper will address some teleinterventions of Giselle Beiguelman which she did between 2002 and 2004. She is using commercial electronic billboards for open public streaming by the Web and via SMS and MMS. These projects are: Did your Read the East?, egoscópio (both from 2002), Poétrica (2003, 2004) and esc for escape (2004).

Stalk Show
Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat (Amsterdam)
The StalkShow deals with threat of unsafety and isolation. A backpack with laptop/touch screen is carried through public spaces. Being surrounded by the audience you are invited to touch the touch screen and to navigate through an archive of texts about threat of unsafety and isolation. The texts derive from internet, written by people living in isolation, like a prisoner, a nun, a pilgrim, a digipersona. By web cam and wireless internet connection, your live video portrait appears together with the text on a large projection screen in the same public space. www.stalkshow.org

Etre = Réseau: From scenography to planetary network
Franck Ancel (Paris)
Since the attacks of 9/11, Franck Ancel has set up an interactive triptych mixing "architecture - image - technology" on 20th century heritage sites. In 2002, he put it in the Le Corbusier/Xenakis convent; in 2003 in a classified theatre in Catalogne; and in 2004 on the screen of Montparnasse
Tower in Paris. Franck Ancel challenges the viewer outside traditional frontiers, by projecting a setting of a network of information on screens.

Energie_Passagen [Energy_Passages] – Reading and (De)Scribing the City
Wolfgang Strauss & Monika Fleischmann (Germany)
The project “Energy_Passages” reproduces linguistic spaces of the city in form of a data flow. Hundreds of catchwords processed from local newspapers appear in a projected »information flow« and are spoken by artificial computer voices. As soon as passers-by select individual words, thematically related networks of terms start to perform in this flow, which can also be experienced as an audiovisual echo. Text and language is thus detached from its linear context and staged as a medial reading in urban space.

SESSION 5 - EXPERIENCES WITH NEW CONTENT CREATION AND CURATION

Curating the Zuidas Urban Screen
Jan Schuijren (Amsterdam)
In co-operation with the city of Amsterdam, the Zuidas Virtual Museum, SKOR and Faircom will install a permanent video screen for cultural programming at the Zuidplein on Amsterdam’s South Axis. Jan Schuijren is commissioned to curate the screen and will introduce his ideas for this new Urban Screen.

Audiences on the Move - The Bigger Picture
Kate Taylor (Manchester)
The Bigger Picture curates and commissions moving image art work for a big screen in Manchester, UK. This presentation will address the challenges of negotiating a relationship between a non-immersive exhibition point and a transient audience in a public space. Following experiments with content and scheduling it will encourage the possibilities of touring, simultaneous screenings and large scale commissions via the development of distribution networks with other public screens.

Video as Urban Condition
Anthony Auerbach (London)
Reflecting on how video becomes part of the urban fabric and on its mutability sliding between fact and fiction, entertainment and persuasion, urban fantasy and reality-TV, art and activism, surveillance and control. I will consider ‘urban screens’ in the broad sense. I will examine contemporary shifts in what may be called the ‘relations of representation’ mediated by video technologies, that is to say: the culture and politics of video as it emerges in various urban contexts. http://www.video-as.org

Outvideo - International Videoart Festival in Public Spaces
Arseny Sergeev, Nailya Alachverdeiva (Ekaterinburg)
The festival OUTVIDEO is carried out for the second year in a row on the network of 8 outdoor video screens in Yekaterinburg (Russia). The peculiarity of the festival is that we show the video art pieces as advertisement. Short 30-second-long silent video art pieces are broadcasted in common advertisement blocks every 5 minutes. We change the rules of the game. Introducing Video Art into the public environment as advertisement we create the favorable conditions for active perception (“consumption”) of the contemporary art by unprepared public. The strategy of the festival is to use the temporary intervention of contemporary art as the foundation for its future constant presence in the public environment.

The Signing Operations of the Schaulager Screenings
Dr. Sabine Gebhardt Fink (Zurich)
The focus of my case study of the screenings at the Schaulager is their function, character, nature and qualities as spatial-social sign, an aggregate of meaning/s which I maintain is based in both material aspects and social conventions. I am working with the notion of a signing-situation. One the one hand, I will consider the material placement and human use of the entrance-area with the screens on the level of affectedness, articulation and understanding; in using a phenomenological model for interpretations. On the other hand, I will explore the discourses and actions in the cinematographic display-zone by a geosemiotic case study.

FINAL KEYNOTE SPEECH

Two Years Public Space Broadcasting in the United Kingdom
Mike Gibbons (London)
PSB brings 24 hour non-commercial content to the city centers, animating public spaces; helps provide an event program for local community and is a information notice board for the 21st century. PSB is a partnership between BBC, Philips and the local Government to provide the hardware working together with a creative program linking arts, film and video groups in the screen’s catchment area. The lecture reviews the lessons learned by BBC and the project members and paints a picture of future development.