Annet Dekker has been active in the field of media art since the mid 90s. She worked eight years as curator, head of exhibitions and the artist in residence program at the Netherlands Media Art Institute in Amsterdam. At the moment she is an independent curator and programme manager at Virtueel Platform.

According to Dekker, the virtual and the real are currently in dialogue with each other. She began with a lengthy quote from Miriam Struppek,

‘Urban screens can be understood in the context of a reinvention of the public sphere and the urban character of cities, based on a well-balanced mix of functions and the idea of the inhabitant as active citizen instead of properly behaving consumer.’ (2006)

Urban screens focus on the public urban audience, on joint and widespread reception of media content. Levels of locality and globality vary, ranging from the local neighbourhood screens with symbols and signs on a city level to trans-urban networks of screens enabling new glocal interconnectivity.’ (2009)

Dekker believes that a “media space” can be defined with more than “urban screens”, and as one example she suggested the mobile phone. In addition, she highlighted four projects that she believes challenges common notions of what an urban screen can be: Esther Polak’s Nomatic Milk, the work of Yolande Harris, Blast Theory, and Ian bogost’s Persuasive Games.

In closing she added her concern for the future of urban screens, “A new hybrid space has formed, and we use technologies without really questioning them. It’s really problematic that you have very little control.”

Paul Klotz is an applied art engineer and light designer who specializes in interactive light installations for public spaces. By means of light and sound installations which create a feedback loops between the passerby and the installation upon physical interaction with the artwork, he attempts to set up in public spaces artistic zones which captivate, entertain and enrich human experience.  The Tunnel Vision installation for example is a light and sound installation which responds to the individual’s hand movements within it by sound and light alterations.

Besides a couple of more politically determined projects such as the as the EL-37 (Eco-Line 37), the primary function of Paul Klotz’s creative lighting installations is aesthetic and stems from his fascination with light as artistic medium. EL-37 (Eco-Line 37) was installated in the urban space of Almelo. The installation consists of a six meter modular lightline, something like a thermometer which represents in colours the temperature at the place of the installation. The displayed temperature fluctuates according to the different types of transportation in transit by the place of installation as a modality of creating awareness of environmental issues, climate change and the role of pollution in the process. In absence of traffic the installation acts as a blow-up thermometer.

The sense of individual engagement is determined in Klotz’s installations by the responsiveness of the installation to the movements of the passerby, enabled by the data gathered by sensors at the location of the installation. This much praised feature of interactivity emphasized by many of the media installations and projects presented today at the conference deserves more interrogation. Individual engagement and agency are not to be made the primary goal of such projects and admired as accomplishments in themselves but further interrogated in terms of their meaningfulness. Interactivity in itself can enable both responsible and irresponsible engagement with the artwork/ installation. In order to make the interactive features of an artwork meaningful the attention of the artist should go towards enabling responsible interaction and empathy through conceptual choices. Kristine Stiles and Edward Shanken, art theorists and historians, provide a list of questions useful in reflecting upon whether the interactive features of multimedia artworks truly enable responsible and meaningful agency in relation to social change, agency which would activate complex emotional and decision-making responses and which would contribute to the meaningfulness of the overall artwork, defined as “the ability to change (or affirm) the way viewers see, understand, and act upon the world” (Stiles and Shanken, forthcoming: 86).

In what ways does their [contemporary artists’] use of interactive media: a) challenge or change the creative process and the ways in which artistic meaning is constructed and received? b) enable alternative or expanded roles for the viewer as a producer of meaning? c) enhance individual and collective agency as a vehicle for social change? How are the intentions of the artist and the participant related to the events that result from encounters with interactive art? Do participants have the freedom to influence real-world events or assume interconnected responsibility? (Stiles and Shanken, forthcoming: 91) 

This set of questions brings me to another question which I would have liked to be addressed in the presentation of each art project namely, beyond their obvious spectacularity and the ‘coolness’ factor, what is the ‘added-value’ in terms social capital/change/ efficacy, of these sometimes very expensive thereby largely inaccessible forms of expression in urban space interventions, in comparison with older forms of artistic/ tactical/ subversive/ socially-oriented interventions in urban space?

Notes:

Kristine Stiles and Edward A. Shanken, Missing in Action: Agency and Meaning in Interactive Art, forthcoming in Margot Lovejoy, Christiane Paul, Victoria Vesna, eds., Context Providers: Context and Meaning in Digital Art (University of Minnesota Press).

Mettina Veenstra is principal researcher and coordinator of the theme public screens at Novay Research. Novay is a Dutch research institute for ICT driven innovation. Her presentation today at the Urban Screens conference focused on what public displays can do for public space in terms of stimulating encounters and interactions between people in public spaces. They envision the role of public digital displays as external stimuli for encouraging contact between people, with art being an important type of stimulus. But why is it important to foster social interactions? According to Mettina Veenstra social interactions lead to social capital which is important for our well being and our economy.

 The speaker identified eight functions of public displays: information, entertainment, art and culture, advertising, communication, better services, e-participation (the stimulation of discussion on environment and other local issues) and influencing (colors or imagines that can improve the mood of people). The speaker presented a series of projects for public screens which incorporate these functions and ideally aim to generate social capital. For example, a game projected in neighborhood public digital displays, the main target audience of which are youngsters, permits any individual who owns a mobile phone to play with the main character of the game, a dog, along with other people who access the game trough their mobile phones. A social networking site which links you to people whom you played the game with has also been set up. Other projects aim at encouraging the practice of performing arts in public spaces, while others are designed for public areas of office spaces with the purpose of stimulating workers to get in touch with each other by means of a constant flow of messages related to their activity.

The ‘recipe’ for fostering social capital which Novay puts in practice emphasizes the ‘locality’ of content and it’s direct relevance to the individual (personalized content), as well as allowing people to interact with the screens. The personalization of content is enabled by the integration of sensors and facial recognition technology in context aware applications.

This year’s Urban Screens conference in Amsterdam focused less on theoretical aspects and more on showing some of the actual artistic and non-commercial projects and installations which have been developed for digital displays in public space, and Mettina Veenstra’s presentation was one of them. I could not help noticing with surprise the great gap between theory and practice in what producing applications and installations for digital interfaces in public space as platforms for creation, cultural exchange and social interaction are concerned. While the growing number of such projects is certainly a step in the right direction, an issue that deserves more attention is a more informed and critical integration of new technologies, such as surveillance technologies, in these projects. For ambient intelligence enthusiasts, a recent exhibition which took place in New York, The Sentient City, provides a useful source for reflection. The Too Smart City section of the exhibition contained a series of artworks which amusingly explored potential technological failures of augmented objects, as a way to generate reflection about the transformations and effects of living in an intelligent urban environment.

Another concept which has been extensively and uncritically used today in the presentations with implicit positive and ideological connotations directly related to the applications’ potential to foster social change is the concept of ‘interaction’ in relation to media applications. However, interaction with digital environments is often not the much celebrated ‘empowerment’ of the individual now an user/participant, to replace the passive consumption of traditional media, but simply reaction and individual configuration of a technological environment with a limited number of already defined potential paths. Moreover, the participant’s agency in artistic environments is not meaningful in itself in relation to social change but only when it “sets empathy in motion toward responsible interaction and constructive change.” (Stiles and Shanken, forthcoming: 93).

I am convinced that The Urban Screens Reader which has been launched today and which will soon be available for free download on the INC website,  will be an useful tool in bridging the gap between theory and practice.

Notes:

Kristine Stiles and Edward A. Shanken, Missing in Action: Agency and Meaning in Interactive Art, forthcoming in Margot Lovejoy, Christiane Paul, Victoria Vesna, eds., Context Providers: Context and Meaning in Digital Art (University of Minnesota Press).

The Urban Screens conference is approaching! We shall see you on the 4th of December at Trouw Amsterdam, Wibautstraat 131. Doors open from 9.30.

If you are attending and wish to Twitter, Blog or Flickr the conference, please use the following tags:

#urbanscreens & urbanscreens

Please find the flyer below: