Wednesday  02 June 2010
De Verdieping @ TrouwAmsterdam | Wibautstraat 127 |
start 20:00 |

Guests: Rene van Engelenburg (DROPSTUFF.nl) and Gijs Broos (City Media Rotterdam)

Visible Cities
Visible Cities presents a revolving programme on how emerging technologies are changing the cities we live in. The widespread employment and adoption of ubiquitous computing, sensor networks and mobile media into the urban environment have unforeseen implications for how our cultures might come to use networked digital resources to change the way we understand, build, and inhabit cities.

The City As Interface
With the proliferation of screens in urban space, the city increasingly acts as an interface connecting and offering communication between the public and various forms of cultural content. Profoundly altering the urban environment and offering diverse possibilities for public engagement, urban screens can take the shape of LED signs and screens, plasma screens, projections as well as intelligent architectural surfaces, light projects and a whole collection of other possibilities that move away from traditional understandings of the screen.

Organized in partnership with illuminate Outdoor Media, the Institute of Network Cultures and the Urban Screens Association (Amsterdam), this month’s edition of Visible Cities presents Rene van Engelenburg from DROPSTUFF.nl and Gijs Broos from City Media Rotterdam, discussing their projects and sharing personal insights to explore how different approaches to screens in urban environments offer diverse possibilities for enhancing the public domain, engaging the public in designing the city space and providing a site for sharing and exchanging cultural content.

The next ‘The City as Interface’ event will be Impakt Online, which will be presented at www.impakt.nl/online and during Impakt festival 2010 ‘Matrix City’ www.impakt.nl.

illuminate Outdoor Media ::: http://www.illuminate.nl/
The Institute of Network Cultures ::: http://www.networkcultures.org/
The International Urban Screens Association ::: http://www.urbanscreensassoc.org

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De Verdieping is the cultural project space underneath club and restaurant TrouwAmsterdam.
http://trouwamsterdam.nl/de-verdieping

Visible Cities is made possible by the Amsterdamse Fonds voor de Kunsten (http://afk.nl/) and VURB (http://vurb.eu/).

20 May 2010, 20:00- 23:00 hrs, V2_, Eendrachtsstraat 10, Rotterdam

The interactions between the urban space as means of artistic expressions and the dilution of such intervention by commercialization of such spaces was explored and critically examined in the Test Lab. Six live demonstrations by artists:

• Michelle Teran
• Matthias Oostrik
• Rui Guerra
• Toine Horvers and Paul Cox
• Gunnar Green
• Oscar Steens

Report by Srividya Balasubramanian

Michelle Teran (CA) performs, exhibits and lectures in topics ranging from collaborative art, street projections and urban intervention, exploring and illuming the inherent tension between the public and the private. In the two works that she presented at Test_Lab, she aims to brings into attention to the effects of situational permission on the idea of implied security and stability.

The first work, Projects for a city. Girona (2008) was inspired by the Georges Perec’s vision of facade-less Parisian apartment, whose interiors are made visible. The work itself was an actual performance where various interior spaces were projected on the buildings along River Onyar, Girona through the span of a few hours on one night. The first segment was a selection of videos made by the artists and residents of Girona, while the second segment was the projection of live video from inside the kitchen of a restaurant on to the street. As the people in the kitchen directed the attention of the viewers to the most happening parts of the kitchen, Teran described that in this way, they became the producers, directors and performers of their action.

The second project, the Black Leather Projection Purse (2006) is a street performance object. The modified ladies purse with handheld projector is connected to a battery that allows one to walk through the city, intercept its live surveillance and project on its architectural surfaces. The projected video, which greatly resembled a peephole view, gave it a voyeuristic touch.

Following the presentation of her works, Teran brought up some topics for discussion, mainly the notion of the cityscape as a skin; a site for the projection and intervention by artists. She also put forth questions on situational permission and privacy, and the course of action before and after one’s absence of privacy is revealed.

Link to Teran’s webpage with more information on her works, click here

Link to the Flickr photostream of Projects for a city.Girona, click here

Report by Srividya Balasubramanian

Matthias Oostrik (NL)is an artist trained in interaction media from the Nederlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam, whose artworks focus primarily on the dialog between human presence and technological interventions, particularly, the discovery and exploration of its own presence by the interacting body. His interactive installation E4.1 Bijlmer Moodwall (2009)is installed at a tunnel in the Amsterdam Zuid-Oost (South-East) district and won the Dutch design award for best product in the public domain. Originally conceived as the Motionwall (2007), one of his earlier creations, the Moodwall was adapted for a lower resolution screen at the Bijlmer under the commission of Urban Alliance. Both of the installations are screens that create colourful patterns revolved around the movements that are tracked in front of it.

At the Test_lab, Oostrik showed a demonstration of this first installation, and explained that the aim of creating the wall was to use the human body and its most basic functions: movements to develop a direct relationship between the audience and the art work (real body and the virtual body).

The installation is done with the help of a program called Quartz Composer that takes the live image of people in front and tracks the movement by subtracting each object position from its predecessor position. The motion is then blurred till the elements finally blend in to form a silhouette that is merged with colourful patterns and interactive sound.

Though the screen resolution at Bijlmer only allowed for a low resolution that compromised on the quality of the silhouettes, Oostrik remarked that one of the most interesting outcomes of the project was in how the wall allowed for new forms of interactivity and movements around the Moodwall to emerge. As the Moodwall installation did not react to movement towards the front of the screen but only to sideway movement, one of his audience told him that he needed to move around quickly parallel to the wall to make it react. As a curious note, he also added that the wall was used as a background to shoot several hip-hop videos that several peripheral activities like blogging (about the wall) helped in spreading the news and foster a positive sense of community around the Bijlmer area.

Oostrik’s future projects also involve movements of the human body creating visuals on the screen, ideas of initiating an interaction and confronting people with themselves and their narcissism as the starting point of a dialog.

For more information on the Moodwall and other projects, click here

To watch some videoes and photos of the Moodwall/Motionwall in practice, click here

Report by Juliana Brunello

Rui Guerra (PT) first presented his project called “Beam It“. The project consisted of a screen beamed on public space (in this case, in V2) that could be modified by online users by means of text messages, photos or videos. Basically people could visit the website, watch the area where the screen was located as well as the screen itself, and interact with it by means of typing things that would then appear on the screen.

After that, Guerra presented IXTK, whose goal is to do some research and experiments in the fields of art, technology and society.Meanwhile, beam it was still running on the background, which made it difficult to concentrate on either his speech or the streaming. Nevertheless, both were very entertaining.Their first project consisted of the a sentence written on a big cardboard: Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable? With this in hand, Rui and his group would walk around in bars or private spaces and wait to be approached by someone, as they should not talk to people directly for this project. If someone came and talked to them, they would point the person to a website called “would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable . com”. There, the person would end up receiving an invitation to a private party. Their second project was called “beam me up, scotty“. It involved a mobile battery support, a laptop and a beamer. They would beam images on the surface of buildings. However, they were not beaming their own content. Instead, they had an interface where anyone who was in the street could make drawings on the buildings. Later, they started beaming inside of bars, projecting sentences above people, about what they were possibly saying.

Check the short video called “my place or your place” at their website as well as their other
original and well humored pieces!

Report by Juliana Brunello

Toine Horvers (NL) and Paul Cox (NL) have been working together at a project called Beijerkoppen, which is still being developed and improved. The project has already had its debut on a wall of the new Media-markt at Beijerlandselaan, Rotterdam. The main aspect of this work is the multiculturalism represented by three simultaneous portraits of newsreaders from all over the world in near real-time. The fact that most TV newsreaders look straight into the camera while speaking a message makes this work interesting 24 hour live talking portraits. With the use of small loudspeakers, the passer-bys, when close to the portrait, can also hear the different languages that are being spoken at each screen/portrait.

For this project V2 developed a search system that continuously scanns as many online TV stations as possible. However, the software still makes mistakes, which is why they are still working on it. The software should recognize only human faces, but sometimes something similar to a face is falsely recognized. A special software has also been developed in order to determine the right crop, size and composition of the picture before it appears on one of the displays. When asked about leaving the mistakes, as they could make the work more interesting, Horvers responded that he would not mind it being perfect, as it should “just be there” and “be what it is”.

Even though the work is supposed to be set in public space, it worked very well at the V2 lounge. However, the connection between “old city” and “modern portraits” cannot be made under this situation.

Report by Cecilia Guida

Oscar Steens (NL) is the Special Guest of the program, who works for City Media Rotterdam, which is a key facilitator of urban screens in the city. Oscar is the editor-in-chief for those screens. In his presentation he has shown the prospective of the CMR and some success stories in their practice collaborating with various artists. The organization is really active in the city with many and diverse projects, such as the ‘Moving Newspaper’ and the ‘Moving Magazine’. It makes an innovative program that mixes journalistic and artistic practices with modern, digital technology. Video artworks are presented together with news from sport, economics, culture and entertainment. CMR has been broadcasting in the city for two years, 7 days a week, 18 hours per day, from large-scale screens in public spaces to smaller-scale spin-offs such as narrowcasting (for example in metro stations, libraries and city stores). The projects presented by Oscar are interesting for several reasons. First of all, for the fact that every resident of Rotterdam is called to participate in them, from artists, politicians, sportspeople, entrepreneurs to ‘ordinary citizens’ by sending texts and videos via e-mail, SMS and other applications. Secondly, they are very far reaching projects, as they broadcast different contents depending on the the size and the place where the screens are located, the people who watch them and on the moments of the day. One can also appreciate that CMR guarantees the quality and the independence of the public digital screens from financial and commercial purposes.

Mixing artworks and news is certainly creative and challeging, however I noticed a sort of similarity to the MTV’s style…

Urban Screens have emerged as a key site in contemporary struggles over public culture and public space. They form a strategic junction in debates over the relation between technological innovation, the digital economy, and the formation of new cultural practices in contemporary cities. How should we conceptualize public participation in relation to urban screens? Are ‘the public’ citizens, consumers, producers, or something else? Where is the public located? When a screen is erected in public space, who has access to it and control over it? What are the appropriate forms of urban planning, design and governance? How do urban screens affect cultural experiences?

Scott McQuire, Meredith Martin and Sabine Niederer (eds.), Urban Screens Reader, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2009. ISBN: 978-90-78146-10-0.

contributors: Simone Arcagni, Alice Arnold, Giselle Beiguelman, Liliana Bounegru, Kate Brennan, Andreas Broeckmann, Uta Caspary, Sean Cubitt, Annet Dekker, Jason Eppink, Ava Fatah gen. Schieck, Mike Gibbons, M. Hank Haeusler, Bart Hoeve, Erkki Huhtamo, Karen Lancel, Hermen Maat, Meredith Martin, Scott McQuire, Julia Nevárez, Sabine Niederer, Shirley Niemans, Nikos Papastergiadis, Soh Yeong Roh, Saskia Sassen, Leon van Schaik, Jan Schuijren, Audrey Yue.

Order now!
Order a copy of the Urban Screens Reader by sending an email to: books (at) networkcultures.org, download a pdf here or go to the Urban Screens Reader page for more information.

colophon: Editors: Scott McQuire, Meredith Martin and Sabine Niederer. Editorial Assistance: Geert Lovink and Elena Tiis. Copy Editing: Michael Dieter and Isabelle de Solier. Design: Katja van Stiphout, Printer: Raamwerken Printing & Design, Enkhuizen, Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2009. Supported by: the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science in collaboration with Virtueel Platform, the Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne, the School for Communication and Design at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, MediaLAB Amsterdam and the International Urban Screens Association. The editors would also like to acknowledge the assistance of the Australian Research Council LP0989302 in supporting this research.

The Urban Screens reader was launched at the Urban Screens 09: The City as Interface event on 4 December 2009. Urban Screens 09 was organized in Amsterdam by the Institute of Network Cultures and MediaLAB Amsterdam in collaboration with the International Urban Screens Association, and curated by Sabine Niederer (INC). www.networkcultures.org/urbanscreens/09/

The INC reader series are derived from conference contributions and produced by the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam. For more information about this publication series, please go to www.networkcultures.org/readers.

Reports Session 1: Urban Screens as Architecture
Matthijs ten Berge, Illuminate (NL)
Mettina Veenstra, Novay Research (NL)
Paul Klotz, Led-art (NL)

Reports Session 2: The Mobile Screen

Martijn de Waal, The Mobile City (NL)
Nanna Verhoeff, Utrecht University (NL) 

Annet Dekker, Goldsmiths and Virtueel Platform (NL)

Auke Touwslager (NL) & Ursula Lavrencic (Slovenia), Cell Phone Disco

Reports Session 3: The Mediatized City

Theodore Watson (UK/NL) – Graffiti Research Lab

Juha Van ‘t Zelfde, VURB.eu (NL)

Gijs Gootjes, MediaLAB Amsterdam (NL)
Nanette Hoogslag, Visual Foreign Correspondents (NL)

Report Book launch: Urban Screens Reader

Introduction to the Reader by Sabine Niederer