Sentient Rotterdam Workshop (Mobile City) by Mark Shepard
The Mobile City is a Dutch organisation that creates a interdisciplinary network of professionals around the themes of locative and mobile media, urban culture and identity. One of the important driving forces behind the organisation is Martijn De Waal, researcher, writer and blogger on media, culture, cities and society. More specifically, the Mobile City explores the fascinating meeting points between physical and digital spaces in urban culture. Their workshop “Sentient Rotterdam” on the 6th of November adresses exactly these issues, this in collaboration with Mark Shepard. It is part of the Connectivity Program of the International Architectural Biennale at the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Shepard creates different critical artefacts that adress urban issues, like this umbrella that frustrates surveillance systems.
The workshop description:
Computing has left the desktop and spills out onto the sidewalks, streets and public spaces of the city. Information processing is increasingly embedded in the material fabric of everyday urban space. We approach an age of urban information systems capable of sensing and responding to events and activities transpiring around them. This is the ‘Sentient City‘. What does this emerging Sentient City mean for urban culture? Few people will quibble about ’smart’ traffic light control systems that more efficiently manage mobility. Some may be irritated when discount coupons for their favorite espresso drink are beamed to their mobile phone as they pass by Starbucks. Many are likely to protest when they are denied passage through a subway turnstile because the system ’senses’ that their purchasing habits, mobility patterns and current galvanic skin response (GSR) reading happens to match the profile of a terrorist.
The workshop aims to envision new technologies and the ways they relate to our spatial experiences and activities. The participants in the workshop will work on scenarios for “situated approaches toward urban computing and locative media applications, systems and infrastructures for near-future urban life in Rotterdam”. These scenarios have to visualise a product, an intervention or a process related to sentient technology. The starting point is the urban community of Rotterdam and their spatial and social needs, dreams and questions. The results will be publicly displayed at the ‘Open Podium’ of the Architecture Biennale.
Very interesting is that the workshop has a specific methodological approach. It aims to work with the method of ‘critical design’. This means it wants to develop approaches that critically question specific spatial issues in Rotterdam in relation to its communities. Mark Shepard’s Sentient City Survival Kit (exhibited at the NAi) is an example of such a critical design approach.
Practical
If you are interested in participating, please fill out the workshop-registration with your name, background and briefly describe your interest in this workshop before Monday October 27th. If you want to bring in a Rotterdam based case study to debate in the workshop, please mention this. In case the interest in the workshop exceeds the number of available places, we make a selection of participants based on their motivation and the overall disciplinary mix of participants.
November 5th 20:00 Keynote with Mark Shepard, NAi Auditorium Rotterdam
November 6th
12:00-17:00 Workshop introduction and sessions
17:00-19:00 Public presentation + opening exhibit Sentient City Survival Kit.
registration deadline: Monday October 27th 0:00 hours GMT
Registration form can be found here
