dietmar offenhuber » projects by year

Two new Journal Papers

admin — Fri, 04 May 2012 18:31:58 +0000

The first paper, “Putting Matter in Place”, written with the senseable city lab, is a reflection on the lessons we have learned from the Trash | Track project for the discipline of for urban planning. In a nutshell, the findings highlight the tradeoffs involved in the collection and transport of household hazardous and electronic wastes – processes that diminish the benefits of recycling for these items.

The paper was published in the Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA)

The second paper, published in the Leonardo Journal from MIT press, is a social network analysis of the Prix Ars Electronica Jury sessions covering all categories through the years 1987 – 2009. The networks reflect two different views of interdisciplinarity – one from the institutional perspective, expressed in the nominations for prix jurors made by the organizers of the competition (as many judges participate in several different juries throughout the years) and the second one expressed in the award choices of these jurors (awarding artists who themselves have worked in multiple areas and disciplines).

The paper was also chosen as the cover motif for the issue.

Offenhuber, D., Lee, D., Wolf, M. I., Phithakkitnukoon, S., Biderman, A., & Ratti, C. (2012). Putting Matter in Place. Journal of the American Planning Association, 78(2), 173–196. doi:10.1080/01944363.2012.677120

Offenhuber, D. (2012). Patterns of Choice: The Prix Ars Electronica Jury Sessions. Leonardo, 45(3), 226–232. doi:10.1162/LEON_a_00364

DUST – Laboratoria Moscow

admin — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:54:00 +0000

Our ongoing interest in exploring dust as an aesthetic and interactive medium aligned perfectly with the new exhibition “DUST” (12.4.12 – 15.7.12) in Laboratoria art & science space in Moscow, curated by Daria Parkhomenko and Simon Mraz. We (Markus Decker, Orkan Telhan and me) contributed the project “dust serenade”, a musical instrument visualizing its sounds through dust particles moved by the sound waves, and based on a 19th century physics experiment by August Kundt. Images from the installation below.

forage tracking

admin — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:24:47 +0000

The Forage Tracking project is mapping the tacit knowledge and spatial organization of informal recyclers in downtown Saõ Paulo.

We used location-detecting hardware and software to investigate how the Catadores, informal recyclers, find and collect material in the city. We are also developing participatory platforms that will help them to organize their activities and connect the cooperative to the citizens.

In our work with the recycling cooperative COOPAMARE, we try to increase visibility and understanding of the service they provide to the city.

Project homepage

Team

Dietmar Offenhuber, Senseable City Laboratory; David Lee, Senseable City Laboratory; Ciro Iorio, Sloan School of Management; Libby McDonald, Community Innovators Laboratory; Profa. Maria Cecília Loschiavo dos Santos, University of São Paulo; Laura Fostinone, MIT Community Innovators Laboratory; Rafael Galvão, University of São Paulo

Collection activity of the Cooperative, orange: collection with handcart, blue: collection with truck

BackTalk

admin — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:17:37 +0000

A new senseable city lab project i worked on is now exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. BackTalk is in many ways a follow up project on Trash | Track, this time focusing on obsolete electronics, disposed as e-waste or shipped as donated as refurbished computers to developing countries. All of these devices still capable of recording their location and surroundings. The initial inspiration was an incident I read about involving a lost camera, scuba diving and a sea turtle. The project focuses on the reasons why obsolete electronics move across the globe and conveys the hybrid strategies how to deal with them.

all images (c) senseable city lab 2011

dust serenade at MIT museum

admin — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 21:22:21 +0000

Our new project in the dust series:

Markus Decker, Dietmar Offenhuber, Orkan Telhan

‘Dust Serenade‘ is a reenactment of an acoustic experiment done by German physicist August Kundt. Inspired by the Chladni’s famous sand figures visualizing sound waves in solid materials, Kundt devised an experiment for visualizing longitudinal sound waves through fine lycopodium dust; a setup that would allow him to measure the speed of sound in different gases.

Kundt was a strong believer in experimental methods over purely theoretical inquiry in a time when the disciplines of theoretical and experimental physics started to diverge.

‘Dust Serenade’ intends to remind us the materiality of sound. Tubes filled with scraps of words and letters–cut-up theory–interact with sound waves and turn into figures of dust. Here, visitors can modulate the frequency of the sound emitted by moving a rod and create different harmonic sound effects. As sound waves figure, refigure, and disfigure the text, we invite visitors to rethink about the tension between their theorical knowlegde and the sensory experience.

Dust Serenade is one of a series of interactive sound projects that enable visitors to experience the physical aspects of sound, presence, and atmosphere. Works in the series have been shown at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Zagreb, Istanbul and São Paulo.

The project was funded by the Council for the Arts at MIT and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture (BMUKK)

FDTD awarded at File Festival Sao Paulo

admin — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 17:35:46 +0000

A short trip to Sao Paulo for a good reason – dust won a honorary mention from the FilePrixLux award, associated with the great File Electronic Language Festival and was exhibited in the Sao Paulo exhibition.

our project page and a related post on WMMNA

Secession Opening Tonight

admin — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:26:16 +0000

Norbert Pfaffenbichler and Lotte Schreiber invited me to show “paths of G” in the CINEPLEX exhibition in Secession Vienna. Unfortunately without myself, being in Boston at the time. Connected to the exhibition is also the premiere of our new stadtmusik film boston buzz in the Austrian Filmmuseum on 14.9.2009.

Photo: Pez Hejduk

update: an article in derStandard

LBI Visualization Showcase

admin — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:39:30 +0000

For Ars Electronica 09, we created a website showcasing our visualization projects of my departement in the unfortunately closing Boltzmann institute. The webconcept was created by Evelyn Münster, design by Mahir Yavuz, and contains visualization contributions from Gerhard Dirmoser, Moritz Stefaner, Jaume Nualart, Evelyn Münster and myself.

Prix Ars Electronica: Mapping the Archive

admin — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:34:16 +0000

Evelyn Münster, Jaume Nualart, Dietmar Offenhuber, Moritz Stefaner, Gerhard Dirmoser

This project presents the results of an interdisciplinary investigation of the Prix Ars Electronica archive in the form of interactive and static visualizations of information. The archive is examined on three levels: total submissions since 1987 as a quantitative analysis, the jury process as a social network analysis, and the winning projects and their context in accordance with art scholarship.

The project is a collaboration between the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research. and Ars Electronica. More on our visualization showcase website.

News: The project was featured on infosthetics.com, thanks Mahir!

A Timeline of Audiovisual Culture

admin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:25:16 +0000

Related to the See this Sound exhibition, The Ludwig Boltzmann Institute created on an encyclopedia of audiovisual culture during the last three years. As a installation in the exhibition, Stefan Schilcher and I created an interactive visualization showing the structural properties of the different texts, chapters in this encyclopedia.
Credits:
Visual Concept: Dietmar Offenhuber und Stefan Schilcher
Programming: Stefan Schilcher
Content: Sandra Naumann und Mario Röhrle