forage tracking – mapping informal recycling

forage tracking – mapping informal recycling

by | Jan 22, 2012

forage tracking – mapping informal recycling

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

Active Listening Sites

Active Listening Sites

by | Sep 8, 2011

Active Listening Sites

A new stadtmusik work, tying together a lot of what we were working on in the past couple of years.

The physical configuration of the built environment generates a wide spectrum of acoustic effects. Even while they usually remain unnoticed, these acoustic phenomena actively support our orientation in the city and provide a sense of place.
For the exhibition, we have assembled an inventory of urban auditory situations illustrating some of these effects in the vicinity of the architecture forum. We provide a visitor of these places with instructions that facilitate awareness of these effects and decode the underlying interaction between the physical environment and the soundscape. By contrasting these situations with videos of similar situations in other cities around the world, we show shared principles and seek answers to questions such as: why do some urban spaces seem to attract or repel us? What information is being offered to our senses, what information gets lost?
We want to initiate a conversation about the soundscape as a shared, collectively owned resource, its synesthetic interactions and atmospheric elements. Stadtmusik scrutinizes the role of public space as a space of performance that provides a frame through its structures and inter-dependencies.

sensing place / placing sense

sensing place / placing sense

by | Sep 7, 2011

sensing place / placing sense

The mental image of the city has become more complex. Since mobile phones have become geo-social devices, location-based data is increasingly shaping the way we navigate, experience and define the urban environment.
The Symposium and the exhibition will investigate the potential of experimental and artistic forms of inquiry for helping us making sense of the city, and discuss practices that create new public infrastructures and define new places. The panels explore the sensory, structural and cultural aspects of new urban systems literacy – a re-examination of what constitutes public space in the real-time city.

Curated by Dietmar Offenhuber and Katja Schechtner
A Cooperation between afo architekturforum oberösterreich, AIT Austrian Institute of Technology and Ars Electronica.

 

Programm

Sunday, 4. 09. 2011, 10 am–7:30 pm

10:00–12:30 am
Panel 1: Senses – the perception of urban media
Sam Auinger (A/D) + Bruce Odland (US): The Sonic Commons
Malcom McCullough (US): Attention and Ambient Information
Chris Nold (UK): Designing for Responsive Communities
Chair: Dietmar Offenhuber

2:00 pm–4:30 pm
Panel 2: Systems – new infrastructures for public space
Usman Haque (UK): Notes on the Design of Participatory Systems – for the City or for the Planet
Joi Ito (J/USA): Safecast.org
Natalie Jeremijenko (US): What is smarter than a smart city, googlier than a google power meter, whatsier than a Whatzon, greener than a green building, wiser than nuclear monitoring committee and faster than a speeding bullet?
Jose Luis Vicente (ES): Reverse-engineering the #Spanishrevolution: on the Hybrid Infrastructures of 15M
Chair: Katja Schechtner

5:00 pm–7:30 pm
Panel 3: Places – the aesthetics of hyperlocality
Stefan Mittlböck-Jungwirth-Fohringer (A): „Zeitraum“ – a media art project based on the imaginary space bounded by all the world’s airports
Susanne Seitinger (A/USA): Surfacing Opportunities for Engagement through Responsive Lighting Infrastructures
Sandrine von Klot (A): The Significance of Becoming Actors
Juha van ‘t Zelfde (NL): The Medium is the Metropolis
Chair: Oliver Schürer

the symposium program

the exhibition

exhibition photoset

BackTalk (MoMa)

BackTalk (MoMa)

by | Jul 20, 2011

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