:: Workshop 7: Screening Interaction in Public Space

Designing the Urban User Experience Screens have become a ubiquitous feature of urban public and semi-public spaces. We find them in various types and sizes in places like train stations, public squares, pubs, cinemas, university campuses, to name but a few. This ubiquitous presence of screens has led to a phenomenon that was described as ‘display blindness’. The increasing amount of digital content available around us if often considered as information pollution. Yet, urban screens offer an opportunity to increase the experience of public and semi-public places. Key aspects towards designing more engaging and relevant screens are a careful consideration of context and content, but also the ability to allow individuals to interact with such screens. This workshop is a forum for discussion of aspects around the design of urban screens and user interactions in urban spaces that involve screens. Topics addressed in this workshop include, but are not limited to: - Seducing the crowd with media content - Techniques for interacting with media facades - Crowd-based sensing and interaction in public environments - Cross-screen interaction - Interaction design and urban spaces - Designing for engaging user interaction Host: Martin Tomitsch – Design Lab, Faculty of Architecture, Design & Planning, University of Sydney

Speakers:

Speakers – Abstract and Biography


::: Martin Tomitsch – Biography Martin Tomitsch is a lecturer at the Design Lab, an interdisciplinary research group within the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney. He is founding member of the Media Architecture Institute and one of the curators of the Media Architecture Biennale. He has a background in informatics with a focus on interaction design. His research involves the design of interactive experiences and the exploration of new forms of interaction to elicit user engagement and social interaction in everyday environments.
Louis M. Brill – Media Facades as Social Enablers
::: ChristopheDomino_1 ChristopheDomino_2 ChristopheDomino_3 ChristopheDomino_4
Christophe Domino – Grande Image/Big image: an art school experience of creating and programming large-scale images A favorable context for an art-school (Ecole supérieure des Beaux-arts, Le Mans) made possible to develop a program for more than four years of large-scale projections with art students. The City of Le Mans has various programs for tourists during summer: out of these periods, the art school has a fair access to the material and facilities. The partnership with the Paris-based company ETC audiovisuel (www.etclondonparis.com) helped to make the researches and experiences not only a theoretical and critical course on images, monument, public space and history of artists’ projections projects, but too a intense production workshop with regular programming in the city (Projet/Projections 1 to 9, http://www.esba-lemans.fr/content/projetprojection) and then in various sites and towns. Today, more than 250 specific projects by invited artists and students have been developed and diffused, and number of sessions is in preparation, and invitations (Charles Sandison in next November). The works produced in this program consist in large-scale video projections, supported by Onlyview, a real-time control system for multimedia programming and multi-screen projection. From that, with no discrimination of language (video, photo, animation, 3D, painting, drawing, etching…), we enlarge the workshop stake, mixing theoretical and technical formation, in a real situation practicing and experiencing. Furthermore, we got a state grant for a research unit, supporting artists and speakers (philosophy, sociology, art history, critics) in a seminar focused on “Grande Image”. As a Humanities and criticism professor, but also as curator, and with a group colleagues, video artists, photographers and other, I had to propose methodological frame for a reflexive approach in developing projects in this context. The directions of this specific agenda include technical and esthetical questions in producing image for public pace, sociological and political issues. The conditions of reception are one of the key points (frontality, immersion, monumentality, authority, responsibility, projection as real and symbolic space) but too the formal aspects (image consistency, redefined relation image/screen, new narrativities). Those points will be developed, through notions and references, as well from precise examples and images. Christophe Domino – Biography Christophe Domino (b. 1958) is a Paris-based free-lance art critic, curator, lecturer and professor. He contributes today to Le Journal des Arts (Paris). He run a radio program (1999- 2004, France Culture) and published essays for numerous catalogues and a dozen of books (monographies, including À ciel ouvert-l’art à l’échelle du paysage (art on landscape scale, from Land Art to urban interventions, 1999, Scala, Paris, new edition 2011). He curated exhibitions (from Geographiques, FRAC Corse, 1997 to Iain Baxter&, now at the Canadian cultural center, Paris. He is in charge of Projectile (artists projects support) and a member of FRAC Bretagne purchase committee. He teaches at the Ecole des beaux Arts, Le Mans (Humanities and theory) and leads there the research group “Grande image”.
::: BenKreukniet_1 BenKreukniet_2 BenKreukniet_3 BenKreukniet_4 Ben Kreukniet & Ale Tsolakis – CANOPY Inspired by the experience of walking through the dappled light of a forest, Canopy employs mass production and precise fabrication to evoke and reflect nature. Thousands of identical modules, their form abstracted from the geometry of leaves, are distributed in a non-repeating growth pattern. During the day, apertures in the modules filter natural light to the street below. After dusk, particles of artificial light are born, navigate through the grid and die, their survival determined by regions of energy sweeping across the structure. The result simultaneously recalls the activity of cells within a leaf, leaves in a forest canopy, or a city seen from the air. Concept: United Visual Artists (UVA) was commissioned by Public Art Management to create a permanent installation for Maple Leaf Square in Toronto, Canada. Given a pedestrian sidewalk as the site for the work, we wanted to create a work that people could connect to, immerse themselves within, and almost escape momentarily from the hard environment of the city.We set out to create a sculpture that simultaneously evoked man made rationality, natural irregularity, and blurred the distinction between the two. The result was Canopy, a work consisting of over 8000 identical polygonal modules which together form a 90 meter long organic mesh suspended above the sidewalk. Canopy is a regimented grid whose modules recall crystalline materials, the cells of leaves, and the shape of the maple leaf itself. The modules grow outwards from seed locations to colonise the grid, subsequently not every cell is occupied by a moduleDuring the day, natural light reflects and refracts through apertures in the modules to the pavement below; at night, the canopy comes to life. Particles of light are born, move around their environment, and then die. The particles thrive or perish according to the whims of larger, cloud-like regions of energy that sweep across the canopy. Although the piece is hard, angular and mechanical, the overall impact is softer and more organic – reminiscent of a forest canopy, with dappled light modulated by passing weather systems. The location of the artwork in downtown Toronto encourages a different interpretation. Canopy can be read as a city seen from the air – the particles of light become people navigating the sidewalks, vehicles moving through traffic, or the continuously changing lights in the windows of the condominiums that surround the site. Canopy is a meditation on the essential commonality between what we think of as ‘artificial’ and ‘natural’ processes – in both cases, the action of multitudes of short-lived entities creates a large, long-lived complex system – the “city” and the “forest”. MaterialsFrame: powder coated steel Module walls: anodised aluminium Module lenses: injection moulded polycarbonate LED Software control and code: d3 Dimensions90 metres x 5 metres United Visual Artists – Biography Established in 2003, United Visual Artists are an art and design practice based in London. UVA produce immersive and responsive work at the intersection of sculpture, architecture, live performance, moving image and digital installation. Reflecting their roots in live show creation, UVA’s work aims to create a social and emotional experience, inviting the ‘audience’ to cross the line and become a part of the work.UVA’s team members come from many disciplines including fine art, architecture, communication design, moving image, computer science and engineering. The cross-pollination of diverse skills inspires new fields of exploration and is core to their ethos. UVA’s work has been exhibited at institutions including the The V&A, the Royal Academy of Art, the South Bank Centre, the Natural History Museum, the Wellcome Collection, Opera North Leeds, Durham Cathedral and The British Library. Their artworks have also toured internationally to cities including Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Yamaguchi, Taipei, Hong Kong, Melbourne and Barcelona. UVA also have large scale permanent art works in Toronto and Istanbul.In 2007, UVA’s responsive light and sound sculpture Volume won a yellow pencil at the D&AD awards, and featured in the London Design Museum’s ‘Design of the Year’ show in April 2008. In 2010 UVA were awarded a distinction for their kinetic installation Chorus at this year’s Prix Ars Electronica. www.uva.co.uk


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