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Course schedule:

week1, Sept 22 – Introduction (Michiel de Lange)

week2, Sept 29 – ‘Hybrid space’: the relation between digital and physical space (Eric Kluitenberg)

week3, Oct 6 – New media and urban publicness (Martijn de Waal)

week4, Oct 13 – Privacy & surveillance in the media city (Sander Flight)

week5, Oct 20 – Media art and the urban experience (Annet Dekker)

week6, Oct 27 – Urban play & gamification (Kars Alfrink)

week7, Nov 3 – eParticipation and co-design: designing cities with new media (Carl Lens)

Course literature:

week1 – Introductie De Mediastad

- Booth, W. C., Colomb, G. G., & Williams, J. M. (2003). “Making good arguments”. Chapter 7 in: The craft of research(2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago press. (pp. 114-123) http://boelter.krischeonline.com/lispdf/pdf/BoothW et al 2003 ch 07.pdf

Waarom lezen? Algemene voorbereiding op hoe je een sterk academisch argument neerzet in een debat. Booth et al. beschrijven op toegankelijke wijze vijf regels waaraan een goed argument voldoet. Vooral bedoeld voor geschreven argumentatie maar ook goed bruikbaar voor verbale discussies. [Deze tekst hoef je niet te bespreken voor de weekopdracht].

- Hill, D. (2008). The street as platform. City of Sound weblog, http://www.cityofsound.com/blog/2008/02/the-street-as-p.html

Waarom lezen? Deze tekst biedt een zeer toegankelijke blik op wat er gebeurt nu de stad in toenemende mate doorsneden raakt met allerlei digitale mediatechnologieën. De tekst schetst twee scenario’s en roept een aantal vragen op waarover gedebatteerd kan worden.

- Wirth, L. (1938). Urbanism as a Way of Life. The American Journal of Sociology, 44(1), 1-24. http://www.jstor.org/pss/2768119.

Waarom lezen? Deze klassieke tekst gaat over de vraag: wat is een stad? De gegeven definitie fungeert als achtergrond waartegen veel andere teksten gelezen kunnen worden.

- Graham, S. (2004). The Cybercities Reader. London; New York: Routledge. Introduction: “From dreams of transcendence to the remediation of urban life” (pp. 3-23). Download van: http://boelter.krischeonline.com/lispdf/pdf/Graham%20S%202004%20in%20Graham%20S%20ed%202004.pdf.

Waarom lezen? Deze introductie biedt een overzicht van verschuivingen in hoe de relatie tussen stad en digitale media geconceptualiseerd is.

Optioneel:

- Townsend, A. (2000). Life in the Real-Time City: Mobile Telephones and Urban Metabolism. Journal of Urban Technology, 7(2), 85-104. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/713684114

Waarom lezen? Een invloedrijk vroeg artikel over de invloed van mobiele technologieën op stedelijkheid.

week2 – ‘Hybrid space’: de relatie tussen digitaal en fysiek

- De Souza e Silva, A. (2006). From Cyber to Hybrid: Mobile Technologies as Interfaces of Hybrid Spaces. Space and culture, 9(3), 261-278. http://sac.sagepub.com/content/9/3/261.full.pdf+html (alternatieve link: http://tvdigital.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/mobile-2006-adriana-silva.pdf).

Waarom lezen? In dit artikel behandelt De Souza het begrip ‘hybrid space’ als de versmelting van fysieke en digitale ruimte. Ze stelt in reactie op Manovich dat ‘hybrid space’ niet begrepen moet worden als extra laag bovenop de fysieke ruimte maar als wederzijds constituerend.

- Kluitenberg, E. (2006). The network of waves: living and acting in a hybrid space. Open, 11, (pp. 6-16). http://www.skor.nl/download.php?id=3231

Waarom lezen? Kluitenberg gaat met name in op veranderingen in sociaal gedrag die mogelijk gemaakt worden door de hybridisering van stedelijke ruimte en digitale mediatechnologieën. Ook gaat Kluitenberg in op strategische vormen van agency in hybrid space.

- Ito, M., Okabe, D., & Anderson, K. (2009). Portable Objects in Three Global Cities: The Personalization of Urban Places. In R. S. Ling & S. W. Campbell (Eds.), The reconstruction of space and time: mobile communication practices(pp. 67-87). New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers. Te downloaden van: http://www.itofisher.com/mito/portableobjects.pdf.

Waarom lezen? Ito et al. presenteren een op veldwerk gebaseerde typologie van drie concrete manieren waarop stedelingen met draagbare technologieën ‘interfacen’ met de stad.

Optioneel (sterk aanbevolen!):

- Simmel, Georg (1903) The Metropolis and Mental Life. In: Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson, eds. The Blackwell City Reader. Oxford and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002, (pp. 11-19). http://www.esperdy.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Simmel_21.pdf.

Waarom lezen? Dit een andere must-read actuele klassieker over stedelijkheid. De tekst vertoont sterke gelijkenissen met de tekst van Louis Wirth, maar zoomt verder in op stedelijkheid als socio/psychologisch fenomeen. Simmel wijst erop dat de moderne stedelijke ervaring gemediëerd is (middels geld en kloktijd) en in die zin al veel langer ‘hybride’ is.

week3 – Nieuwe media en stedelijke openbaarheid

- Holmes, D. (2005). Communication theory: media, technology and society. London ; Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE. (pp. 67-82)

Waarom lezen? Holmes geeft een overzicht van de discussies rond computer mediated communication (CMC) en publicness, deels in relatie tot de stad. Holmes beperkt zich tot discussies over ‘cyberspace’ en besteedt geen aandacht aan mobiele media.

- Frei, H., & Böhlen, M. (2010). Micropublicplaces. In O. Khan, T. Scholz & M. Shepard (Eds.), Situated Technologies Pamphlet series. http://www.situatedtechnologies.net/files/ST6-MicroPublicPlaces.pdf. (eerste gedeelte, pp. 12-28).

Waarom lezen? De auteurs bespreken twee belangrijke denkers over (stedelijke) openbaarheid – Arendt en Latour – en verbinden dit thema met actuele discussies over de mediastad.

- De Waal, M. (2011). The Urban Culture of Sentient Cities: From an Internet of Things to a Public Sphere of Things. In M. Shepard (Ed.), Sentient city: ubiquitous computing, architecture, and the future of urban space. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. http://www.martijndewaal.nl/?p=236.

Waarom lezen? De Waal bespreekt kort enkele klassieke denkers over openbaarheid en voegt een actuele visie toe vanuit de discussie over ubiquitous computing.

Optioneel:

- Graham, S., & Aurigi, A. (1997). Virtual cities, social polarization, and the crisis in urban public space. Journal of Urban Technology, 4(1), 19-52. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10630739708724546.

Waarom lezen? In dit wat oudere artikel bespreken de auteurs een actuele discussie uit die tijd, namelijk de mogelijkheid van een online publieke sfeer geënt op stedelijke principes. Interessant voor een historische achtergrond van de discussie.

- De Waal, M. (2008) “Locative media and the city – from BLVD-urbanism towards MySpace urbanism” In: Vodafone Receiver Magazine. http://www.receiver.vodafone.com/locative-media-and-the-city.

Waarom lezen? De Waal benoemt een aantal nieuwe kwesties die gepaard gaan met de opkomst van technologieën in het stedelijk landschap.

week4 – Privacy & surveillance in de mediastad

- Crang, M., & Graham, S. (2007). Sentient Cities: Ambient intelligence and the politics of urban space. Information, Communication & Society, 10(6), 789-817. http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/13691180701750991

Waarom lezen? In dit artikel zetten de auteurs uiteen hoe nieuwe technologieën verbonden zijn met pogingen om steden te controleren en tot ‘frictie-vrije’ consumptie-zones om te toveren. Ook besteden ze aandacht aan pogingen van media-activisten om hier tegenin te gaan.

- Jacobs, J. (1992). The death and life of great American cities(Vintage Books ed.). New York: Vintage Books (originally published in 1961). Hoofdstuk 2: “The uses of sidewalks: safety” (pp. 29-54) http://www.gwu.edu/~art/Temporary_SL/177/pdfs/Jacobs Part 1.pdf.

Waarom lezen? In deze klassieker laat Jane Jacobs zien dat surveillance een intrinsiek onderdeel is van stedelijke interacties, een manier om met vreemden te kunnen samenleven. Dit nuanceert de instinctieve reflex dat surveillance iets inherent ‘slechts’ zou zijn.

- Mann, S., Nolan, J., & Wellman, B. (2003). Sousveillance: Inventing and Using Wearable Computing Devices for Data Collection in Surveillance Environments. Surveillance & Society, 1(3), 331-355. http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/articles1(3)/sousveillance.pdf.

Waarom lezen? Het concept sousveillance is bedacht om aan te geven dat hedendaagse vormen van surveillance niet langer institutioneel zijn maar veeleer gedistribueerd en peer-to-peer. Dit artikel ziet sousveillance als mogelijkheid tot ‘empowerment’ van onderaf.

Optioneel (aanbevolen i.v.m. tussentijdse opdracht 2):

- Deleuze, G. (1990). Postscript on the Societies of Control. L’autre journal. Retrieved from http://www.nadir.org/nadir/archiv/netzkritik/societyofcontrol.html.

Waarom lezen? In dit korte artikel signaleert Deleuze de opkomst van een nieuw type controle. Dit is de opvolger van Foucault’s institutionele surveillance in ‘disciplinary societies’.

- Solove, Daniel (2005) “Of Privacy and Poop: Norm Enforcement Via the Blogosphere”. (June 30, 2005). http://balkin.blogspot.com/2005/06/of-privacy-and-poop-norm-enforcement.html.

- Krim, Jonathan (2005) “Subway Fracas Escalates Into Test Of the Internet’s Power to Shame”. In: The Washington Post (July 7, 2005). http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/06/AR2005070601953.html.

Waarom lezen? Deze korte online artikeltjes over sousveillance als nieuwe schandpaal biedt een mooi contrast met de empowerment-stelling van Mann et al.

week5 – Mediakunst en stedelijke ervaring

- Tuters, M., & Varnelis, K. (2006). Beyond Locative Media. http://networkedpublics.org/locative_media/beyond_locative_media.

Waarom lezen? In dit artikel wordt een aantal ‘locative media’ projecten besproken, kunst die gebruik maakt van GPS locatie-bepaling om ruimtelijke ervaringen te ‘mappen’.

- Benjamin, W. (2008). The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility (second version). In M. W. Jennings, B. Doherty, T. Y. Levin & E. F. N. Jephcott (Eds.), The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility, and other writings on media(pp. 19-55). Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. http://www.arts.rpi.edu/century/nmt11/Benjamin%20Art%20in%20Age%20of%20Its%20Reproducability.pdf.

Waarom lezen? Dit is een klassieke tekst over de opkomst van het elektronische kunstwerk en de verschuiving in stedelijke ervaring.

- Paul, C. (2008). Digital art (2nd ed.). London ; New York: Thames & Hudson. (pp. 216-237) “Technologies of the future: Mobile and locative media”.

Waarom lezen? Dit hoofdstuk biedt een overzicht en bespreking van een aantal locatieve media kunstprojecten.

Video’s (te vertonen tijdens werkcollege):

- Mark Shepard – Sentient City Survival Kit (5 min.) http://survival.sentientcity.net.

Waarom zien? Middels hypothetische ontwerpinterventies poogt Shepard de discussie rondom stedelijke technologieën aan te zwengelen en publiek te maken. Dit is tevens een goede voorbereiding voor de eindopdracht.

[afhankelijk van de tijd]

- Dunne & Raby over ‘critical design’ (7 min.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bns4qcRRYY.

- RedSheep – Critique on Critical Design (5 min.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FTTamBXo_w

week6 – Urban play & gamification

- Licoppe, C., & Inada, Y. (2010). Locative media and cultures of mediated proximity: the case of the Mogi game location-aware community. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 28(4), 691-709. http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=d13307.

Waarom lezen? In dit artikel bespreken de auteurs hoe de Japanse locatieve game Mogi de ervaring van sociale nabijheid bemiddeld via de connectie met fysieke plaats.

- McGonigal, J. (2010). Gaming can make a better world. TED Talk. http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html. (20 min.).

Waarom zien? McGonigal is een van de voorvechters van het toepassen van game-principes op problemen uit het ‘echte leven’.

- Juul, Jesper (2011) “Gamification Backlash Roundup”. Blogpost op: http://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/gamification-backlash-roundup (+ blog comments!)

Waarom lezen? Game-onderzoeker Jesper Juul geeft hier een overzicht van recent werk over ‘gamification’. De comments op zijn blog zijn een waardevolle aanvulling en een voorbeeld hoe een online discussie van behoorlijk academisch niveau zich ontwikkelt.

Optioneel:

-Debord, Guy-Ernest (1956, 1958), “A User’s Guide to Détournement” + “Theory of the Dérive”. Te vinden op http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/index.htm.

Waarom lezen? De Situationisten zijn invloedrijk gebleken voor latere mediakunst en speltheorie. Voor hen was spel een subversieve tactiek. De teksten bieden een interessant tegenwicht aan ‘gamification’, waarbij spel voor heel andere doeleinden het alledaagse leven ingetrokken wordt.

- Bogost, Ian (2011) “Gamification is bullshit”. Blogpost op: http://www.bogost.com/blog/gamification_is_bullshit.shtml (+ blog comments!)

Waarom lezen? Game-onderzoeker Ian Bogost neemt provocatief stelling (maar slaat hij niet door?)…

- Chaplin, Heather (2011) “I Don’t Want To Be a Superhero: Ditching reality for a game isn’t as fun as it sounds”. Blogpost op: http://www.slate.com/id/2289302/pagenum/all.

Waarom lezen? Prima omschrijving van ‘gamification’, plus enkele discussiepunten:

“The basic idea arises from how engaged people are when they play games, even if they’re doing mundane things …. If we make the world more like a game, the thinking goes, we can harness all that energy to solve real-world problems.”

week7 – e-Participatie en co-design: stedelijk ontwerp met nieuwe media

- Vajjhala, S. (2005). Integrating GIS and participatory mapping in community development planning. Presented at 25th Annual ESRI User Conference, San Diego, CA, July 25–29. http://proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/proc05/papers/pap1622.pdf.

Waarom lezen? Vajjhala onderzoekt hoe ‘participatory mapping’ bewoners een stem geeft in het plannen van hun leefomgeving. Hierbij richt ze zich vooral op hoe mensen leven i.p.v. uitsluitend waar ze leven.

- Gordon, E., Schirra, S., & Hollander, J. (2011). Immersive planning: a conceptual model for designing public participation with new technologies. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 38(3), 505-519. http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=b37013.

Waarom lezen? De auteurs beschrijven hoe digitale media – met name social media, mapping en videogames – een rol kunnen spelen in het plannen van steden met een participerende rol voor burgers.

- Shepard, M. (Ed.). (2011). Sentient city: ubiquitous computing, architecture, and the future of urban space. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Waarom lezen? Shepard is opgeleid als architect en stelt de vraag hoe deze professie de invloed van nieuwe media in het stedelijk domein kan incorporeren.

Optioneel:

- Blogpost “Beyond the ‘smart city’” : http://urbanscale.org/2011/02/17/beyond-the-smart-city/

Waarom lezen? Dit is een kritiek op het ‘smart city’ paradigma dat sterk in opkomst is. Steden en technologiebedrijven (o.a. IBM, Cisco, HP, Philips en Fraunhofer) gaan samenwerkingen aan om stedelijke processen efficiënter te organiseren. Sensor- en netwerktechnologieën helpen om energie- en watervoorziening, transport en logistiek, en lucht- en milieukwaliteit te meten en optimaliseren. De hoop is dat hiermee de kwaliteit van leven vooruit gaat.

Download the presentation >> (PDF 1.4 MB)

Chris McDowall on the “Seeing Data” section of SciBlogs reports: Mapping a Day in the Life of Twitter. He notes that Jakarta glows brightly 24 hours, day and night…

(see full animation at SciBlogs)

Mark Graham on Floating Sheep notes:

As Chris points out, we can see Indonesia (particularly Java) producing an unexpected amount of content. Well, at least unexpected until we realise that Twitter is enormously popular in Indonesia. The country apparently has world’s highest proportion of internet-users on Twitter.

From the CNN article linked to:

Indonesia is the world’s fourth largest user of Facebook and has been dubbed the most Twitter-addicted nation on the planet by online research firm comScore. The country beat every other nation in the percentage of online Twitter users. […] Most people use their mobile phones to access the web.

(via Floating Sheep)

At last and alas, the end is getting in sight. I have become progressively more silent on this blog, as I was busy finishing my PhD dissertation, and doing other things, like writing/curating/organizing for The Mobile City. I am just back from Shanghai, China, where Martijn and I have been organizing an event about urban design and the hybrid city (in cooperation with Virtueel Platform). More about this soon on The Mobile City’s weblog.

The table of contents of the dissertation is as follows:

Table of Contents

List of figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction. Identity, mobile media, and play
i. Identity and the mobile phone: in search of another mediation
ii. Research question, arguments, and aims
iii. Approach and outline

1. Setting the stage: mobile media, narrative identity, and play
1.1 Understanding mobile media technologies

1.1.1 Four dimensions of mobile media

1.1.2 Approaches to the relation between technology and identity

1.1.3 What is ‘mobile’ about mobile media?

1.2 The storytelling self: narrative identity

1.2.1 Idem and ipse identity

1.2.2 Threefold mimesis

1.2.3 Narrative identity: character and promise

1.3 In search of play

1.3.1 Play and games: the classics

1.3.2 Game, play, playability and playfulness

1.3.3 Communicative play

1.3.4 Play as mediating metaphors: life as play

1.4 Connecting media and play

1.4.1 Media ambiguities

1.4.2 Pleasure, humor, and joking

1.4.3 Media as playful learning spaces

1.5 Conclusion: outline of the play framework

2. Entering the stage: mobile media and modernity in Jakarta

2.1 Handphone mania in Indonesia

2.2 The shaping of modernity in urban Jakarta

2.2.1 Jakarta’s metropolitan setting

2.2.2 Jakarta as the center of the modern nation

2.2.3 Unity in diversity?

2.3 From old media to new media: a short media history of Indonesia

2.3.1 From old media…

2.3.2 …To new media

2.3.3 Physical nodes of new media

2.3.4 New media’s new modernity

2.4 The ‘production’ of the handphone

2.4.1 Market and numbers

2.4.2 Wartel as precursors to mobile telephony

2.4.3 CDMA technology: bridging high-tech and low-tech

2.4.4 The ‘design’ of the mobile phone

2.5 Conclusion: four play levels

3. Playing the stage: mobile media, mobility and identity in Jakarta

3.1 From gengsi to gaul: how to become a proper handphone user

3.1.1 Handphone gengsi

3.1.2 Handphone gaul

3.2 Three handphone mobilities

3.2.1 Corporeal mobility

3.2.2 Socio-economic mobility

3.2.3 Imaginative mobility

3.3 Moving forward: contesting modernities

3.3.1 Conceptualizing place: locality and the global

3.3.2 Spatializing identities

3.3.3 Contesting mobile media modernity

3.3.4 Reconciling differences

3.4 Conclusion: four play types

4. Locating the media: mobile media and urban plays

4.1 In search of locative media

4.1.1 Location-based technologies

4.1.2 Locative media practices

4.1.3 Locative media classification

4.2 The city and the media

4.2.1 What is a city? Three approaches

4.2.2 The media city, or the death of the city?

4.2.3 Mobile media as interfaces to hybrid space

4.2.4 Why the city?

4.3 Bliin: A locative playground in hybrid space

4.3.1 A playground for boundary play

4.3.2 Playing with spatiotemporal boundaries

4.3.3 Playing with social boundaries

4.3.4 Playing with boundaries of the self

4.3.5 One more thing: the end of serendipity?

4.4 Conclusion: playing the boundaries

5. Playing the media: the playful qualities of mobile media

5.1 Play on the mobile

5.1.1 Casual games

5.1.2 Pervasive games

5.1.3 Mobile play interfaces

5.2 Play with the mobile

5.2.1 Toys

5.2.2 Mobile agôn: mastery, competition and pleasure

5.2.3 Mobile alea: fate, chance, and surprise

5.2.4 Mobile mimicry: creativity, pretense, fun; and the conditional order

5.2.5 Mobile ilinx: disorientation, thrill-seeking, and escape

5.3 Play through the mobile

5.3.1 From Kula to mobile gifting

5.3.2 Types of mobile gifts

5.3.3 Differences between old and new gifting

5.4 Play by the mobile

5.4.1 Tyrannies of choice and speed; colonization of private and public life

5.4.2 New power mechanisms: from surveillance to sousveillance, identity profiling

5.4.3 Ontological doubt and ludification: between cynicism and engagement

5.5 Conclusion: conditional play

6. Conclusion. Playing the self: narrative and playful identities

6.1 What narrative does not tell: play critique of narrative identity theory

6.1.1 Narrative’s closed circularity and sedentary ethics

6.1.2 Narrative’s simplified view of culture

6.1.3 Narrative’s neglect of spatiality and becoming

6.1.4 From narrative reference and representation to playful conditional performances

6.2 The story, the mobile, and the play: linking narrative and playful identities

6.2.1 Play1: prefiguring life as play and game

6.2.2 Play2: configuring life as play and game

6.2.3 Play3: reconfiguring life as play and game

Literature

Replay (Nederlandstalige samenvatting)

Curriculum vitae

Saturday 20th March 2010 from 16:00 − 18:00 I will moderate the session “Food and Global Mobility” at the ElectroSmog Festival for sustainable immobility. The venue is De Balie, Amsterdam (Google Maps). Entry is free.

This is the program:

What does food mean for us today? There is a growing understanding that food is not only a fuel to keep our bodies working, a source of pleasure, and for some also a source of income. It is also an important link between us and our environments, natural and social, local and global. More and more people are trying to rethink our relationships with the world through food and different forms of engagement with it. The issue of sustainability in the age of hyper-mobility is one of the most urgent ones. Questions on the table can be different as well as answers to them. Should we reduce global food mobility and start buying more local products? But what then about farmers and communities in the developing countries for whom supplying us with fruits and vegetables is of great economic significance? What exactly would we like to know about the pre-shelf life of our food in order to make an informed responsible choice? How can we access this information? What alternative ideas for sustainable food strategies are out there? Is urban farming a promising way to reconnect to your food? And what does it actually mean – “sustainable food strategies”?

This panel will bring together people involved in practical and theoretical research related to sustainable food strategies. The idea is to present and discuss highly diverse perspectives on the issue where environmental, social, ethical, technological, scientific and aesthetic aspects can be interrelated in an interesting, insightful, creative, and even challenging way.

Speakers are in the session are:

1) Toine Timmermans (program manager sustainable food chains of Wageningen UR) – www.fbr.wur.nl/UK (see his proposed presentation here)

2) Hugo Hooijer (Fairfood) – www.fairfood.org

3) Esther Polak (locative media artist) – http://nomadicmilk.net/?page_id=2

4) Hernani Dias (“Refarm the City” project) – www.refarmthecity.org

5) Frank van der Hoeven (Associate Professor, Chair of Urban Design at Delft University of Technology) – http://urbandesign.bk.tudelft.nl

On December 14th 2009 De Balie – an Amsterdam-based center for culture and politics – organized an evening about old and new cartographies. Participants were Ferjan Ormeling (Emeritus Professor Cartography, Faculty of Geographical Sciences, Utrecht University), Henk van Houtum (Associate Professor of Geopolitics and Political Geography, Head of the Nijmegen Centre for Border Research), Maarten Keulemans (science journalist), Jelle Reumer (director Natural Museum Rotterdam, Special Professor at Utrecht University), Lucas Keijning (NEMO science center), and me. The evening was lead by Volkskrant journalist Martijn van Calmthout. The evening was set up as a prelude to the presentation of a new world map the day after in The Hague. From the announcement:

We have been making maps for centuries, to establish territorial borders or mark safe routes. A map is a model of reality, and the terrain of a fascinating branch of science: cartography. Maps represent social and political choices, which start forming their own truths. For example the Persian Gulf is not the Persian Gulf everywhere, the world on its head or with China in the middle all of a sudden looks very different, and maps today seem less complete because of an increasing number of ‘white spots’…

Some of the issues addressed this evening concerned the relation between model and reality, the consequences of new map-making media technologies for society and politics, and – unavoidably it seems in such popularizing science discussions – the question whether new developments are good or bad? I was invited to talk about the influence of mobile and locative media and cartographic representations.

Cartographer Ferjan Ormeling started the evening with an overview of cartography as a professional scientific discipline. He defined cartography as “the transmission of spatial information for decision-making”. In a few slides he walked through cartographic history, mainly from a western perspective as the attempt to explore and chart unknown territories, with ensuing overseas trade and later colonization in its wake. Some of the interesting topics he touched upon included the fact that cartography is always subjective and culturally determined. Dutch maps for instance often leave out ditches because they are everywhere, whereas in Belgium they are included on maps. The world maps we know today are clearly Euro-centric, placing other territories in the periphery of Europe. Maps were hugely important for an upcoming sense of nationalism (a point made by Benedict Anderson in his well-known work “Imagined Communities” 1991). Nation-states were now drawn in monochrome colors, clearly separating them from their neighbors. Further, names on maps are often surrounded by controversy. For example in the 1970s attempts were made to modernize the spelling of Dutch town and city names. This met with fierce opposition from local government, because this meant some places would lose their name-based exclusivity (Veghel sounds more chic than Veggel, ditto for Wijchen – Wijgen). Map-making therefore always involves selection, manipulation, and generalization. What is displayed? What is left out? Where are borders drawn? What is on the map and what lies outside of the map? Ormeling closed his talk by assessing the relevance of new technologies like Google Maps. Here it became interesting, since Ormeling tenaciously clung to the idea of the unique professional expertise of cartographers. While digital technologies certainly are useful, Ormeling argued, the role of cartographers remains important because they are the ones who “fill in” these satellite images, and “give meaning” to those satellite views. Sure, there are interesting attempts by amateurs to engage map-making (such as Openstreetmap). But there are lots of things professionals can and amateurs can’t do, like accurately mapping a rugged coastline.

Then Henk van Houtum and I joined the discussion. Van Houtum argued new geographic technologies like TomTom and Google Maps turn all of us into geographers. But very uncritical geographers. We unwittingly feed all kinds of information to search engines. Van Houtum worries about the loss of personal autonomy as we are surrender ourselves to various digital search and control systems. But on the more positive side, new technologies enable far more people to engage in place-making and representing spatial knowledge. The old monopoly of mapmaking by geographers under the auspice of the nation-state is crumbling, and that is a good thing.

I argued that under the influence of mobile and locative media, cartography has changed from being a predominantly geographical medium in which the representation of space and place is central, to a social medium in which online social networking acquires a cartographic element. Our mediated social relations are now being ‘rooted’ in physical places. A good example of such a locative social network is Bliin, a project by Selene Kolman, who was in the audience, and Stef Kolman.

This has in part been a response to our perception of the internet as placeless, and broader social and spatial shifts often grouped under the name ‘globalization’. Further, New technologies offer people the opportunity to write space and place with their own experiences (e.g. by ‘geotagging’ places), rather than just reading the maps made by others (see e.g. Greenfield & Shepard about “read/write urbanism” p. 12-13). This means cartography is no longer the prerogative of professionals but indeed, as Henk van Houtum said, we have all become geographers. Already in 1946 geographer J.K. Wright proposed in front of the Association of American Geographers that the earth had been largely mapped by conventional geographical method. The time had come to map our earth all over again. Wright called upon geographers to map folk knowledge of places, and more aesthetic experiences of our environments. This would vastly expand the terrain of classic geography to include what Wright called ‘geosophical’ knowledge. Wright would probably have been thrilled to see how his plea is being realized today… A third change is that maps now consist not only of mostly spatial information but also temporal information. The historicity of place as a process is made visible by the range of micro-narratives that are attached to places through locative media. Maps become far more dynamic representations of spatial and temporal knowledge. A nice example is the project Droombeek, by Edward Mac Gillavry, who was also present this evening, and Peter Dubois.

In this project inhabitants of Roombeek, an area of the city Enschede which was destroyed in 2000 by a huge fireworks disaster, recount their memories and stories of their neighborhood. These stories are made available to others by taking a GPS-walk. A fourth change is the database structure of geographical knowledge captured in maps. We can now query items through maps. Most of these searches are about simple properties like categories of places and proximity, such as finding restaurants nearby. However while we still can’t search for sadness in New York (PDF 2,4 MB; Russell – Headmap Manifesto – p. 31), we are already awfully close.. Fifth, new cartographies alter our subjective experiences of space and place. For instance, locative media can inform a more aesthetic experience of space and mobility. Someone who is working on GPS-based cartography as a new form of landscape painting is Esther Polak, who also joined this evening – just back from a trip to Nigeria. And what about the fact that in many locative media views the ego is the center of the map? You no longer have to first find your position on the map. Rather, the environment revolves around you. Does this literally lead to a more ‘ego-centric’ worldview? Finally, maps are increasingly often used as a way to visualize and transfer increasingly complex datasets. Maps are becoming metaphors to represent information, and for thinking. An organization that has been doing this for while is Informationlab by ‘information architect’ Auke Touwslager, who also attended the evening (yes, good crowd present..). To summarize, under the influence of locative media mapping tends to shift from mostly objectifying representations to highly subjective, from general to thematic representations, and from visualizing topological rather than topographical information. I wanted to raise some more ‘political’ issues of these developments but – alas – time was running short… (I couldn’t even bring in half of the above).

It was interesting to see how the audience, and ‘old school geographer’ Ormeling, reacted to this new media story. Ormeling himself did not feel these developments had much to do with his profession as a cartographer, apart from being handy new instruments. This strikingly parallels the dominant reaction of another professional audience: architects and planners. New media technologies as instruments yes, but investigating the consequences of these technologies for the professional practice itself… no. In the audience, meanwhile, someone wondered in exasperation “this is al very nice but who actually wants to know all the time where their friends are?”. Indeed only one or two people raised their hands. Although the predominantly white middle-aged male audience perhaps might not exactly be representative of very active mobile media users, this question of course is a legitimate one. All talks about new representations of knowledge and new ‘participant audiences’ or ‘networked publics’ in spite, who are “we” (we – the people more or less professionally dealing with geo-locative media) actually representing in our talks and thoughts? The majority of people, at least during this evening, seem very skeptical about these developments. The discussion immediately turned to the pervasive influence of mobile media themselves in everyday life and all sorts of ethical discussions, rather than pausing for a moment to look at media developments and their influence on cartography. Too bad this somewhat fell of radar at the end of the evening. Luckily, columnist Jelle Reumer restored this by evoking the poetics of maps. Looking at maps above all brings up half-forgotten memories of the places one once was and where beautiful or sad things happened. Maps also stir the imagination about places one would perhaps never go. I thought Reumer’s short talk was a nice closure of the evening, which put matters in a broader perspective. Aside from their obvious differences (differences that do matter, as I’ve tried to show here), to what extend does it matter whether such imaginations occur by holding a map made of paper or by looking at a handheld screen?

In this article I discern five possible ‘levels’ to understand urban games: (1) the city is often used as a model to construct an architecture of computer and video games; (2) the city itself has historically been understood in multiple ways as a game or playground; (3) pervasive games take digital games out to the streets and bridge the digital-physical distinction; (4) (serious) games are used in the process of (re)building actual cities; (5) urban games are a metaphorical lens through which to look at utopian and dystopian futures of cities. For each of these ‘levels’ I raise some relevant questions.

You can read the article here >> or download a PDF of the article (1,6 MB).

There are a number of other interesting contributions. See the journal’s table of contents.

As MoMo is a kind of trend-watching event, the main emphasis of this MoMo#11 was on the emerging field of augmented reality. Of course this vision has been around for a long time. Yet prototypes have mostly been very clunky head-mounted displays, or relied on some flat surface to project things on. As our mobile devices have by now arguably become the most ubiquitous technology humans ever carried with them (becoming a third skin, like our clothes are a second skin), they appear the ideal platform for all kinds of new forms of augmented reality in new and unexpected ways. This arguments of course echoes the argument made by Bell and Dourish (“Yesterday’s tomorrows”, PDF) that the vision of ubicomp has in actual practise taken shape in a different way on the mobile phone. Below some of my notes and impressions of MoMo#11.

Continue reading at The Mobile City weblog >>

090526_chapter4_section-nomadism-draft.pdf (PDF, 136 KB)

[I guess I should try a new front image next time, it's getting routine...]

download presentation (PDF 1.4 MB)

Read review at www.themobilecity.nl >>

090319_filmacademie-S.pdf (PDF 1MB).

Found via Textually.org > Engadget Mobile > Make (nice trail):

Artist Jorge Colombo (Portugal) made a couple of cityscapes by drawing with his fingers in an application called Brushes on an iPhone. He also posted a short movie showing in speed-up how he created his drawings. You can see all of the drawings on his website. Not only do these drawing look really nice, they also come quite close ‘the urban experience’ of neon lights, big structures, and a blurry sense of movements and speed. The medium indeed perfectly fits the subjects depicted. It also possible to relate this to the theme of “urban computing”, as an artistic way to ‘write’ one’s experience of the city, as Greenfield and Shepard call it (though, granted, this experience doesn’t ‘stick’ to the location as a kind of locative tag; that should be the artist’s next step!).

What I think is really interesting about is how the mobile device gradually becomes a platform for creative production and playfulness, like the (desktop) computer has been for much longer. A similar kind of creative production on mobile devices has existed for a while in the digital music scene. Here, the iPhone is used as an interface for music sequencing, tracking and beat creation. And in a related field called Chiptunes or 8Bit music, much older portable devices such as Gameboys have been given a brand new second life in being used to make electronic tunes. Also, as posted elsewhere on this blog, the mobile phone is increasingly being used to make (short) films. Last example: the mobile phone is used to not only read but also write texts and even entire novels. This has to do with the fact that many Japanese make long commutes by public transport.

It’s really nice to see how the mobile phone develops from a platform for consumption of services to a medium for creative production as well. Moreover, some of these examples clearly indicate that there is a relation between artistic creation on mobile platforms and the physical surroundings and urban experience, apparently much more so than with fixed computers.

Below the files (mostly in Dutch):

090210_hva_mdelange01.pdf – Some slides about campaigning + technical aspects of the mobile phone

090210_hva_mdelange02.pdf – Some slides about locative media

Dutch digital channel Uitzendinggemist has a number of ‘Micromovies‘ especially for the mobile screen. You can watch them via the application made for mobile phones. 

Many of the movies are made by mobile phones and address some aspect of mobile phones.

In the movie Death Valley the theme of solitude is displayed. This desert is one of the few places where there is no cellular signal.
 

Or the movie ‘Over en Uit’ about being called in a public place, and hearing some very disturbing news…

It is nice to see some more attention for mobile phone movies as an emerging genre.

Here is a great case of mobile phones playing a role in mass media reports, and their ‘playful’ characteristics in story-telling:

Last Friday, December 19 2008, prime minister of Belgium Yves Leterme and his entire cabinet stepped down as an indirect result of the financial crisis. The mobile phone played a pivotal role in both the prelude, as well as in the media reports about this event. How did it all start? When Belgium bank Fortis was split up, many small-scale shareholders were left with virtually worthless shares. They went to court and successfully prevented the transfer to BP Paribas. However, in a 6-page report which became public on Friday afternoon, Belgium’s supreme court wrote that members of the government had tried to influence the outcome of the case. It appeared that Belgian prime minister Yves Leterme was in direct contact with the spouse of one of the judges who leaked information about the proceedings of the case through the mobile phone. With this information Leterme was able to brief the government lawyers on a defence strategy.

Now, this is already an interesting case of how the mobile phone is used to connect supposed separate worlds. But it gets better. The mobile phone also plays a crucial role in the way these events are being reported in mass media [1]. As soon as the report comes out, the government is summoned to the parliament. It does not take long before the minister of justice resigns. It remains uncertain what Leterme is going to do. In front of the camera of Belgium national television station VRT1, one of the members of opposition wonders why he hasn’t received an SMS yet announcing the resignation of Leterme himself. At 17:10 reporter Peter Vandermeersch from Belgium newspaper De Standaard breaks in on the live news report (see pictures). He has received an SMS from an “exceptionally dependable source” claiming that Leterme had proposed the resignation of the whole government. Another reporter is interviewing indignified members of the opposition. Just a few minutes later Vandermeersch is cut back into the broadcast. Glancing at the cellphone in his hand, he withdraws his earlier statement and instead says he hears “from sources near the prime minister” that the government still hasn’t fallen but only proposed to resign. The Dutch commentator’s voice says that different parties appear to send text messages with their own version of what is going on to VRT reporters. Again reporter Vandermeersch appears on screen, concluding with an ironic smile that the different parties are “spinning” this issue. He has received by SMS yet another version of the story, stating that the prime minister does not want to resign at all. Vandermeersch concludes “we are almost physically co-experiencing what is happening a few buildings further”, immediately followed by a remark of the other reporter “if it weren’t so dramatical, we might call it a soap”. Finally we see Vandermeersch for the fourth time. It is then 17:56. He is glaring at his cellphone, saying once more that from an “exceptionally dependable source” he has received the following text, and starts to read from his phone screen a message that seems to be written in very official language, stating the entire government has offered its resignation to the Belgium king. After the report is over, the presenter of Dutch actuality program Nova remarks on the item that “the Belgium government crisis unfolds by SMS”. A bit later she calls the affair of the minister of justice, who first stepped down, a “Shakespearian drama”. This term is later repeatedly used by the director of Belgium newspaper De Morgen in his reaction to the affair in Nova.

Why is this interesting? First, mobile phones are used to uncover and report backstage affairs from court and parliament directly to the outside world. Not only has a judge leaked inside information to the outside world, also members of the parliament leaked via SMS to the press what was being discussed inside. Second, because of this mode of reporting directly from the cellphone screen, the events are narrated as an ongoing sequence of events without much overall coherence. As a result, the whole affair is understood as being “like a soap” and a “Shakespearian drama”. Indeed this is a very apt description. The instant updates, the sequential way of ongoing story-telling (“and then.. and then..”), and the sudden and dramatic plot turns are all very soap-like. Moreover, the journalist at some point becomes acutely aware of the fact that he was being played (“spinned”) by the different political parties which all texted their own version of the events. Politics as theatre, mobile phones as tool for play and being played, great stuff for the ‘playful identities’ thesis.

[1] The following description is largely based on a television special on the issue by Dutch actuality program Nova on Friday December 19 2008, which in turn is largely compiled from live reports by Belgium national television VRT1.

Starting this academic year Jeroen Timmermans, Jos de Mul and I are teaching a new course called “Homo Mobilis: mobility, media & identity” at the Erasmus University Rotterdam as an international masters. The aim of the course is to acquire a deeper understanding of some of the main theories of mobility, and its place in modern history, and to critically rethink the influence of transportation- and (digital) communication mobilities on human identity. The 15-week course schedule looks like this:

Introductory classes

1. First meeting, introduction, practical matters, course outline, syllabus, etc. Thematic overview of the course.

2. From movement to mobility: the concept of mobility.

3. Mobility systems and the mobilities paradigm.

4. A short history of media.

5. Philosophical overview of time/space by Jos de Mul.

Mobility systems

6. Public transport and the time schedule.

7. Airplanes, airports and non-places.

8. Car mobility.

9. Mobile media and smart mobs.

10. ICTs: spaces of flow.

Thematic & critical classes

11. Guest lecture by Lucas Harms (SCP)

12. ‘Liquid identity’ and ‘The corrosion of character’

13. ‘Identity under siege’ and ‘the saturated self’

14. Overshoot: critical perspectives on mobility.

15. Closing session. Presentation of assignments and discussion.

The film is a mixture of documentary following a number of ‘Rotterdammers’ an their mobile cam use as well and interviewing the, as well as a showcase of the mobile phone movies and photographs itself that are made by them. This is done quite ingeniously, by blending the two together in such a way that you get a good view both from the ‘real life’ perspective and the ‘virtual media-perspective.

So what kind of people are portrayed in the film? The first are Thom and Osama, two young guys (both 16) who film their daily movements in the city, go to weird places and shoot themselves fooling around a bit, and upload their material to Youtube. See the following Youtube accounts: Osama (osama015); Thom (jump266) ; and together they operate under the nick osamathom1991.

Then there is a young mother Annemarie (24 years old) and her daughter. The mother makes little clips of for instance her daughter and her singing and dancing together, and shares these with friends and family online.

There is Hans, a guy of about 30 years old who mainly takes photos of things he sees in the city in an artistic fashion.

And finally an older man, Cor Been, age 75, who has filmed the entire process of the construction of his new apartment building to which he is moving.

There are a couple of things I found really interesting about this film:

Different age, different use
First of all, the film shows how people from different ages do very different things with their mobile phone camera. Osama and Tom went for the kicks and sought out the ‘dangerous’ and exiting urban places they normally wouldn’t go or weren’t suppose to be. The young mother did it in a very social way to share her life with her daughter with other; the 30 year old guy made all kinds of photographs of the city in a very aesthetic way; the old man used film to get accustomed to his new habitat, as a kind of narrative medium to incorporate the new into his life.

Mobile film as an emerging genre
What kind of new pictorial language is emerging through the use of the mobile phone for photo and film? It is a radical first person perspective; a 3D view of the world, the camera does not only pan from left to right but also up and down (one’s feet!); movement while shooting instead of stills; no cuts; position of the filmer in his own film; enactment in front of camera: it’s is not acting as if it is real but made absolutely clear that it is acting in full awareness of the presence of a camera.

Experience of multiple places at the same time (moving in hybrid space)
The two young guys were making a film while sneaking into a building (hotel?) they clearly weren’t supposed to be. While prowling through the corridors and pushing elevator buttons in a seemingly spontaneous way, all of a sudden one of them yelled: “This is certainly going to be on Youtube!”. This seems to indicate that these kids are adding an extra dimension to their physical world, namely concurrently imagining a digital world. They interweave their here and now experience of what they are doing in physical space with an added dimension of presenting it later elsewhere on a digital platform.

Social aspects of sharing: niche vs. platform
The young mother was sharing films and photos of her and her daughter with friends via online platforms (Youtube, Hyves). There is something very social about creating content. A new sociality? Or sharing as age-old ritual (gifting)? Only within small circle? But interestingly she chooses a platform that is accesible to everyone. This raises questions about how people want to express themselves, either to small niches vs. sharing broadly.

Experiencing city space through the mobile phone camera
Filming the city while being on the move adds an extra reflexive dimension to this mobility. First it adds another lense in front of you, a layer of mediatrion in a (new) visual movie language. And second it enables you to look back almost immediately on what you have just experienced and how you have captured this. The experience of a city may change through this additional reflexive layer. It enables you to distrance yourself from your own immediate experience by viewing it again through the eyes of a bystander, like an being an audience to your own captured experience.

(thanks Bieke for the pictures, additional info, and small corrections!)