From 9 ? 14 July 2012 The Mobile City (in this case Marc Tuters and I) developed and gave a six-day workshop ’Designing for Ownership’ at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow. The workshop is part of a series of Summer at Strelka workshops aimed at a practical change in the city’s microrayons. The microrayon where we did research and development is Yuzhnoye Medvedkovo (south Medvedkovo). This workshop aims to help create an actual long-lasting change for the better in an urban neighborhood in Moskow. This is done by bringing together creative workshop participants and various neighborhood stakeholders (citizens, local government, businesses, neighborhood organizations, and so on). […] Read More
Recently I contributed a short chapter to this publication: De Lange, M. (2012). Stad, spel, media: spelenderwijs eigenaar worden van je stad. In E. Holleman, R.-J. de Kort & S. Lindemann (Eds.), Balkan in de polder: naar organische gebiedsontwikkeling in Nederland? (pp. 78-82). Amsterdam: Mondriaanfonds (pdf 120 KB Dutch). In this chapter I try to develop some thoughts on how play and games are informing the changing professional practices of urban design. Balkan in de Polder. Naar organische gebiedsontwikkeling in Nederland? Zijn Nederlandse planningsprofessionals bereid eindbeelden los te laten en meer ruimte te bieden aan initiatieven van gebruikers in een gebied? Is het denkbaar dat […] Read More
As part-time lecturer at Utrecht University, I am one of the co-organizers of this event: When: 25 – 27 June 2012. Where: Sweelinckzaal Utrecht University (25/26 June); Theater Anatomicum, Waag Society Amsterdam (27 June). With the advent of digital and mobile technologies scientific knowledge production has changed profoundly. As interactive, affordable, networked and ubiquitous technologies they invite people to engage with, alter and probe scientific ‘facts’. Play is essential to think about this new kind of engagement with science. It offers citizens powerful ways to become involved with and knowledgeable about scientific practices and offers subversive and exciting possibilities to […] Read More
Below are scans of some of my recent (non-academic) publications about digital media and ownership in the city: De Lange, M. (2012). Eigenaarschap: stedelingen betrekken bij hun stad met digitale media. In M. Kreijveld (Ed.), Samen Slimmer. Hoe de wisdom of crowds onze samenleving verandert. (pp. 152-153). Den Haag: STT (jpg 1 MB Dutch). De Lange, M. (2012). Digitale media en de stad: omarm de complexiteit. Architectenweb Magazine (nummer 48, mei/juni 2012), 60-63 (pdf 5.8 MB Dutch). De Lange, M., & De Waal, M. (2011). What Is Ownership and Why Does It Matter? Volume, #30 Privatize!, 40-43. (pdf 7.2 MB […] Read More
Just came back from the ‘Remediating Urban Space: Exploring Design Responses‘ symposium at the Plymouth University in Plymouth, UK. Thanks to the organizing committee: Alessandro Aurigi, Katharine Willis, Mike Phillips, and Gianni Corino! Katharine Willis and Chris Speed have made overviews of #remediatingspace tweets and images made during the event. In the morning I gave a little talk about the ways in which play can aid in strengthening citizen engagement with the urban environment. This is the abstract I submitted, which is the basis for the talk and to-be-written paper: Playing for ownership: digital media and urban design Michiel de […] Read More
We are happy to announce a new event: Social Cities of Tomorrow. Social Cities of Tomorrow is an international conference that takes place on 17 February 2012, plus an intensive three-day pre-conference workshop on 14 ? 16 February, in Amsterdam Netherlands. Social Cities of Tomorrow is organised by The Mobile City, Virtueel Platform and ARCAM. Using digital media technologies for collective urban issues Our everyday lives are increasingly shaped by digital media technologies, from smart cards and intelligent GPS systems to social media and smartphones. How can we use digital media technologies to make our cities more social, rather than […] Read More
I’ll be giving two lunch talks in the next few weeks, the first is public, the second isn’t: November 22 2011 Broodje Kennis at Spui 25 (University of Amsterdam) More information >> December 8 2011 Place-Mat talk at Ymere housing corporation for Placemakers. Read the report of this meeting on the Placemakers website >> In addition, November 23 2011 I’m participating in an e-tourism strategy day organized by LAgroup and Waag Society in Pakhuis De Zwijger. More information >>
As I wrote in an earlier post, I have been developing a new course at Utrecht University, called “The Media City”. It is a course for bachelor 2 students and pre-masters. The program has been set up around a number of guest lecturers, who talk about several ‘media city’ topics from their own expertise. Below some more information about the course (guest speakers + literature list). The course is in Dutch, but all of the literature is in English. Download introductory presentation (PDF, 2.3 MB in Dutch) Download full course instructions (PDF, 220 KB in Dutch) Course schedule: week1, […] Read More
Virtueel Platform commissioned Martijn de Waal and me (The Mobile City) to do a study about the ways media technologies and e-culture can help to design livable and lively cities. In this study we present “ownership” as an alternative design approach. In today’s cities, our everyday lives are increasingly shaped by digital media technologies. How can we engage these technologies to design for cities where citizens feel they belong, where they feel the city belongs to them as well, ands where they have the power to act on communally shared issues? In short: how can digital media aid in strengthening […] Read More
The beginning of this academic year will be quite busy: Sept 14 2011 Amsterdam. Session during PICNIC 2011 “Future Cities: Designing for Ownership” First, at PICNIC this year I’ll present a fresh new study about ‘Ownership in the Hybrid City’ that I’ve done together with Martijn de Waal. The study was commissioned by Virtueel Platform. More about this study (and the international event we are planning in its wake) soon at The Mobile City website. More information >> Sept 20 2011 Istanbul Session during ISEA 2011 “Beyond Locative: Media Arts after the Spatial Turn” After PICNIC I rapidly move on […] Read More
I wrote a review of this recent book on The Mobile City website: In Divining a Digital Future (2011), computer scientist Paul Dourish (Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine) and cultural anthropologist Genevieve Bell (Intel Interaction and Experience Research Lab) again team up in an attempt to marry ethnography with ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) research. The book heavily builds on some of their previous collaborative work. Dourish & Bell propose to develop “a ‘ubiquitous computing of the present’ that takes the messiness of everyday life as a central theme” (4). Their scope embraces the far ends of mythology, […] Read More
Martijn and I have been working on a major redesign of The Mobile City website. Not only does this bring a much tighter interface, it also involves a reorientation of what we want to do with The Mobile City in the future. On the About us page, we more clearly position ourselves as an organization that continues to actively participate in the debates about the new urban condition, and define in what ways we can contribute through our non-profit activities. In addition, we are now more actively bringing our expertise to the market. We added a page called Our services, […] Read More
This is the presentation I gave a few weeks back at the second ‘Serious Games’ expert meeting, organized by the Netherlands Study Centre for Technology Trends (STT) for their Future study Serious Games. The afternoon session took place at Hyves headquarters. You can view back some reports and videos from previous sessions here. Download the presentation >> (PDF 1.4 MB)
This comes as no surprise to me. I’ve been describing this love of high-tech and all things ‘modern’ among Jakartans in my dissertation. 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 […] Read More
I posted this review on The Mobile City blog yesterday: Aurigi, A., & De Cindio, F. (2008). Augmented urban spaces: articulating the physical and electronic city. Aldershot: Ashgate. (The introduction is a free read from the website). This book from 2008 had been on my desk for quite some time but finally I got around to do a review. It is listed in a recent overview of a decade of writing about digital cities. Three years earlier, one of the editors Alessandro Aurigi wrote the monograph “Making the Digital City: The Early Shaping of Urban Internet Space”. The main question […] Read More
Here are the slides from the presentation I gave at the Wireless Stories Conference organized by Sandberg@Mediafonds, on February 17 2011. Download >> (PDF, 360 KB)
Tuesday November 16 2010 I successfully defended my PhD dissertation “Moving Circles: mobile media and playful identities”. I am now dr. Michiel de Lange :). A big thanks to my paranymphs: Daan de Lange (left) and Martijn de Waal (right). You can download “Moving Circles” here (pdf, 3.6 MB). Versions suitable for e-readers are available as well: * epub (epub file, 1.8 MB) * epub – zipped (zipped epub file, 1.8 MB) * mobi (mobi file, 1.8 MB) * mobi zipped (zipped mobi file, 1.6 MB) This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Netherlands License [note: this […] Read More
Last week on October 28 2010 I gave a talk about ‘The Hybrid City’ for PULS at La Citta Mobile in Eindhoven during the Dutch Design Week. The event was organized by MAD emergent art center. Below my presentation slides (PDF 1,4 MB).
Beste allemaal, Op dinsdag 16 november 2010 om precies 13:00 zal ik mijn proefschrift verdedigen, met de titel “Moving Circles: mobile media and playful identities”. Hierin staat de vraag centraal hoe mobiele mediatechnologieën onze identiteiten op speelse wijze beïnvloeden. Jullie zijn van harte uitgenodigd om de ceremonie bij te wonen. Na afloop is er een receptie. wanneer: dinsdag 16 november 2010 om 13:00 (wees ajb op tijd, de deuren zijn anders gesloten) waar: Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, campus Woudestein, Senaatszaal (gebouw A, verdieping boven de Aula) bereikbaarheid: openbaar vervoer (OV chipkaart nodig in Rotterdam); automobiel/fiets (Google Maps) De verdediging zal hoofdzakelijk […] Read More
== update Oct 12 2010: now truly, really done== 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: