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.............DRAFT VERSION.............
Wikiplaza, or an experiment in the social production of space mediated by technologies
prototype: public space's interactive device for the digital commons
date: Paris, may 2009
With Benjamin Cadon, Labomedia & Ewen Chardronnet, Paris
hackitectura.net in collaboration with Labomedia (Orleans)
The project is part of a wider network of urban art and technology projects curated by Ewen Chardronnet & Jean Luc Sor
1- Summary
Flowing, thinking, dwelling the network city
The public plaza (square) of the future will be like an active node of the Internet, like an Operative System, like a crossroad of flows, physical and mental, electronic and electromagnetic.
The public square of the future will be a hybrid space inbetween the physical and the digital, with multiple layers; and it will be a space in permanent transformation, a social production resultant of the desires and activities of its multitudinar, nomadic, cyborg inhabitants. A space such as the situationists once imagined; but new.
Digital infrastructures and tools allow us to explore this potential future of public space as a lab of citizenship and new freedoms mediated by technologies, that brings to the world of atoms, the bits experience of digital communities developed during the last ten years. As flickr, youtube or wikipedia are built through the collaboration of thousands of members of their communities, so the Jornadas de media-arquitectura will be built through the participation of artists, technicians and citizens.
The public plaza of the future could be a wikiplaza.
2- scenario of the response to the proposition "digital contents and the future of the city" (artistic proposal)
General ideas
Electronic flows, caressing or menacing, have transformed the metropolis. Their ubiquitous presence invites us to think of new public spaces where the dance of atoms and bits creates new forms of beauty and give way to new emancipatory potentials.
In 2006, hackitectura.net produced the concept of Jornadas de media-arquitectura to rethink public space. It was first applied in the winning competition entry for the Plaza de las Libertades in Sevilla, Spain – a project developed in collaboration with Morales de Giles Arquitectos and Esther Pizarro. The project, however, has not been built.
The Jornadas de media-arquitectura concept considers the following ideas to rethink public space:
1. Public space as Operative System
2. Public space as an active node of the Net
3. Public space as interface with electronic networks
4. Public electromagnetic space
5. A citizens' media ecology
6. Public space as a garden of microchips (interaction between natural and electronic flows)
7. Public space as wiki (social-collaborative production of public space)
interphase physical-digital
Wikiplaza Paris
Invited to develop a Jornadas de media-arquitectura prototype around the topic of “digital contents and the future of the city”, for Paris 2009, hackitectura.net and labomedia consider to apply these ideas to a temporary installation to be located in the Place de la Bastille.
The WikiPlaza? Paris will be an infrastructure made up of light architectural elements and technological systems (hardware, netware, software) designed to be used by the public in participatory open ways, to share knowledge and experiences, to access local and remote resources, to connect itself to other people and locations. The idea of freedom of knowledge, distribution of information and access to networks is key to the wikiplaza. It will be implemented through the employment of free software and hardware, web 2.0 technologies and open and transparent use of the space and systems.
The Jornadas de media-arquitectura will be a catalyzer of urban activity, a citizenship lab on the social uses of technologies. It will be an extensión of physical public space into the diverse networks that compose contemporary life. It won't be taking away public space from people but rather extend and amplify its dimensions into other realms.
Eventually, the Jornadas de media-arquitectura will be a node or hub connected to the other nodes of the project distributed around central Paris.
As recently suggested by Tim Berners Lee, with the introduction of the GGG (Giant Global Graph) concept, collaborative mapping will be a central issue of the Jornadas de media-arquitectura; working as a general interface, a relational machine, a generator of new territories between the physical and the digital.
The density of connectivity is the interface.
Images: view to the monument
3- architectural scenario (in the city, relation to Paris, response to the specificity of the location)
 
  
Urban, acrhitectural context
Paris, a contemporary postmetropolis that we could define as global, reticular and informational, constitutes the general background of the proposal. Nomadism, flexibility and cyborg becomings are some of the conditions addressed by wikiplaza. The metropolis is understood as process, as space of flows.
The Bastille in Paris is a significant node of central Paris, from the functional point of view it is a place traversed by multiple flows: traffic, buses, metro, channels, public facilities and networks and used for multiple activities and by diverse people: opera, commuters, young people, mothers and children, people taking walks, cyclists, skaters... From a simbolic point of view it is also a very relevant place connected to the memory of the French Revolution, with its demands of liberty, equality and fraternity; and today one of the venues for social and political demonstrations.
The actual space for the intervention, in the Southern end of the Place de la Bastille, is an area which -is felt as a free space, used in flexible, mixed ways by the citizenship, significantly by skaters and cyclists, but also by mothers and children and elder people and passers-by. It is also traditionally used for temporary installations related to urban public events.
 
 
Images: skaters and bikers at Bastille
The protoype: Infrastrucure + contents + program
The architecture of the proposed prototype is an assemblage of physical and digital public interfaces (components), creating a hybrid space. The components can be described as follows:
- spaceware: platform, dome and furniture. The platform, includes an aerea to be used by skaters and cyclist, that connects the medialab with the pre-existing space and uses. Especially at night, the dome, covered by white textile materials functions as an urban screen that can be seen from inside and outside. The furniture, within the dome provides for the installation of an open to the public medialab.
- netware: includes a broad band Internet connection, allowing for global accesss (data and multimedia servers included) and the active interaction with the other prototypes of the project and the different art projects in the Jornadas de media-arquitectura constellation. Then it will include the medialab LAN (Local Area Network) and Wifi-LAN to be accessed from public space. The Wifi_LAN will as well communicate different interactive devices in the area.
- hardware: medialab and mediaroom equipment: computers, digital storage devices, beamers, sensors, cameras, recording and sound system, and miscellaneous communication devices. Interactive systems will be implemented with free hardware, such as arduino and others.
- software: all systems will be run with free software, including server admin, multimedia, web, interactivity, communication, collaborative and sharing, visualization and mapping applications.
- flows & contents systems: the WikiPlaza? map (developed by labomedia) will be the digital resource articulating the network. It will include a:
- geolocalized, multimedia data base (generated by the public, the different nodes of the project and the art projects in the Jornadas de media-arquitectura constellation)
- data visualization systems in different scales (data base interface, actual dynamic multilayer maps)
- real time video streaming network, based on GISS (Global Independent Stream Support) a free software, global network
- WikiPlaza? web 2.0 interface, allowing for collaborative production of the digital space and communication with the WikiPlaza? interactive devices.
The WikiPlaza? will have and show different moods: processing, active and idle. During daytime it will be on a processing mood, - workshops, production, sharing, leisure... -; in the evenings it will be in an active mood, - events, projections... -; late at night and early mornings it will be in a idle mood.
Image: prototype
Image: dome at Bastille platform (real scale)
physical elements:
- dome (14 metres diameter)
- platform (17-19 metres diameter - irregular perimeter)
- furniture (situation room)
4- relation location-audience-public space
Image: dome at Bastille platform (real scale)
Image: dome at Bastille platform (real scale)
The projected infrastructure will function as an extensión or amplification of the existing public space, connecting it to next and remote locations, and digital resources.
It will function as a participatory gateway between the local-physical realm and digital space. Space + infrastructure will work as a temporary media lab supporting the following activities – organized as core – permanent – ones, and temporary – plug-in ones:
Core activities
- media room / projections / multimedia participatory database /
- mapping lab / georeferentiated content / interaction between devices and maps
- “Mille Plateaux” web tv / performances / workshops – presentations
- permanent link with other prototypes and relay with global festival
- how-tos to join the different activities
Plug-ins
- skaters geotracing
- bicycle wadriving
- emotional map
- Videomaton
- ip-phone
- burnstation
- gps movies
- porta-porter
- net-drive
- paris temps reel
- play area
- live remote interventions
One of the main activities to be developed will be workshops, designed to promote participation. Some of the workshops will deal with introducing the tools and proposed issues to the public. Other workshops will deal with the presentation and discussions of the artistic projects connected to the Wikiplaza.
Workshops will be addressed to schools and families, social collectives and neighbours, artists and technicians.
Description / development (contents / activities):
- Participatory urban gate between physical world and digital world
- Emotional map / Mapping lab (participatory generation, contents brought by people _ georeferentiated)
- Bicycle wardriving
- Skaters eletronic mirror & geotracing
- “Mille Plateaux” web tv / skaters – events + archive / selforganization
- Media data base / burnstation, downloads (free software / free knowledge)
- Using a wiki: Wikiplaza, wikicity on Wikipedia
- Engagemente with community
- “Agora” to encourage people to participate
- Diagram: device where people can input there projects
- Hub, with other prototypes, the “universe”, the city-people – social networks (cyclists, skaters...)
- Hot links with other prototypes (relay with global festival)
Infoscape device modes:
- active: events, workshops
- passive: visualizing urban flows (physical and digital flows)
Distribution / scenarios:
Scenarios of what people do:
- Videomaton
- IP-phone
- wiki_programa_4 universes
- Pizarra tipo bar con programa del día
Distribution / screens :
Screens / themes-areas / information flow
Night / day
1/ Jornadas de media-arquitectura map
2/ multimedia participative space (mediadata base, mille plateaux, and videomaton, ip-phone)
3/ artistic and participative experiments
4/ public digital space (access)
5/ universe, art pieces, program, manuals
Program:
three weeks , three weekends
- Opening
- first week workshop (participatory mapping, public space-technology, art-projects)
- Second weekend
- second week workshop (participatory mapping, public space-technology, art-projects)
- closing ceremony
- Artists/
- Schools/
- Social collectives/
- “Utopia city”
5- technical specifications
water, electricity, etc.
night - day (garding the place, hours of opening, night installation)
habitat
etc.
6- technicial specificity to each prototype
internet
energy
gps & cartography server
sound, climate, vr, etc.
Open source / specs for the wikiplaza
Protocols for participation (manuals)
Image: hardware-software-wetware
Hardware
1. Urban semispheric screen(s)
2. Urban interactive devices (for example, lighting connected to dynamic data bases and/ or sensors capturing changes in the surroundings or that interactuate with the Plaza users.
3. Broadband Internet connection
4. Public data server (citizens web services)
5. Public multimedia server (Internet-tv, real time streaming...)
Image: media-dome, dome as screen
Networks
1. Free wifi urban space
2. Local Area Network
Digital facilities
1. BurnStation
2. Medialab,
3. X
4. Multimedia exhibition area
5. Mobile Internet-tv studio (live broadcasting of local events)
6. Mobile dj-vj studio (performances and public festivals, in and outside)
Software
1. Web 2.0 (Plaza de las Libertades web space: archive / online data bases / mediatheque, discussion forums, local groups' spaces, Internet-tv & radio...)
2. VOIP network
3. 3D sphere Pure Data Flow
4. Metamap (web space, Plaza de las Libertades virtual version, providing interactivity with the physical space (via screens, interactive urban devices...)
7- Interface with contributing artists
Possible collaboration with Compartir es Bueno campaign
Possible collaboration with Yona Friedman
Possible collaboration with Platoniq Burn Station
Possible collaboration with C. Nold biomapping
8- Bio
9- Budget
- honorarios hackitectura.net
- honorarios colaboradores
- infraestructura
notes:
Interest of proposed location as a mulitlayer nodal point.
Explaining the Jornadas de media-arquitectura as an extension of public space – we are not taking the place away from the skaters but extending it...
Wikiplaza and wikipolis concepts (situation room) as participatory construction of public / urban space, supported by ICT technologies.
Image: Location: Bastille
http://htca.us.es/materiales/perezdelama/imagenes_varias/wp_paris/
metamap orleans labomedia http://numo.levillagenumerique.org/
soundtrack: http://www.keny-arkana.com/
Site / “architecture” / IT infrastructure / software / activities
...The digital and participatory x centers hackitectura.net's contribution to "Digital Contents and the future of the city". This prototype deals with a series of issues relating to the digital dimensions of contemporary cyborg territories, in particular of public spaces, and on the opportunities for the production of new commons opened up by information and communication technologies.
Image: de la plaza a la web
Image: representación esférica
Image: manual de instrucciones
Image: participatory timeline during the three weeks
Image: convertir a dos modos: pasivo y activo
wikiplaza by hackitectura.net | wwb s.coop.and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike 2.5 Generic License.
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