Right to the Smart City: Integrated Design and the Civic Imaginary”

Anthropology Lecture

Thursday, February 8, 6-8pm

Dorothy Hirshon Suite, Arnold Hall, 55 W 13th St, Room I-205

Beth Coleman, Associate Professor of Experimental Digital Media at the University of Waterloo will deliver a lecture: “Right to the Smart City: Integrated design and the civic imaginary.”

Abstract: In an age of smart technology, big data, and the concomitant threat of a surveillance society, how do we understand the citizen’s right to the city and how that right is manifested? In this talk, I discuss my research relation to the complexity of the sociotechnological world we inhabit through the lens of smart city infrastructures and interaction design. The term “smart” describes autonomous computational processes built into the physical environment, such as traffic lights that work responsively (as opposed to mechanically) to fix congested roadways. Smart technologies, such as those projected for a smart city, presents risks and opportunities in regard to privacy, social inclusion, and civic futures. The rights of a civic body and the civic imaginary by which these rights may be articulated speak to valuable, albeit complex, intersectionalities of civic culture, such as race, class, and territory that address critical issues of our time: urban density, income inequality, economic and political instability, population mobility, environmental stewardship, among others. My work directly addresses a recognized gap in the smart city research domain that “civic actors are not yet central to smart city design.” Equally though, my research—manifest in ethnographic fieldwork, data analysis, and speculative design—speaks to a recognition of a poetic city as a critical aspect of the urban imaginary that should not be left aside from the projected efficiencies of the smart city. I address modes of engagement across platforms, formats, and context that include big data analysis, augmented realty (AR) interface, distributed narratives, games & play.

A/D/O Seminar Series

HOMO SAPIENS, I HEAR YOU

Conceptualized in collaboration with Dr. Nelly Ben Hayoun, a celebrated and award-winning creative director of experiences, Homo Sapiens, I Hear You offers a yearlong series of unique seminars that will question, debate and modernize Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs.”

  • JAN: Sleep With Me: On beds, the unconscious and the nighttime
  • FEB: The Last Supper: On tables, carnivores and kitchen stories.
  • MAR: Breathe It In: On air, wind and lungs.
  • APR: Fire In My Eyes: On catastrophe, electricity and disaster management.
  • MAY: BOO! On fear, violence and safety.
  • JUN: Talk to Me. I am Your Friend: On animals, friendship and speech.
  • JUL: What is This? On curiosity, extinct species and doors.
  • AUG: Let Me Be the King: On bureaucracy, the office and labour.
  • SEP: Where is this? On toxic tourism, leisure and forests.
  • OCT: My Hero! On peers, superpowers and cyborgs.
  • NOV: Pray for Me: On religion, beliefs and other fictions.
  • DEC: Homo Sapiens, I Hear You: On shamanism, spirits and magic.

Participants will experience thought-provoking conversations, immersive lectures, collaborative workshops and unique sensory experiences guided by experts in conventional and unconventional fields and industries. Along the way, we will unravel new perspectives on what motivates us and explore whether the modern practice of design addresses our essential needs – from the most basic functions (eating, sleeping, etc.) to the more fulfilling (self-improvement, practicing sports).

A/D/O is a community-based endeavor that aims to understand the future of design.
A/D/O is located in a 23,000 square foot former warehouse in Greenpoint, Brooklyn’s Industrial Business Zone. It has been converted into a space for creative exchange.
A/D/O is part of MINI .

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Rendered Cities exhibition @ Apex Art

Rendered Cities
organized by ANGL Collective

January 18 – March 17, 2018

Opening Reception:
Wednesday, January 17, 6-8 pm 

Featuring work by:
Felicity Hammond
Lawrence Lek
Laura Yuile

In a society obsessed with the visual, there is an increasing tendency to mistake good images with good architecture. Perfect renderings printed on glossy billboards have not only colonized global cities, but are also used to approve, evaluate and sell new construction projects. These digitally constructed, imagined landscapes become real before reality: their shiny presence merges with the existing urban environment, masking the raw construction sites they overlook and forming a representation of a future city in citizens’ minds. And when construction terminates, finished buildings imitate the aesthetics of digital architecture, leading to a hyper-real experience of physical space, as well as a fixed idea of what life in the city should look like.

Rendered Cities will present newly commissioned works by artists Felicity Hammond, Lawrence Lek, and Laura Yuile, that address the future of our cities in light of these digital aesthetics, and investigate the political, economic, and ideological forces behind their proliferation.

Felicity Hammond’s work uses photography and sculpture to reflect on how digital representations of buildings become part of the urban fabric before their construction, and how these marketing techniques create the effect of a ruin in reverse when buildings are completed. A video essay by Lawrence Lek will trace the political symbolism of the skyscraper as the global repetition of an urban form and a contemporary manifestation of wealth and power. Laura Yuile will present an installation that will change throughout the duration of the show, which considers how familial structures and methods of living are sold to us via advertising and narratives of wellness and wellbeing. 


Ways of Knowing Cities conference @ Columbia, February 9

Ways of Knowing Cities

Friday, February 9, 2018, 9:30 am
Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall

Registration

Pre-registration is now closed, the auditorium seating is first come first served. Registration does not guarantee seating. The conference will be live streamed to Ware Lounge in Avery Hall and online at arch.columbia.edu

Please note, seating will be first come, first serve. Registration does not guarantee seating. The event will be livestreamed on arch.columbia.edu

Technology increasingly mediates the way that knowledge, power, and culture interact to create and transform the cities we live in. Ways of Knowing Cities is a one-day conference which brings together leading scholars and practitioners from across multiple disciplines to consider the role that technologies have played in changing how urban spaces and social life are structured and understood – both historically and in the present moment.

Keynote lectures by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Trevor Paglen

Participating Speakers
Simone BrowneMaribel Casas-Cortés,  Anita Say ChanSebastian Cobarrubias,  Orit HalpernCharles Heller,  Shannon MatternV. Mitch McEwenLeah Meisterlin,  Nontsikelelo MutitiDietmar OffenhuberLorenzo PezzaniRobert Pietrusko, and Matthew Wilson.

From John Snow’s cholera maps of London and the design of the radio network in Colonial Nigeria to NASA’s composite images of global night lights, the way the city and its inhabitants have been comprehended in moments of technological change has always been deeply political. Representations of the urban have been sites of contestation and violence, but have also enabled spaces of resistance and delight. Our cities have been built and transformed through conflict, and the struggle is as much informational and representational as it is physical and bodily. Today, the generation and deployment of data is at the forefront of projects to reshape our cities, for better and for worse. As a consequence, responding to urban change demands critical literacy in technology, and particularly data technologies. The conference addresses itself to the deep ambivalence of interventions in the urban, as it explores the ways that knowledge regimes have impacted the built world. In this sense, it seeks to catalyze more robust, creative, and far-reaching ways to think about the relationship between the urban and the information systems that enable, engage and express the city.

Please note, seating will be first come, first serve. Registration does not guarantee seating. The event will be livestreamed in Ware Lounge, Avery Hall and on arch.columbia.edu.

Support for Ways of Knowing Cities is provided through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and hosting by Columbia GSAPP.