FusedSpace Failure
Last month I helped Angie Winslow wrap up some of her ideas from the end of the semester and produce an entry for the FusedSpace competition. The website calls for entries that "by means of existing technology, can change or improve our current relationship with physical public space or that can otherwise bring about innovations in the public domain."
We first thought about the nature of public space in the contemporary city by considering how capitalist and touristic urges have changed out relationship to the physical places of our cities:
Empowered by technology, the inhabitants of the city now conduct their communal life in transit, a constellation of public spaces always in the making. As formal public spaces lose some of their social meaning to inhabitants of the city, their job is passed to the mundane roads, alleyways, and sidewalks which are now able to function as ad-hoc urban living rooms. This is possible thanks to the connective potential of the internet, SMS, and cellular phones. Public space has been atomized: left to spread across the city while undergoing a constant process of reconfigurations and momentary connections.
Instead of trying to force the importance of central physical spaces we took this atomization as an opportunity:
In an effort to draw new connections across our cities, UTILITY WORKS perverts existing municipal street furniture which will become points of mediation between disparate physical urban environments and the people that inhabit them. With these new urban experiences UTILITY WORKS seeks to provoke a renewed awareness of self and environment through a reexamination of familiar civic objects that we interact with every day.
Our full submission can be seen here:
http://www.bryanboyer.com/misc/fusedspace/
Thirty semi-finalists have been chosen and posted: we did not qualify. Although I'm disappointed personally, it's also worth noting that I think the crop of finalists do not necessarily represent the best work submitted to the competition. I cannot discern a specific rationalization behind the choice of that particular 30 beyond a general attempt to provide the widest range of typologies. As a competitor it's none of my business how the competition is judged, but as an observer it seems like a rather odd way to do things. Many of the finalists violate the competition's stipulation that entries be realizable "by means of existing technology" rather blatantly. In my opinion, the best projects are those that use both existing technology and existing behaviors in the city to create or elucidate a new digital information layer.
These are the entries that I figured would have (should have) been in the top 30. Only one of them made it:
ARL WiFi WaFi
This is my bet for 1st place. It was chosen as a finalist. Though I am a bit worried about how this would scale to a city's worth of interactions, it's very well executed. What happens when more than one person wants to leave a note, or when people go around erasing other's notes?
Mobile Profile
Potentially awkward interaction via the cellphone, but the swarm effect evidenced through ambient light coloration is interesting.
Data Fountain - a calm information display
Simple and clear. I think this is effective. Though it is fairly jokey and one wishes for more clarification on exactly how the subject of the fountain could be conveyed.
Toothspace
Simple idea that starts to approach the connection of virtual and physical in a pop-up-video manner. Still very limited to planar surfaces, but seems appropriate for the subway nonetheless.
--Posted 07/07/04 03:18AM