The Hybrid City as Interface
YASMIN July/September 2010 Discussion
The discussion will be moderated by Dimitris Charitos and Prof. Martin Rieser, along with Daphne Dragona, Haris Rizopoulos and Iouiliani Theona as Invited respondents. All YASMINERS invited to participate.
Dimitris Charitos, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication and Media Studies, University of Athens
The Hybrid City as Interface
In the beginning of the 21st century, urban environments, within which social life evolves, are radically being reordered by technological systems and networks. Mobile telephony has restructured the way people socialize within urban space (Plant, 2001). Multi-user virtual environments redefine the meaning of mediated communication by immersing communicating participants into a synthetic spatial context. ICTs and new media may also be used for augmenting physical environments in order to communicate meaning. The contemporary urban environment already incorporates various kinds of representations of reality, communicated to us all via various media and appropriate display systems (most of these representations are visual, i.e. billboards, video projections, wall paintings, closed circuit tV, touch screens, etc). These environments may also incorporate systems that capture visual, auditory, and other types of information regarding human activity and, consequently, utilize this input to affect the process of generating digital representations. The most advanced form of such systems is pervasive and ubiquitous computing systems (Weiser, 1991). It could then be suggested (Charitos, 2005) that the incorporation of information and communication technology (ICT) systems results in an electronic enhancement of the everyday urban environment and that communication with these environments and with other citizens who exist and act within them is mediated by these systems.
Whose city exactly? Reconsidering spatial production processes through ludic, user inter-actions within the urban context. Which side are you on (on the threshold)? Outlining the relations between the virtual and physical experience of the city, as well as the new social dynamics of this hybrid urban context for everyday life.
BIOGRAPHICAL INFO of DISCUSSION RESPONDENTS
Dimitrios Charitos is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies of the University of Athens. He teaches "Human-Computer Communication", "Art & Technology", "Visual Communication", "Mediated Environments" (www.media.uoa.gr/~charitos)
Professor M. Rieser is a Media Artist and Theorist based in Bristol. Professor of Digital Creativity at De Montfort University. 2000-7 Professor of Digital Arts and Senior Teaching Fellow Bath Spa University , was Principal Lecturer in Digital Media at Napier University in Edinburgh at the Department of Photography, Film, and Television 1997-2000. and in post as Senior Lecturer in Electronic Media at UWE Bristol between 1986 - 1998.
Daphne Dragona is a media arts curator based in Athens. Her exhibitions and events the last few years have focused on the notion of play and its merging with art as a form of networking and resistance. She has worked with Fournos Center for Digital Culture (Greece) , LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Centre (Spain), Alta Tegnologia Andina (Peru) and with the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens.
Charalampos Rizopoulos is a researcher at the Department of Communication and Media Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. After graduating from the aforementioned department in 2003, he obtained a MSc in Interactive Multimedia Production from the University of Huddersfield, UK.
Iouliani Theona is a practising architect and a researcher. She studied at the School of Architecture of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and later obtained a Degree from the Inter-Departmental Postgraduate Programme: Architectural Design - Space - Culture, in the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens. She is currently a PhD Candidate in the aforementioned institution, focusing on subjects such as pervasive games and spatial perception.
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Updated 21 July 2010
