[Standby public launch / photo: Liisa Tervinen ]
A series of six urban screen projects were recently installed in Madrid’s Plaza de Las Letras as the output of the Medialab Prado sponsored Open Up workshop. The projects were developed in-situ over the course of two weeks by international teams of collaborators (including myself) and were designed specifically for the plaza’s three-story digital LED facade.
Employing a range of elements including live motion capture, social network-sniffing, virtual ecosystems, games and public testimonials, the projects attempted to activate a somewhat quiet plot of urban space and engage its evolving identity as a recently-created place.
A range of technical and practical issues had to be confronted—some of the most persistent relating to pedestrian movement (or lack thereof) in the plaza, the relatively low resolution (192 x 157) of the facade/display and issues related to neighborhood or municipal disturbance (a seventh project focused on city surveillance initiatives was apparently halted by local authorities).
[Chris Sugrue programming video-tracking system / photo: Liisa Tervinen]
Ultimately the projects succeeded in making questions related to interaction and the social impact of technology visible and immediately relevant, while manifesting the open-source and collaborative goals of Medialab-Prado, whose mission is the creation of “a structure where both research and production are processes permeable to user participation.
A brief summary of the six developed projects:
- Mimodek: A virtual ecosystem visualizing the plaza’s pedestrian population and ambient data flows.
- Standby: Digital “plants” that encourage passers-by to slow down and help tend to the garden.
- ZeroEstigma: A public forum for confronting taboos surrounding mental health, gender issues and discrimination.
- Lummo Tetris: A humorous remake of Tetris, requiring multiple players to control.
- Local Feed: A virtual “bulletin board” generated by input and response from neighborhood residents.
- Color Occurence: A visualization based on color-detection and keywords harvested from Twitter.
Editor's note: Check out photo documentation of the projects here.
