MAB20: DIY & More-Than-Human Media Architecture Workshop
held in conjunction with the Media Architecture Biennale 2020 in 2021
June 28 -July 2, 2021
In recent years, research in the fields of media architecture and urban informatics have made calls to move beyond the human-centred city and towards a “more equitable multispecies city” (Van Dooren et al. 2012). Working towards future more-than-human cities, the design of hybrid digital-physical urban spaces - with an ethos of inclusivity and diversity - will require methods, tools, approaches, platforms, etc. to engage different communities, environments, and all kinds of nonhuman entities and creatures. This workshop poses the following question: While considering different characteristics (such as gender, race, class, abilities, creed, digital skills, habitat, bio-systems), how can citizens engage in creating DIY and More-than-Human Media Architecture to actively shape their spaces and foster imaginaries of more-than-human urban futurity, all while being kinder towards our stressed and fragile urban ecology?
As a first step, DIY Media Architecture proposes that communities of experts support non-experts to create and design Media Architecture as active instigators of change in their own right. A possible strategy may lie in mobilizing allegories, entanglements, multispecies world-making, speculative prototyping, i.e., techniques to frame and engage more-than-human urban futures. This is positioned as empowering the less heard as taking charge of their digital-physical canvases throughout urban spaces and, as a next step, staking their and all creatures’ rights to the city.
The workshop will be conducted online from 24th-29th June 2021. The workshop will provide the platform for discussions on alternative materials, platforms, strategies and tools for enabling DIY processes of the less heard in anthropocentric engagement. The workshop, further, encourages participants to bring prototypes, demos, videos and examples to broaden the conversation on DIY and More-than-Human Media Architecture. This will be collated towards two outcomes; 1) conceptual prototypes and 2) participants will be invited to co-author a publication. This is in keeping with MAB2020’s Themes & Issues of “Citizen’s Digital Rights”, “Playful and Artistic Civic Engagement” and “More-Than-Human Cities.”
Workshop Themes
We invite architects, designers, artists, academia, students, industry, media producers, technologists, psychologists, community practitioners and other interdisciplinary participants to help shape the discourse around and practice of DIY and More-than-Human Media Architecture. The workshop themes are:
- Tools, Services, Building Blocks and Case Studies of different types of DIY and More-than-Human Media Architecture.
- Methods and Methodologies of engaging in DIY and More-than-Human Media Architecture Processes, Platforms & Approaches.
- Explorations and reflections of Social and Ethical Dimensions/Inquiries of Allegories, Entanglements, Speculative Practice through DIY and More-than-Human Media Architecture.
Workshop Participation
The workshop will involve a format of online presentations in the lead up to a workshop/s in 2021. Prospective participants are encouraged to contribute a short biography (50 words per author) along with a proposal. The proposal can take the form of one of the following:
A brief position paper (500 words, excluding references) OR Visual Design Provocation (2-8 pages) on prototype or demo. You can pitch to do an online presentation or demonstrate a prototype during the workshops. Do indicate the time required for your presentation in your proposal.
Key Dates
Deadline for proposals: 30 April 2021.
Workshop Participant Notification: 14 May 2021.
Schedule of sessions will be available by 1 June 2021.
The Online Workshop will run on 29 June 2021 on Zoom.
Contact
k.gonsalves@hdr.qut.edu.au
greg.nijs@urbanspecies.org
Media Architecture Biennale 2020
The Media Architecture Biennale is the world’s premier event on media architecture, urban interaction design, digital placemaking, urban media art and urban informatics. As we design and adapt new technologies, in turn these technologies shape our cities. What future scenarios are implied in today’s urban technologies? And how can we shape our technologies to respond to their surroundings, contributing to cities that are both socially and ecologically sustainable?
Originally, media architecture was most concerned with the integration of displays and interactive installations into architectural structures, such as media facades and urban screens. Over the years, the discipline has grown much broader, as new technologies such as digital platforms and smart city technologies have increasingly made their way into the experience, management and design of cities.
None of these technologies brought into the city are neutral enablers, mere decorative structures or just simple market places connecting demand and supply in fields as diverse as energy and transport to commerce and leisure. They are built upon numerous spoken and unspoken assumptions about urban life, each with their own implications for both social relations as well as their effect on the natural ecosystem. It is time therefore for the discipline of media architecture to address the implied futures of new technologies.
MAB20 calls for media architectures that move beyond the mere spectacular; as well as beyond the design of individualized services comforting human customers. MAB20 calls for media architectures and urban interaction that dare to take on a more-than-human approach: aiming at the well-being of the natural ecosystem as a whole; For urban media art and design that bring implicit and explicit bias within technology and culture to light, and provide the means for ongoing discussion, debate, and societal change; For digital platforms that strengthen citizen’s digital rights in democratic societies.
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