Interactivos?'12 Dublin: Hack the City. Current and Future Needs - Summary of selected projects

Projects:

• Open Energy: Hacking your Home's Electrical System
• Cycling Safety Report System / Bicycle Sadness
• Cocook Dublin Workshop
• Mobile Cityscapes: crowdsourcing knowledge for a sustainable city / InfiniteCity
• GuerrillaHuerta/ Seedbombah
• Thank you for recycling

Open Energy: Hacking your Home's Electrical System

by Fran Castillo and Oscar Marín Miró (Spain)

Open Energy aims to develop a platform to explore new systems of visualization energy use and to optimize it accordingly, both in domestic and industrial environments.The system is built along two dimensions: first one, Energy Monitoring Device, which investigates open hardware devices in which monitoring power consumption, and a second dimension, Open Energy Visualization (Data Visualization / Real-Time Energy Behaviour Visualization), which explores new ways of real-time visualization power consumption in domestic environments. These systems will allow us to amplify our knowledge about the dynamic behavior of energy anywhere. Open Energy is a prototype of energy infrastructure completely Open Source.
More information in http://openenergy.francastillo.net/

Contact this project through the Studiolab Community Forum 

* For reasons beyond our control this project won't be developed at this workshop

Cycling Safety Report System /Bicycle Sadness

by Dara McHugh (Ireland - Dublin)

This project will create a website and mobile platform for the cycling community to input their experiences of dangerous areas for cycling, based on specific incidents. The system will aggregate this information and display it on an online map. Users will be able to query data based on their own interests (e.g. show only accidents that occurred between 8 and 10am, show only accidents caused by cars turning left).

The intended users are cyclists in Dublin, planners and policy-makers. The software will be developed in an open-source framework to be replicable in any other location worldwide.

The intention of the project is to improve information on cycling safety for planners and policy-makers, and to give cyclists access to information on cycling danger spots. We will work with planners to develop methodologies for using the information to support studies for road improvements.

Contact this project through the Studiolab Community Forum 

Cocook Dublin Workshop

by Íñigo Cornago Bonal y Claudia Sánchez (Spain)

One year ago Cocook movement started in Stockholm. It is a collaborative global movement that involves cooking and eating in urban public spaces. Altough it seems to deal with everyday simple issues it requires a certain know-how that we propose to share in an open workshop.

The project consist in an collaborative workshop open to Dublin citizens. In it participants will develop several portable kitchen prototypes for communal use in the public space, get knowledge about the fields involved in the process and promote the meeting and collaboration between existing local networks.

The development of the workshop follows the same idea as cocook and takes place in the public space. It requires a basecamp where the activities proposed are held.

The aim is to give citizens the tools to repeat the experience by themselves as long as they enjoy it.
Cocook is an on-going project. You can follow it and participate at: http://cocook.tumblr.com

Contact this project through the Studiolab Community Forum 

Mobile Cityscapes: crowdsourcing knowledge for a sustainable city / InfiniteCity

by Corelia Baibarac (Ireland - Dublin)

‘Mobile Cityscapes’ is an urban awareness experiment which attempts to ‘hack’ (crowdsource) subjective urban data: city dwellers’ experiences, emotions and meanings attached to spaces in the city they move through in their everyday lives. The experiment explores an approach to citizen participation in decision-making regarding city aspects that are inextricably linked to citizens’ everyday lives and to urban sustainability – specifically, urban mobility. The resulting digital platform – prototyped through the experiment – is seen as one of the tools which could allow the public to take part in decision-making processes in a meaningful and collaborative way.
The project merges features from process-based urban design, locative media art, and spatial practice theory. It uses GPS technology as a collaborative, participatory and creative medium, which makes visible the relationship movement/space/time, while representing an interventionist way of raising individual and collective awareness of how space is designed and used. The digital prototype employs narratives, photography, sound and video as further ways of raising awareness, and for opening up conversations about current and potential uses of everyday spaces (e.g. movement through).

Contact this project through the Studiolab Community Forum 

GuerrillaHuerta / Seedbombah

by Judith Villamayor (Argentina)

The project is about creating orchards in public unproductive spaces through the release of “Seed bombs” in every free green space. Planting food plants in public abandoned spaces GuerrillaHuerta will be integrated into the neighborhoods of Dublin promoting the techniques and necessary elements to initiate the interchange of experiences and knowledge among neighbors, allowing to establish cultural and artistic ties highlighting the values of free culture and environment.

With the pass of time the bombs start dissolving and the seeds are ready to grow. They are balls of clay, compost, water and seeds that are thrown in hard to reach places. Erosion of wind and rain do their job and the seeds are quickly spread. (This technique of throwing seed bombs from airplanes in order to recuperate the land devastated by fires was first used by Masanobu Fukuoka at the turn of the century. Nowadays, we use it in every free and abandoned space).

Each "attack" (action of throwing seed bombs) will be documented (photographs and video). Videos will be uploaded to an Internet platform with a virtual map with the location of each "Garden" so that people can follow the action and, if desired, harvest freely the food grows. More information: http://articultores.net

Contact this project through the Studiolab Community Forum 

Thank you for recycling

Martina Kalogjera, med-i-kids (Croatia)

'Thank you for recycling' is about drawing attention to the recycling habits by hacking recycling bins and converting them into public art installations.

We are going to put a few of these recycling bins (for paper, plastic, glass, bio degradable material..) in the public area, somewhere as close as possible to the heart of Dublin. Each bin will have sensors for the waste which will count total amount of it by the end of the day. During the night, the bin will visualize output of its sensor on a display which will cover part of its surface. Display will be formed of modules of layered glass, led lights and photovoltaic solar cells which will absorb energy from the sun during the day. We will decide how to represent this data in creative and customizable ways and decide about design and other details of implementation. Also, there is a possibility to use datasets of recycling quantities of the city and to visualize them on led displays and on the web page that will accompany the project together with the information about recycling bins. The whole project itself will be good for environment combining both renewable energy sources and recycling while at the same time will be amazing public art sculpture and real time visualization of "good citizens' deeds".

The workshop at Science Gallery is part of Studiolab, a 3-year Europe-wide initiative that merges the artist's studio with the research lab. Funded by the EC Seventh Framework Programme in 2011, Studiolab is a network that provides a platform for creative projects that bridge divides between science, art and design.