Jornadas sobre pantallas urbanas y espacio público - Conclusiones finales

Paloma Blanco, PhD in Contemporary Art:

"Social participation, data visualizing, game and interaction, three titles for three presentation sessions, idea-sharing session and debates that clearly show the close relationship between these three spaces for reflection.
Aiming to apply everything spoken and confronted in these days to the specific situation of the screen located in Medialab-Prado, we consider that is crucial to first focus on the analysis of the socio-politic context of the Plaza de las Letras (public space), Medialab-Prado (screen manager) and the Barrio de la Letras (possible recipient and active participant). So the three basic subjects came out immediately when considering the role that the new screen would play in these environments.

In the first place, the screen's future contribution to the urban regeneration and gentrification of the Barrio de las Letras, where the screen is located, was mentioned. This is a neighbourhood isolated from traffic that is being changed into "an artistic neighbourhood" with all its consequences. It is inevitable to ask ourselves what are the role and the cultural content for this type of mass communication during a process of regeneration offered as a chance for the future, to improve the image of the city, a symbol of modernity? Which will be the role played by the screen during the current process of recapitalization of urban spaces, a process of urban remodelling/speculation orchestrated by The State and Private Capital that are creating a new urban landscape?" (...) To read the complete text please download the pdf. 

Tim Edler, realities:united, Berlin:

"I want to encourage and support any debate that helps to open up the conception to a degree that you (considerably) maximize the potential and (considerably) minimize restrictions and the risk to suffer from frustrated neighbors.

The situation:
The suitability of the urban situation in general is debatable regarding size and light emission of the installation and -  in the end - of course also regarding the potential (artistic, provocative, painful...) content you might want to experiment with. There is no doubt, that the placement of the media screen will always been seen in regard to the media lab's (incidental) placement at this location. Keeping in mind that a lot of the criticism towards media in public space is fed by the impression that they lack "urban" empathy and integration it is a risky decision to feed this sentiment by placing a platform of that size in this dense mostly residential area. That is unless you confine yourself to the development of media architecture/ media art with the explicit and exclusive mandate to develop formats for that specific kind of urban situation. " (...)  To read the complete text please download the pdf. 

Blanca Fernández Quesada, PhD in Fine Arts:

"Activities to which I attended as a moderator of the panel discussion "Game and Social Interaction":

September 29, Afternoon Session: Presentation of the participant's current job: Kim Halskov (Director of the Digital Urban Living in Denmark, www.digitalurbanliving.dk, researcher; his research projects are ascribed to the University) and Tim Elder (from Realities United in Germany founded with his brother Edler, realities­united.de, they are both architects). Later, the artist Daniel Canogar presented his work Asalto (Assault) created in this year's edition of Oxigenarte at the Alcazar in Segovia and Marcos from Medialab-Prado also presented the work Entramado (Intertwined) by artist Pablo Valbuena created in the square that gives access to the Medialab­-Prado. Lastly, all the guests participated in a debate moderated by Nerea Calvillo.

September 30, Morning Session: Tim Edler presents the projects from C4 in Cordoba, Lorenzo Alonso presents the expansion of Alcorcon's Town Hall and María Langarita and Javier Navarro introduce the Project for the screen at the Medialab Prado. Panel Discussion Game and Social Interaction with Kim Halskov, Tim Elder, Daniel Canogar, Marcos, Farhad from the Project Atopía in Norway, two representatives from the company managing an Urban Screen Project in Melbourne (Australia), a foreign architect and six people from Madrid." (...) To read the complete text please download the pdf.
 

Kim Halskov, Aarhus University, Denmark:

"In continuation of Tim's (Realities:United) thoughts and reflections I add mine below:

I very much agree with Tim's thoughts about the potential of having a modular kit, which could enable a traveling road show of media architecture though out the city of Madrid. I would, though, at this point in time be concerned whether this could be a feasible strategy (politically and technically)? A possible solution could be to mount some of the LED modules on the Medialab-Prado facade and mount the remaining modules on flexible units, which temporarily could be mounted at other locations in the city. Such a strategy does require that it is possible to raise funding continually.

Many of us have raised as a concern the effect a full-size big screen could have on the close neighbors. As we discussed in one of the groups on Wednesday it is important to get in contacts with those people directly affects and not only inform them about the new project but also to find ways of involving them using a participatory strategy: It could be the case that families with kids are living in the apartments and in that case it could be great to develop new kind of game that those kid could play with each other. Not possible to be conclusive here: much depend on who those people are and what their interests are." (...) To read the complete text please download the pdf.

Susa Pop, Public Art Lab, Berlin:

"1. Local reference: a media facade to fall in love with :

As the media facade is very closely located to the neighbourhood, it is very important to include them from the very beginning. They have to fall in love with the media facade. If you achieve this from the very beginning, you will never have problems for the further display of more experimental screenings. How to do it?
- Let the media facade grow like a plant: the media facade as a growing organism
Invite the neighbours to plant a digital flower that is slowly growing. Every day they have to water it digitally via internet and contribute to the growth of the plant.
Thus the media facade will slowly illuminate and the neigbours get more and more excited and curious about the 100% flourishing of the screen. 
- Cinematic light moods: sunset . Everybody loves the light atmosphere of sunset or sunrise. With the pure illumination of the screen, you could create an artificial light like in film productions which pretend natural light situations like sunset or sunrise. The media facade beams into the sitting rooms of the neighbours who feel like in their holidays during cold winter days in Madrid. 

Urban screens and media facades as a communication platform and local stage." (...)  To read the complete text please download the pdf.

United Visual Artists:

"Further to our peers input on modular approaches and the unwished for dominance of the typical 'billboard' form, we are going to address the issue of content and programming.
We are all agreed that the form is set and purchased by the Madrid council, as it the type of technology. What we are faced with is a large rectangular LED screen positioned above the media lab, abutting neighbouring houses and out of proportion with the public square below. In order to continue with the aims of Media Lab Prado and co-exist in the neighbourhood, the key to success of the work is the approach to programming and content creation.

Taking the pixel as unit in the screen we would suggest that a series of templates are created to give pixel perfect control on the screen, this subtly reducing the dominance and giving the opportunity to develop a flexible perception of the screen. This then offers a series of 'canvases' all of different forms and using the black space [ie the pixels that are off] as a part of the canvas. In essence turning pixels off is the way to change the way you work with it. These templates will allow artists to leave behind the impression of creating work for a 'screen' and work in a more abstract manner. Examples of these templates could be a series of low resolution wide horizontal / vertical strips, a central circular area, a grid and randomly changing matrix of black 'off' pixels. These templates can be built with a view to your curation and programming of the canvas.  " (...) To read the complete text, please download the pdf.