Panel Statement

Chair Per­son: Mar­tin Ko­plin
Pre­sen­ters: Hel­mut Eirund, Carl Skel­ton, Michael Jo­hans­son & Mikkel Thelle

All think­ing is in BETA – so how should the fu­ture city and ur­ban­ity be de­signed? The panel dis­cusses new processes for the Par­tic­i­pa­tive Evo­lu­tion of Smart Cities, the cul­ture and tech­nol­ogy of the new soft city. The aim is to com­bine ad­vanced new media art with re­search and de­vel­op­ment of in­no­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies, par­tic­i­pa­tion method­olo­gies and in­no­v­a­tive ser­vices for the de­sign of the new ur­ban­ity. The art ob­jec­tive is to arise new media and urban art sce­nar­ios in areas of re-de­sign and re-con­struc­tion. The tech­ni­cal ob­jec­tive is, to re­search and to de­velop mo­bile-sta­tion­ary en­vi­ron­ment for smart cities as par­tic­i­pa­tory and per­for­ma­tive cul­tural media in­fra­struc­ture for their de­vel­op­ment. It is about the re­quire­ments for fu­ture tech­ni­cal and cul­tural mass player in­fra­struc­ture for the urban de­vel­op­ment of Smart Cities and the op­ti­miza­tion of mu­nic­i­pal ser­vices and dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­tures in form of media art and gam­ing processes. Which tech­ni­cal ap­proaches from media art, urban art, con­cep­tual art, eGov­er­nance, e-ser­vices, e-mo­bil­ity, LBS, to the user-af­fected eCul­ture and eCre­ativ­ity are to be in­cluded to de­velop and to pro­vide im­proved sys­tems for urban de­vel­op­ment, plan­ning and par­tic­i­pa­tion? Cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion in urban de­vel­op­ment has a long cul­tural tra­di­tion in Eu­rope. The ris­ing com­plex­ity of urban de­vel­op­ment and in­fra­struc­ture is­sues evoke the need of im­proved co­op­er­a­tion of gov­ern­men­tal en­ti­ties, ex­perts and cit­i­zens. De­ci­sion mak­ing processes for fu­ture ac­tiv­i­ties in the field of urban sus­tain­abil­ity re­quire an en­hanced ap­proach to cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion, ar­tisic ex­pres­sion and user-friendly ex­pert ar­tic­u­la­tion. It is re­quired to ac­cess the full po­ten­tial of the new ca­pa­bil­i­ties of com­mu­ni­ca­tion net­works, the broad avail­abil­ity of mi­cro­com­put­ers, and the new de­sign and e-skills. The de­sign, de­vel­op­ment and im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Be­taville “soft­ware in­fra­struc­ture” meet all de­mands of fu­ture cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion for a sus­tain­able urban de­vel­op­ment. Pre­vi­ous ap­proaches did not took into ac­count ex­ist­ing ex­per­tise (eg. of media art, civic arts, par­tic­i­pa­tion or gam­ing or set a sin­gle dis­ci­pline per­spec­tives un­bal­anced in the fore­ground. Which is be coun­ter­acted through the in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary con­fig­u­ra­tion of the panel. Sim­i­larly, tech­ni­cal and or­ga­ni­za­tional is­sues of par­tic­i­pa­tory urban plan­ning with dif­fer­ent ap­proaches for dif­fer­ent user groups are to be con­sid­ered. How al­ter­na­tive plan­ning processes by artists, media ac­tivists, de­sign­ers, re­searchers can be in­te­grated should be dis­cussed. Ad­vanced art and en­vi­ron­men­tal and so­cially sus­tain­able de­sign is to be of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est and will get ex­posed. Dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture should be di­rected to their local po­ten­tial for par­tic­i­pa­tory art and de­sign, for de­vel­op­ment, for local knowl­edge processes and for the as­pect of cross-gen­er­a­tional, so­cial and eco­nomic net­work­ing. Think BETA Par­tic­i­pa­tory Evo­lu­tion of Smart Cities is chaired by the two di­rec­tors Mar­tin Ko­plin and Hel­mut Eirund of the “Think BETA Evo­lu­tion of Smart Cities” in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary think tank. It has part­ners from Asia, Africa, North Amer­ica and all over Eu­rope. The think tank is funded by the BMBF Ger­man Fed­eral Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and Re­search (Bun­desmin­is­terium für Bil­dung und Forschung) and goes back to the co-op­er­a­tion be­tween Mar­tin Ko­plin of the M2C In­sti­tute of Ap­plied Media Tech­nol­ogy and Cul­ture at the Uni­ver­sity of Ap­plied Sci­ences Bre­men and Carl Skel­ton from the BxmC Brook­lyn Ex­per­i­men­tal Media Cen­ter of the Poly­tech­nic In­sti­tute of the New York Uni­ver­sity.

• Mar­tin Ko­plin is found­ing Di­rec­tor of the M2C In­sti­tute for Ap­plied Media Tech­nol­ogy and Cul­ture at the Uni­ver­sity of Ap­plied Sci­ences Bre­men, Ger­many. He worked as media artist for over 15 years and is a sci­en­tific re­searcher in the field of com­puter sci­ence, dig­i­tal media and vir­tual or­ga­ni­za­tion for more then 10 years. Ac­tu­ally he works on par­tic­i­pa­tive media and vir­tual or­ga­ni­za­tions and is co­or­di­na­tor of sev­eral EU-pro­jects. He stud­ied media com­mu­ni­ca­tion, cul­tural stud­ies, or­ga­ni­za­tional stud­ies and labour stud­ies, has two M.A. and is ac­tu­ally com­plet­ing his PhD in Com­puter Sci­ences. Mar­tin cu­rates me­dia-art events and earned in­no­va­tion awards for his R&D pro­jects, like the “Best Prac­tice in Cre­ativ­ity and In­no­va­tion of EU Pro­grammes” in 2009 by the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion, or the “An­nual Mul­ti­me­dia Ger­many 2009”. He is lec­turer for dig­i­tal media com­mu­ni­ca­tion and in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­ogy. Be­fore, he was di­rec­tor of the M2C In­sti­tute, he was work­ing as sci­en­tific co­or­di­na­tor and re­searcher in the eCul­ture Fac­tory of the Fraun­hofer In­sti­tute IAIS, in the re­search group mo­bile2­cul­ture of the Dig­i­tal Media Pro­gram Bre­men and in the In­sti­tute for Graphic Com­put­ing and In­ter­ac­tion at the Uni­ver­sity of Bre­men. Mar­tin pub­lished over 40 ar­ti­cles, pa­pers and in­ter­na­tional con­fer­ence con­tri­bu­tions.