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.