[ISEA2011] Panel: Carl Skel­ton – Be­taville: The View from New Brook­lyn

Panel Statement

Panel: Think BETA: Participative Evolution of Smart Cities

The Be­taville pro­ject has ma­tured from an ex­per­i­men­tal soft­ware de­vel­op­ment pro­ject into a ve­hi­cle of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and ex­change in the main­stream: as a cre­ative tool in plan­ning and ar­chi­tec­ture stu­dios, a medium for con­cept de­vel­op­ment and ad­vo­cacy in the con­text of local art and ur­ban­ism pro­jects. In this paper, one of Be­taville’s found­ing cit­i­zens will pre­sent some of the first re­sults from Be­taville’s im­ple­men­ta­tions in the field as a col­lab­o­ra­tive en­vi­sion­ing and de­vel­op­ment en­vi­ron­ment: from adap­tive re-use of ex­ist­ing built forms to large-scale neo-top­ias built for New York, but in many cases draw­ing on a mind-bog­gling breadth of prece­dents. It seems to be pos­si­ble to “mash up” Prouns, New Baby­lon, New Ur­ban­ism, dis­carded de­signs for base­ball sta­di­ums, and next-gen­er­a­tion tech­nolo­gies… until the mix is just right for a next step in the real world.

  • Carl Skel­ton is In­dus­try Pro­fes­sor and the found­ing di­rec­tor of the Brook­lyn Ex­per­i­men­tal Media Cen­ter and the In­te­grated Dig­i­tal Media pro­grams at the Poly­tech­nic In­sti­tute of New York Uni­ver­sity, USA. His work on the Be­taville pro­ject has been sup­ported by the Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tion through its Cul­tural In­no­va­tion fund, the Mu­nic­i­pal Art so­ci­ety of New York, Mi­crosoft Re­search through the Games for Learn­ing In­sti­tute, and Red Hat.  idm.engineering.nyu.edu

Full text (PDF) p. 2262-2267