Human Ecosystems

BAOTAZ at Fondazione Neuromed

After La Triennale in Milan, BAOTAZ, the augmented sense created during La Cura Summer School, arrived in Pozzili for the annual European Researchers’ Night organized by Neuromed Foundation. From 28th to 30rd September 1.200 students from allover in Molise, together with researchers, doctors, institutions and citizens, interacted with the installation confronting with new imaginaries and raising…

Human Ecosystems at the Triennale di Milano with a prototype for an augmented sense

Human Ecosystems provided the data infrastructure for La Cura Summer School this August, in which 46 artists, researchers, designers, philosophers, engineers, activists and other representatives of different disciplines and approaches designed and developed a prototype for an augmented sense, a new tactility which is able to interconnect people to wide, diffused phenomena which can be represented…

Human Ecosystems and BASE at the Social Media Week in Milan #HumanEcosystems #data #architecture

Human Ecosystems will join BASE at Milan’s Social Media Week to present an upcoming project: R.E.M.O., which will bring the analysis of the relational ecosystems into the realm of the exploration of the ways in which a cultural organisation can generate relations, innovation, collaboration within its buildings and with the world outside. Here is some information about the event. June 7th,…

Report on Collaboration in #Bologna: HUB, presentation and document #collaborarebologna

HUB, Human Ecosystems Bologna, the system with which we have been observing the practices of collaboration in the city of Bologna together with the city administration and the Co-Cities at LabGov project, has produced its first Report. The Report will be presented on Friday March 18th (see below for the details of the event) and will be published on these pages immediately afterwards. HUB, mixing…

Persona Non Data: art in the age of #BigData

“Persona Non Data”: Art in the age of Big Data Full information at: http://artisopensource.net/persona-non-data/ Persona Non Data An interactive installation shows how art can join research and technological innovation in the understanding of the cultural transformation in the age of Big Data, investigating on the critical implications originating from the large quantities of data which human…

Human Ecosystems and Ubiquitous Commons at STARTS in Bruxelles

‘I think that more and more we all understand that innovation in the future will be on the intersection of arts and sciences.‘ (video) — Commissioner Carlos Moedas ‘Artistic creativity and critical thinking are essential for innovation in today’s digital world.  Already, highly innovative companies like Mercedes thrive on a strong link between artists and their engineers…The EU will support…

Terror and the City

In this article we will not speak about the Human Ecosystems. We will talk about cities, about how cities experience terror, and about public space. The events of November 13th 2015 in Paris call for a wide reflection on this subject. We will not talk about Islam, Christianity or other religions. We will not talk about terrorists, and the violence and sadness of human deaths and, on the other…

HE and UC at StARTS Boot exhibit – ICT2015, Lisbon 20-22 October

ICT2015 – Innovate, Connect, Transform  is the largest event organized by the EU Commission in 2015 to foster innovation at European level, show the best results achieved through financed projects, inform about upcoming call, facilitate the emergence of new networks. The StARTS program – Innovation at the nexus of Science, Technology and the Arts, realized for the occasion an exhibit showcasing a…

After its very first launch in Rome in September 2013 with EC(m1), after the Festival dell’Innovazione in Bari, Human Ecosystems goes back to Italy with a new project sponsored by the City of Bologna, with the support of ANCI – National Association of Italian Municipalities. The project will start on October 7th 2015. Below the official press release. HUB – Human Ecosystems Bologna: the emotional…

Myriads: Human Ecosystems at Ars Electronica

Some times has passed after Ars Electronica 2015, and our participation to its exhibit and to education programme with the Myriads project, part of the Human Ecosystems and of the Ubiquitous Commons.

Myriads and Ars Electronica: some links

http://www.aec.at/postcity/en/myriads/

http://www.aec.at/postcity/en/myriads-of-knowledge-pills/

http://www.aec.at/aeblog/en/2015/08/28/myriads/

https://m.flickr.com/#/photos/arselectronica/20953511038/

http://motherboard.vice.com/it/read/fastforward-ars-electronica

The Myriads Exhibit

The Myriads exhibit constituted an environment in which everything you see/hear/experience is generated through the data massively captured in multiple modalities from the city.

Myriads at Ars Electronica

In this case, data was massively harvested from major social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) to gain understandings about the myriads of micro histories of the city, as they evolve with people’s behaviours, emotions, movements in the spaces of the city, and their flows of information, knowledge and communication. (the Human Ecosystems technology was used to perform the massive harvesting of this data, and for the use of Natural Language Analysis and Geo-referencing techniques interpret what emotions, movements, behaviours, topics, relations and flows were expressed by the captured messages).

Everything in the space was designed to show the passage from the industrial city to theThird Generation City, the  city of the flows of data, information, knowledge and emotions.

In the exhibit, the data coming from the interpretation of emotions, expressions, gossips, movements and behaviours, become the generative sounds, visuals and knowledge which you could see and access in the projections, screens, speakers, and in the workshops. As in Marco Casagrande‘s definition: the third generation city is the ruin of the industrial city, in which gossip, ruins infrastructures, transforming them into syncretic maps of the flows of citizens and their communications/exchanges in the city.

Myriads, Human Ecosystems

Go to Art is Open Source for more information about the exhibit.

The Education Program

At Ars Electronica, the Myriads project included 15 workshop pills: 15 different micro workshops, each one dealing with one specific point of view or perspective which was relevant to the concept of the work.

The Workshop Pills

Each workshop pill was distributed under the form of a dose of the Myriads’ knowledge drug, each containing one micro-slide with the title of the workshop and a link to a set of documentation items which were used in it: from articles, to scientific publications, to software and tools.

These are all of the micro-slides of the workshop-pills:

The workshops covered multiple topics: identity; relational ecosystems; practical examples of generative arts (and the software needed to create it); privacy and surveillance; peer-to-peer ethnography; zombies (and the significance of understanding each era’s monsters). There was also a hidden, mysterious 16th workshop (which some people actually managed to find) going under the title of Jennifer Gabry’s essay “Telepathically Urban“.

Each workshop lasted 20 minutes, giving participants a good overview of the theme, as well as the possibility to choose which workshops to participate to, assembling the, into an educational and experiential path.

These are the slides from the workshop:

Considerations

We were very satisfied with the results.

As is always our intention, both the exhibit and the education program were a stimulus for people’s perception for possible futures of cities, helping them to build their own imagination, vision and desires beyond mere technologically possible futures, tending toward better understanding of their desirable, imaginable futures, together with other people, their conflicts, agreements, divergences, differences and harmonies.

In this, the education program constituted a major advantage. Workshop participants really seemed to appreciate the effort dedicated to exploring possibilities, going beyond the techno-imaginaries which are currently promoted by industry operators.

People were very engaged, stayed long after the intended 20 minutes duration of the workshops, bringing up interesting and profound conversations. They came back over and over, multiple times, even given the richness of the program at Ars Electronica. This happened for the specific need, expressed by many participants, to confront with theabsence of conflict, differences and transgression in the technological discourse about the future of the city.

For example, this was particularly visible and highlighted by the industrialization of mindworkshop, and by the identity workshop, where we analysed some of the most critical aspects of the emergence of the experience economies and of the creative economies, as well as in the Ubiquitous Commons workshop, where we learned some models to use to enact participatory actions to propose autonomous alternatives.

In the end, the clear issue was about te importance of the themes which we confronted with in Myriads. They go well beyond the technological features of the “future” cities, and regard human beings’ fundamental rights and desires.

Ubiquitous Commons at Smart City Exhibition: Data Commons #ubiquitouscommons

Data as Commons. This will be the focus of our intervention atSmart City Exhibition 2015 in Bologna, on October 16th 2015, at 9:30. What happens when data becomes a commons? How can we build the high quality relational environment which is needed for citizens to effectively manage commons? What data can become a commons? How can we create inclusive, collaborative economies of multiple types…

Ubiquitous Commons at Hybrid City conference in Athens: Data to the People

Ubiquitous Commons and Human Ecosystems will be at the “Hybrid City III: Data to the People” conference in Athens, on September 17-19, organised by the University Research Institute of Applied Communication (URIAC), in collaboration with New Technologies Laboratory, of the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies, of the University of Athens. The paper “Data and the City: moving from…

come to #Water, with @HumanEcosystems at Expo Aquae, in Venice with @BaicrCultura #ExpoVenice2015 @diculther

Human Ecosystems at Expo Aquae in Venice, August 1st 2015, at 11am. (EXPO ACQUAE VENEZIA is in via Ferraris 5 Venezia) How do we speak about water? How do we relate? What are our fears, concerns, important issues, joys and anxieties about water? We have captured 3 months of public social networking conversations about water, and…

Human Ecosystems workshop at King’s College (London)

On June 3rd, Human Ecosystems, together with AOS and Ubiquitous Commons, performed the workshop “Playing with Data in the Ubiquitous Commons”. Human Ecosystems Workshop – King’s College, London Hosted by the Big Social Data Group at King’s College, during the morning session the workshop introduced and explored with participants a series of  key concepts, in particular: the conceptual frame of…

HE/BA: installation, workshop, talk at Festival dell’Innovazione in Bari

Together with Art is Open Source, Nefula and Ubiquitous Commons, Human Ecosystems performed an interactive exhibit, a workshop and talk in the city of Bari during the Festival dell’Innovazione 2015 organized by Arti Puglia. The exhibit “HE/BA – Human Ecosystems Bari“, placed in the beautiful location of Teatro Margherita, realized a temporary version od the Realtime Museum of the City of Bari…

Human Ecosystems in Bari for "Festival dell'Innovazione #bari #human #ecosystem

Join us in Bari on May 21-23 2015 for the “Festival dell’Innovazione” together with Art is Open Source, Human Ecosystems, Nefula and ISIA, for a workshop on the Human Ecosystems and a Human Ecosystems installation about the real-time digital life of Bari.

The Human Ecosystems Lab will be a hands-on experience, and will give everyone the tools and knowledge to observe the public digital life of…