Skin: New design organics mayo 29, 2008

Skin: New design organics

Ellen Lupton

Skin a multilayered, multipurpose organ that shifts from thick to thin, tight to loose, lubricated to dry, across the landscape of the body. Skin, a knowledge-gathering device, responds to heat and cold, pleasure and pain. It lacks definitive boundaries, flowing continuously from the exposed surfaces of the body to its internal cavities. It is both living and dead, a self-repairing, self-replacing material whose exterior is senseless and inert while its inner layers are flush with nerves, glands, and capillaries. Contemporary designers approach the surfaces of products and buildings as similarly complex, ambiguous forms. Manufactured skins are richly responsive substances that modulate the meaning, function, and dimension of things.

(más…)

Urban Screens – The urbane potential of public screens for interaction mayo 8, 2008

Urban Screens – The urbane potential of public screens for interaction

Mirjam Struppek

Abstract

Within a time frame of about ten years, experimental (interactive) media installations and performances have gained recognition as new art forms in public space. Artworks explore the interconnectedness of public space, interaction, and new media. Urban Screens investigates how the growing infrastructure of dynamic digital displays in urban space, currently dominated by commercial forces, can be utilized in this context and broadened with cultural content. The research project wants to network and sensitize engaged parties for possibilities of using the digital infrastructure for contributing to a lively urban society. The integration of current information technologies supports the development of a new digital layer of the city in a fusion of material and immaterial space, redefining the function of this growing infrastructure. Interactivity and participation will bind the screens to the communal context of the space and thereby create local identity and engagement.

(más…)