The Mobile City is involved in what promises to be an interesting conference on storytelling with digital media, to be held in Amsterdam, February 17 2011. Here’s the blurb:

Wireless Stories New Media in Public Space
From flash mobs to GPS city games, urban screens to digital graffiti, and smartphone tours to augmented reality

Amsterdam, Stadsschouwburg
Thursday Feb 17th 10:30-17:30
Register (Free) here

Physical space is becoming more and more filled with electronic communication and observation networks, which are invisible but no less present for that. We use mobile phones to organise our social lives, GPS to find the places we want to go, and RFID to ride on public transport, monitored by CCTV cameras all the time. Meanwhile, digital space is becoming more “physical”, with applications like Foursquare, Facebook Places and Google Maps linking social networks and data files to geographical locations. The physical world of the city and the virtual world of the Internet are overlapping more and more. This has major consequences for both the way we experience public spaces and the way we exchange news and stories.

The Sandberg@Mediafonds 2011 conference will explore the possibilities and consequences of these developments for media producers. How will the rise of locative and mobile media affect the meaning and form of the things we tell each other? Does the growing number of media applications in our streets and squares constitute a limitation of publicness, or can they actually generate new forms of it? Can we find a new kind of audience in physical outdoor space? Which other narrative forms do these media applications offer, and how can we develop valuable uses and productions for them?

The conference is a joint project of the design department of the Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam and the Mediafonds. It kicks off the Sandberg@Mediafonds master class, in which programme makers and designers will work together on new cultural media productions that explore digital boundaries. The results will be presented on Thursday 26 May 2011.

More information:
www.wirelessstories.nl

The Mobile City’s Michiel de Lange will give a keynote talk at the Conference, and Martijn de Waal will end the day with a brief reflective statement, and we were also (be it modestly in the background) involved as consultants to the program committee.

Here is the full line up:

PART I: THE PUBLIC

Arnold Reijndorp (NL) [u.r.] &mdash The City as Performance

Arnold Reijndorp is an independent researcher working at the cutting edge of urbanism/architecture and social and cultural developments in the urban sphere. He holds the Han Lammers chair in socioeconomic developments in new urban areas at the University of Amsterdam and is affiliated with the International New Town Institute in Almere. With Maarten Hajer, he wrote In Search of NewPublic Domain. His recent coauthored publications in Dutch include Atlas Westelijke Tuinsteden Amsterdam (‘Atlas of the Western Garden Cities of Amsterdam’) and Op zoek naar nieuw publiek domein Analyse en strategie (‘In search of new public domain, Analysis and strategy’)

Michiel de Lange (NL) &mdash The Mobile City

Michiel de Lange completed his PhD in philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam with the dissertation “Moving Circles: Mobile Media and Playful Identities” (2010), on how mobile media technologies shape the construction of personal and cultural identities, in the urban context in particular. He studied cultural anthropology and the sociology of non-western societies at the University of Amsterdam. With Martijn de Waal, he founded The Mobile City, a think tank, research initiative and international network concerned with the role of digital technology in urban culture and urban design.

blog.bijt.org
themobilecity.nl

Dick van Dijk (Waag Society) (NL) &mdash 7scenes

Dick van Dijk is a concept developer at Waag Society, a media lab that explores the interplay of culture and technology in relation to society, education, culture and health care. Part of his work there involves creating interactive concepts, strategising about (and realising) user involvement, and monitoring the development of the actual object. He is currently working with the Amsterdam Museum on a project called the MuseumApp, based on 7scenes, a community platform for multiuser real-time gaming and storytelling using mobile and location-specific technology.

www.waag.org
www.museumapp.nl
www.7scenes.com

Helena Muskens, Quirine Racké (NL) &mdash Diamond Dancers

In Diamond Dancers, a film by filmmakers Quirine Racké and Helena Muskens and choreographer Nicole Beutler, a large group of line dancers travels to Amsterdam in a white tour bus to perform as a flash mob on Dam Square. Most flash mobs are young people who give surprise performances, but this one is a group of elderly dancers who enjoy showing off for passersby. Racké and Muskens produce and direct films and documentaries exploring themes of identity and community in a mediated world. They made the documentaries Celebration (2005), about the town Disney built, and Come Back Kate (2007), about fans of the singer Kate Bush. At the moment, they are working on I Love Venice, a film about the Disneyfication of the Italian city.

www.keyfilm.nl/movie/diamond+dancers

PART II: AUDIENCES AND INTERACTION

Dimitri Nieuwenhuizen (LUST/LUSTlab) (NL) &mdash Mobile Man, Mobile Machine: The Use(fulness) of Ambient Intelligence

LUSTlab conducts research, generates hypotheses, and makes unstable media stable again. More than a new form of research and development, LUSTlab’s work goes beyond observing, inventing and producing, comprising a platform where knowledge, issues and ideologies can be shared. Research takes place at the fringe of society, where communication, science and technology are united with design, interaction and technique, often without a clear goal. LUSTlab believes the future of digital media lies in the design of their use. LUSTlab approaches design as the most ingenious, beautiful and consolatory science in its endeavours to understand human beings – from our molecular origins to our possibilities in the future.

www.lust.nl
www.lustlab.net

Tobias Ebsen (Center for Digital Urban Living [DUL]) (DK) &mdash Design Cases in Urban Computing Research

The Center for Digital Urban Living, a strategic research organisation, addresses new forms of digital urban living influenced by the societal and technological development of the experience economy. The Center’s activities are based in and reinforce public-private cooperation; projects are organised according to research-based, user-driven innovation and an explorative, case-based activity model. In keeping with this model, four cases – Civic Communication in Urban Spaces, Participation in Cultural Heritage, Digital Art in Urban Space, and New Urban Areas – have been initially selected to constitute the basis for involving citizens, industry and public institutions in case-driven research with an emphasis on innovations and partnering, leading to new businesses.

www.digitalurbanliving.dk

Matthijs ten Berge (NL) &mdash illuminate Outdoor Media

Schooled as an urban planner at the University of Amsterdam Matthijs ten Berge worked in the field of film production in the Netherlands. After starting up his company illuminate he tried to combine both worlds in developing and producing media architecture projects in the public domain. Projects include LEDTex for the National Textile Museum in Tilburg, LED Landmark Cruquius and the award winning Moodwall (Dutch Design Award 2009). Matthijs is the Benelux coördinator for the International Urban Screens Association (IUSA) and member of the expert team for sensory influencing of the Dutch Centre for Crime Prevention & Safety.Array

PART III: STORYTELLING

Michael Epstein (USA) &mdash Untravel Media

Untravel Media began with CEO Michael Epstein’s graduate research on mobile storytelling techniques, audiences and technologies at MIT. His thesis focused on industry and experimental projects bringing mobile technologists and storytellers together. He received a grant from the European Union, Motorola and Dell to create a walking tour of Venice from 2004 to 2005. His concept of “terratives” – born of that project – developed into a business, and in 2006 he incorporated Untravel Media, a unique production and software company focusing on mobile storytelling. Working with a range of clients and grants, the company has grown into a diverse studio with developers, designers, writers, and producers based in Boston and San Francisco.

www.untravelmedia.com

Martin Rieser (GB) &mdash The Third Woman and Other Stories

A professor of digital creativity, Martin Rieser has always been fascinated by the possibility of creating fragmentary narrative structures and interactive stories using digital technology. This has led him into explorations using mobile sensing and large-scale interactive video experiences. His art practice has been seen around the world from New York to China, and he recently edited The Mobile Audience, a book on locative art due out this year from Rodopi. He is a joint research professor in De Montfort University’s Institute of Creative Technologies and Faculty of Art and Design. The Third Woman is an interactive mobile film-game, performance, and installation, which gradually reveals the layers of a contemporary film drama on mobile phones and screens.

www.martinrieser.com
www.thirdwoman.com

Bregtje van der Haak (NL) &mdash A Sense of Place: Some Hong Kong Observations

Bregtje van der Haak is a documentary filmmaker, journalist and writer. Since 1998, she has been directing international television documentaries on social change, with a focus on urban life and globalisation, most recently for the Backlight series. As a project director and acting editor-in-chief for VPRO television, she initiated many transmedia formats and collaborative projects, including Metropolis TV and Urban Century. For the past six months, Van der Haak was a visiting associate professor in the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong, where she developed a curriculum for undergraduate education in “future television” and wrote a research blog on new technologies and immersive documentary storytelling.

weblogs.vpro.nl/beingthere/
www.youtube.com/user/VPROinternational
www.cityu.edu.hk/scm/

Martijn de Waal &mdash Analysis of the day

Martijn de Waal is a writer and researcher in the field of digital media and society. His specialities include the role of new media in urban culture. He co-founded The Mobile City with Michiel de Lange and is affiliated with the University of Groningen’s Department of Practical Philosophy and the University of Amsterdam’s Media Studies programme. His dissertation on digital media and the urban public will be published this year. At the end of the conference day, De Waal will provide a review and a critical analysis.

themobilecity.nl