The Mobile City

Author: Martijn de Waal

  • Is GPS-navigation turning us into ‘Men without Qualities’?

    The Dutch Daily NRC Handelsblad published a highly interesting interview with retiring law-professor Egbert Dommering. He enters the current debate about new media, personal development and cultural authority by expressing his fear that the dominance of cultural systems for information retrieving like Google or GPS-Navigation will turn us all into ‘Men without Qualities’ (after the…

  • Video as suburban condition

    Not so long ago, at the Netherlands Media Art Institute, I came across an interesting installation by Martijn Hendriks, called ‘video as suburban condition’. The installation shows a loop of Youtube clips that most likeley we are all too familiar with: teenagers popping mentos in coke bottles on suburban cul de sacs, young girls –…

  • Design of Urban Computing:ambient or foregrounding?

    While attending The Mobile City, panelist Nicolas Nova wandered through Rotterdam and made some interesting observations: Beyond “urban computing” notions such as location-based services or touch-interactions, it’s rather when I encounter street signage about “automation” that I feel the digital city. In film theory there is a term called ‘foregrounding’ – this means that the…

  • Mobile City Conference Wrap-up

    The conference is over, and Michiel and I are very happy with the result. We had a great turn out, highly interesting key notes, inspiring presentations of locative and mobile projects and lots of discussion. Many thanks to all our speakers, our sponsors, our hosts at the NAi and our volunteers. And of course: thanks…

  • The street of the future

    City of Sound is one of my favourite blogs on Urban Culture. This week blog-author Dan Hilll ponders about the future of the street. In fact, this article comes very close to addressing the main theme of our conference: what happens to urban culture when physical and digital spaces merge? It’s recommended reading for anyone…

  • See you at Faraday’s. And leave your laptop at home.

    On Adam Greenfield’s excellent blog, an interesting discussion has risen on urban culture, public sphere, design and so called third spaces. In a reaction to the growing number of laptop nomads colonizing neighborhood cafes, using wifi networks to turn these convivial places into boring office spaces (ok, I am exaggerating), Adam revives his idea for…

  • Mediacity conference @ Weimar: the design of urban situations

    Last weekend I visited the Media City Conference organized by the Bauhaus University in Weimar. One of the main themes of the conference was the concept of ‘situations’, or ‘the settings in which people interact’, as formulated by Jens Geelhaar. This concept was probably best illustrated by a photo that Mediacity-fellow Katharine Willis showed of…

  • Urban computing, Lifestyle management and Google Earth Urbanism

    Working on his new book, Adam Greenfields asks: what do you feel are the most significant contemporary developments in urban informatics? The most resonant projects, the most powerful interventions, the scariest precedents? Nicolas Nova, one of our pannelists, has a very interesting overview of suggestions that I recommend reading. I found Timo Arnall’s suggestion also…

  • Mobile City Fantasies @ CES

    So the yearly circus called Consumer Electronics Show has come to an end again. I didn’t make it to Vegas (and rightly so, if you may believe Gizmodo) but I did do a round up of some blogs and major news outlets today. Was there anything launched or announced that could impact the experience of…

  • Designing for Locative Media: seamless or seamful experiences?

    During the New Year’s holidays I was taking a short vacation in the southern part of Holland. The bungalow we rented provided some proto-locative media: a cheaply printed leaflet featuring rasterized b&w pictures of local attractions with local companies advertising their services (rent-a-bike, visit-our-sauna) in the margins. One of them was a specialty butcher’s shop…

  • Rethinking Community, Rethinking Space (Call for Papers)

    If you are interested in The Mobile City conference, you might also be interested in this upcoming conference organized by the Association of Internet Researchers, called Rethinking Community, Rethinking Place. In the past few years, new forms of net-based communities are emerging, distributed on various websites and services, and making use of several media platforms…

  • Arithmetik Garden – RFID City

    On a few blogs I found reviews of the Roppongi Crossing show in the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. One of the exhibits that seemed very interesting was the Arithmetik Garden by Sato Masahiko and Kiriyama Takashi. When entering this interactive exhibit, the player picks up a card with a number on it. Then the…