<eyebeam><blast> IO_DENCIES questioning urbanity

[kr+cf@khm.de (Knowbotic Research)]

IO_DENCIES explores the possibilities of intervening and acting in
complex urban processes taking place in distributed and networked
environments. The project looks at urban environments, analyses the
forces present in particular urban situations, and offers experimental
interfaces for dealing with these force fields. The aim, however, is not
to develop advanced tools for architectural and urban design, but to
create events through which it becomes possible to rethink urban
planning and construction. IO_DENCIES challenges the potentials that
digital technologies might offer towards connective, participatory
models of planning processes and of public agency.

development: Tokio-Shimbashi
In Tokyo, the central Shimbashi area was analysed in collaboration with
local architects. Several 'zones of intensities' were selected:
Ginza-Shopping Area, Imperial Hotel, Fish Market, Highway Entrance,
Hamarikyu garden + Homeless Area, Shimbashi Station, Hinode Passenger
Terminal, JR-Appartment House, World Trade Center. In these zones,
several qualities of urban movements (architectural,  traffic,
human,information,economic) were distinguished. These movements and
flows and their mutual interferences are represented by dynamic particle
flows which can be observed and manipulated through an Internet
interface: in a Java-applet users can deploy a series of specially
designed movement attractors, each of which has a different function in
manipulating or modifying those processes. These are functions like:
confirming, opposing, drifting, confusing, repulsing, organizing,
deleting, merging, weakening etc.  Participants can collaboratively
develop hypothetical urban dynamics. As soon as one participant starts
working on and modifying the urban profile by changing the particle
streams with movement attractors, a search engine in the background
starts looking in the IP-space for other participants with similar
manipulation interests and connects to them. They become present for
each other, the activated movement attractors of connected participants
will appear in the applet. Some of these can be 'absent' users whose
activities are remembered and reactivated by the system for some time
after the intervention took place. If another participant or more are
found, the characters of the data movements can be changed
collaboratively in tendencies, they can be made stronger, weaker, more
turbulent, denser, etc. Streams of urban movements can shift between
dynamic clusters of participants, chains of events are passing through.
Participants can develop new processes or react to already existing,
ongoing ones. The streams of the manipulated movements are visualized in
the activated segment of each participant, however, each participant
will work on and experience a singular and different segment. The
software modules allow for the variation and transformation of data
clusters by connective activities. KR+cF sees the project as an approach
to a discursive object, where aesthetical and action-oriented interests
occupy and reappropriate urban sites.

IO_DENCIES creates a topological cut through the heterogeneous
assemblage of physical spaces, data environments, urban imaginations,
connective agencies and individual experiences, and forms a model for
the complex way in which network topologies will have to be questioned.

 IO_DENCIES is an ongoing project, the first part of which was realised
by Knowbotic Research at the ArtLab7 in Tokyo in October 1997. Next
interventions are planned in Sao Paulo and Berlin. From 2.4.-8.4. we
(accompanied by Andreas Broeckmann, V2) will make local urban studies in
Sao Paulo. People of the forum currently in Sao Paulo and interested to
meet us could mail us.

greetings kr+cf

URL: http://www.khm.de/people/kr+cf/IO/
(applet loading time about 10 minutes)
japanese version: http://www.canon.co.jp/cast/

IO_DENCIES questioning urbanity
URL: http://www.khm.de/people/krcf/IO/
japanese version: http://www.canon.co.jp/cast/

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Knowbotic Research
Schillingstrasse 32
50670 Koeln, Germany
phone +49 221 779191
cellular +49 172 2524116
fax +49 221 7326695
http:// www.khm.de/people/krcf/
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