Cross media artist Jan Hatt-Olsen

Necessary conditions for an urban wiki project, based on the experience from the urban wiki’s in praxis and the urban wiki workshop during the Metropolis Laboratory 2008.

 

 

How do you envisage the audience interaction or participation in urban wiki – Copenhagen Metropolis? Do you need to generate participatory content before the event itself?: How do you envisage the audience interaction or participation in your project? Do you need to generate participatory content before the event yourself?

 

The interaction is quite easy, like editing Wikipedia, but it has to be learned. It’s also a conscious interaction. People, who interact, shall actively want to interact.

 

It’s therefore necessary that people now they interactive can edit projection, when they are out on the square or anywhere with internet access,

 

The urban wiki shall when is fully functional have a community connected to it, which can develop a culture for how to use and navigate in the augmented urban space. Before this community is developed, the burocrats and administrators have this function. The more the community is functioning by it self, the more can the burocrats and administrators go into their primary function being the same as burocrats and administrator in connected to a square in physical urban space.

 

It is therefore good with participation in the communities before the event. It could be done by establishing the urban wiki – Copenhagen on the net before the event in the Copenhagen Metropolis During the pre period when it only exist on the net there could be information about how to join the community and workshops connected the Urban wiki - Copenhagen Metropolis.

 

When the event start I envisage that the people who already know about the urban wiki, will use it and pass on knowledge to friend and other interested. (you can learn to use it in under a minute)

 

How would you try to spark the audience’s interest or initiate dialogue with the audience in the urban space?:

 

It could be an idea to have a performance aspect, where (you could call theme wiki pilots) would walk around with laptop, pda or mobile phone, use the urban wiki and create attention about the fact that everyone can do it.

 

It could also be an idea to start the dialogue with the public, already before the event, before the wiki is projected into locations i the Copenhagen Metropolis and the Urban Wiki – Copenhagen Metropolis is starting.

Before that the wiki could exist as wiki on the net, which people could use to address the theme water. Thereby being aware of the wiki, before it becomes an urban wiki in the Copenhagen Metropolis (both a locative media and a net media)

 

What infrastructure in the Copenhagen Metropolis do you want to use and do you need additional tools or special support?

 

 

 

·        .I would need the projection areas, with characteristics outlined in urbanwiki-copenhagenmetropolis.pdf  workshop presentations

·        I would need working space for the workshops.

·        I would need PR support to integrate the urban wiki, with the general debate about water, political, environmental, artistic, in the urban planning etc.

·        I would need some volunteers to perform as wikipilots during the event, so that the public on the square and by passers will be aware of that they themselves can interact with the urban wiki projections. If the installation are up for a longer period there will after a time now longer be a need for the performative push ( the wiki pilots)

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What time slots of the screen infrastructure would you need, to run your project successfully? (a whole day, a certain repeated time slot per day, etc.): I would need an hour pr. day so that the dialogue will have time to develop, alongside the urban wiki workshops.

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What are you experiences with (multimedia) projects in public space, or why are you interested in working with urban screens?: I have experience from the two urban wiki’s urban artscape – furesø www.urbanwiki.net , November , December , 2007 January  2008 and and wikivollsmose April 2008 www.wikivollsmose.net  Earlier in 2004 with the City as a Collection of Poetry www.lyrik-installation.dk/Vaerloese  and in several workshops.

 

My interest is to enchant and augment urban space. I wish in that way to create a richer and more living urban space and making doors and bridges in the invisible architecture. In the borders, between cultures, between places, between the imagination and physical urban space and between the private space and public space.

 

My interest in new media goes back to a charter for street creativity ‘The Cinescape Street Creativity Charter’ I presented in 2005 at City Living – Living City | the 6’th European Biennial of Town and Town Planners. www.urbanartscape.org/streetcreativitycharter.htm

 

The urban wiki’s are closely connected to that charter. The strength of multimedia connected to computers and screens is the high degree of flux, everything is in change or potential change.

The problems with small screens are there closed existence in physical urban space. Only a very few persons often only one can look at a small screen at a time. The consequence is that it is not a shared encounter with a part of urban space as a whole. When I am talking about a shared encounter with urban space as a whole, I mean that all people in urban space will be part of the encounter, in different ways of cause but it will be something they all can see or here. This is achieved with large screens, which therefore create an urban space fundamentally different from an urban space without screen or with small screens.

 

The new type of urban space created by large screns, is an augmented, enchanted urban space and this is my primary focus of interest as a research and creation through artistic practices.