The Hackable City / Martijn de Waal & Ben Schouten
Increasingly we experience our cities through the interfaces of mobile and digital media. Where we go, whom we meet, what we can expect at particular locations: its the algorithms of digital platforms like Facebook, TomTom, Google who help us navigate the city and coordinate our social lives. Convenient as this may be, it also leads to a number of important questions. The city has always been an interface that spatially organized our social lives. However, now that these interfaces are increasingly owned and organized by digital platforms, to what extent does the city remain an open system? How can we design for a ‘hackable’ city, a city whose digital platforms are open and can be appropriated by its citizens from the perspective of the common good?
In this talk Martijn de Waal and Ben Schouten will discuss some of the research projects they are involved in at the Lectorate of Play & Civic Media at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, that address the empowerment of citizens in a ‘platform society’.
Martijn de Waal is a researcher on Urban Media and Citizen Empowerment at the Lectorate of Play & Civic Media at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. He is also an assistent professor in media studies at the University of Amsterdam. In 2007, together with Michiel de Lange he founded TheMobileCity.nl – a research group on digital media and urban culture and design. He is the author of The City as Interface. How Digital Media Are Changing the City. His current research project is called Hackable Metropolis Buiksloterham, it’s a research by design project that investigates the role of digital media in the process of citymaking. www.thehackablecity.nl
Ben Schouten graduated form Rietveld Art Academy in 1982 and has worked as professional artist till 1997. Currently he is researcher on Play and Citizen Empowerment at the Lectorate of Play & Civic Media at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.He is also a full professor of playful interaction at the Department of Industrial Design of Eindhoven University of Technology. His group focuses on play for social innovations, citizen empowerment and culture. He is an advisor for the European Commission on the ‘Internet of Things’ as well as for the Dutch Cultural Media Fund, responsible for E-culture.