Exposive Revelations (2008) by Daniel McKewen of the program Great Expectations.

NEXT WAVE festival - May 15-31 2008: a biennial festival all around Melbourne, presenting genre-busting new works by the next wave of Australian artists. The theme "Closer Together" refers to the way society is - for the better or for the worse - becoming increasingly connected by media and communication technologies.

Sceptical of the acclaimed social achievements of new technologies, the Brisbane-based artist-run initiative Boxcopy sets out to explore the futility of human activities with a collection of works entitled Great Expectations as part of the Membrane Project, a major site-specific exhibition, infiltrating the cracks and crevices of Federation Square.

A few other projects deal with media interventions in Public spaces such as Spinning a video projection by Kotoe Ishii is running on the Night Projection Window of the Centre for Contemporary Photography. Serial Blogger a unique digital narrative and performance installation based on a hyper-real crime scene investigation. The project invites audiences to pry into the lives of a group of bloggers who get a little too close to someone stranger than themselves a serial killer…. Esky a Moving architectural intervention is a quirky, curious and nomadic intervention, an unexpected inflatable bar and venue that will occupy periphery and unconventional urban spaces. Urban Screens wil be presented at the Polyphonic’s Forum 3 on Sunday 25th.

Wanted suspects on digital screens wasn’t a single social project proposed by screen operators. In the beginning of 2006, Lamar Advertising agreed to broadcast for free messages of national program AMBER Alert on its own LED signs in Connecticut. Later other screens of Lamar joined the project…"

I-sites and the Atrium at Federation Square, Melbourne

The deadline for submissions for our call for poster presentations has been extended to the 31. May 2008!

We are looking for researchers to present posters on the latest development in the interdisciplinary field of Urban Screens. Posters are ideal for presenting speculative, late-breaking results of ongoing research projects, drawing important conclusions from practical experiments, for giving an introduction to innovative art works or new practical design applications, reports on cutting edge technologies and content management systems under development.

To bridge the Conference and the Multimedia Exhibition posters will be displayed in an exhibition in the public Atrium precinct, next to the conference hall, viewable for all conference attendees and the general public. The conference audience will be gathering around the A1 posters during the poster session to engage with the author. Eight submissions will be additionally shown in an experimental presentation on the four outdoor I-sites around Federation Square. These are equiped with an integrated screen, which offer the possibility to present remotely via scheduled skype sessions, while the audience gathers in groups around them.

Poster online submission form - click here

The episode Playful Audiovision on blip.tv presents some documentations about projects shown at Urban Screens Manchester 07: Videos about the general overview, an Interview with Susanne Jaschko and the projects ‘A wall is a screen’, ‘Circulez Y’a A Rien A Voir’, ‘The Air Been Broken’, ‘D.I.Y. Ballroom’, ‘Man With A Movie Camera’, ‘2.4Ghz Homing Pigeons’ and ‘Megaphone’. Go to their show page for watching the videos.

A mesh LED net is temporarily covering the facade renovation at Piazza Duomo, Milan

The Urban Screen in Milan at Piazza Duomo became media partner of the project Check-in Architecture, a participative research project, inviting artists, architects, designers and sociologists, studying in the most prestigious universities in Europe, to tell stories about our cities in the form of 3 minute-long documentaries. The project interacts with its participants through a website, collecting and managing the documentaries via YouTube and GoogleMaps. It will also publish daily reflections on a blog. Check-in Architecture is also a free-press publication, a part of the Urban Screen programming and an exhibition taking place during the Architects’ Congress in Turin and the Venice Biennale.

"We at CIA have never really liked the word ‘content,’ as it makes art and advertorials one and the same, but let’s say instead of content, Urban Screen will be showing the Check-in Architecture documentaries, roughly between 3-4 and 8-9 everyday."

The Landmark Interactive Bus Stop  

The research project Flexible Urban Displays by David Bouchard and Sajid Sadi in collaboration with Orkan Telhan explores how programmable surfaces can be shaped and textured in more flexible ways than traditional LED displays. By using modular tiles as building blocks, displays can become an integral part of objects, structures and spaces. Through appropriate use of digital technology, a bus stops is turned into a sensual, engaging, memorable self-organized landmark.

DafurDafur at the Jewish Meuseum in Berlin, image by Helene Caux

DARFUR/DARFUR, conceived of by Leslie Thomas, is a traveling exhibit of digitally-projected changing images that provide visual education about the richly multi-cultural region while exposing the horrors of the ongoing humanitarian crisis. The event will present photographs taken in Darfur by internationally acclaimed photojournalists including a US Marine. Launched in New York on September 18th the exhibit will travel to 24 cities over 24 months

More than 200,000 civilians have been victims of violence in Darfur since February 2003. Executions, murders, rapes and the burning of villages are all part of the agenda. Over two million people are living in refugee camps on the border to Chad and at least four million - more than half of Darfur’s population - are completely reliant on international aid.

Source: Anouk De Clercq

A new Video installation by Anouk De Clercq is running on the SEVEN SCREENS in Munich from April 25 to November 9, 2008: Movement is the focus of her installation Motion for Newton. Inspired by the famous physicist’s laws of motion, the Belgian artist allows lines and forms to affect each other in an interplay with their direct environment.

Point of departure was an analysis of the OSRAM building’s architecture. The artist thus created a work that was specifically developed for its location and those passing by the site in their vehicles. The artist refers to her new work as Motion for Newton. This title stands for a “constructive mobile,” which is inspired by the vertical forms of the SEVEN SCREENS, as well as by the city’s architecture, high rises and sky scrapers. Forms encircle each other in continuous motion. The work’s main theme is the moving body in relation to its environment. The SEVEN SCREENS are transformed into "motion sculptures," which become a homage to Isaac Newton…

Los Angeles, 2009?

Here a short WIRED report about Sonny Astani, a real estate mogul who is planning to bring 2019 Los Angeles to life in the form of two 14-story animated billboards modeled on Ridley Scott’s opening sequence of Blade Runner….The idea, pending city approval, is to install hundreds of rows of LEDs, each spaced 6 inches apart, across the buildings’ floor-to-ceiling windows. So what will happen if our dystopian future movie visions are slowly reaised?

Thanks Sascha for the link!

The FLARE membrane developed by WHITEvoid is a modular system to create a dynamic hull for facades or any building or wall surface. Acting like a living skin, it allows a building to express, communicate and interact with its environment. Each stainless steel flake reflects the bright sky or sunlight when in vertical standby position. The FLARE system consists of a number of tiltable metal flake bodies supplemented by individually controllable pneumatic cylinders. When the flake is tilted downwards by a computer controlled pneumatic piston, its face is shaded from the sky light and this way appears as a dark pixel. By reflecting ambient or direct sunlight, the individual flakes of the FLARE system act like pixels formed by natural light.

Post suggested by Mads Rasmusen 

Call for film/video and multimedia projects: The Urban Screens Melbourne 08 exhibition is looking for submissions of film and videos or multimedia, interactive or participatory screen based projects. We are looking for existing and potentially adaptable projects that tackle the festival key themes of issues of building community or sustainability in relation to water. Submission deadline: 31. May 2008

Call for posters : Bridging Conference and Multimedia Exhibition, we are looking for posters about the latest development of Urban Screens research projects. They will be displayed in a public exhibition in the Atrium next to the conference venue. Eight submissions will be additionally shown in an experimental skype presentation on the four outdoor I-sites around Federation Square. Submission deadline: 24. May 2008

CALL : The Media Facades Festival Berlin is looking for creative people such as artists, media producer, interaction designer, filmmakers, software developer, architects, urbanists and digital poets for the production of site-specific contents for four media facades in urban areas of Berlin. The works will be presented to a broad expert audience and the Berlin public from 18.10. - 3.11. 2008 during the main activities of the Festival.

Deadline for submissions of a broad project idea: 15.April 2008

Vox Pop by Antonia Hirsch is a 2-channel video project that will be screened April 7 to 13, 2008 on a dual video billboards above the intersection of Granville and Robson Streets in downtown Vancouver.

Silent, and one minute in duration, Vox Pop is set in a large, empty sports stadium. A panoptic tracking shot, evoking the mass-movement of an Audience Wave, is contrasted with the portrayal of a single audience members gestural action. A subtly provocative investigation of the individual within the crowd, the artwork draws attention to the spaces and behaviours through which we are encouraged to perform and celebrate shared values. By slowing down the rapid pace of video advertising, Vox Pop troubles the site of recreation, competition, and the particular dynamic of the collective.

Vox Pox was curated by Barbara Cole and presented by Other Sights for Artists‘ Projects.

Nordic Urban Design Conference
27-28 February 2008, Bergen

City lightening and new urban spaces - the third annual NUDC Conference in Bergen.

The Nordic climate, with its long dark winters, must be an essential concern for urban designers, planners and architects. City lighting can contribute significantly to social integration and urban regeneration. But, being a big user of energy, lighting is a critical issue in relation to climate change. How can we create beautiful cities while still considering climate and environmental issues in the planning process? How can cities become more enjoyable, functional, permeable and innovative, using not only hydrogen-drive vehicles, solar-powered heating and environmentally approved materials, but also new developments in city lighting?

Photo by Charlie Samuels

The Moons , a Percent For Art Project by Chris Doyle, consists of three circular LED screens suspended over a seiers of gardens in the plaza at the Sprint Arena in Kansas City. The videos depict over 600 people from Kansas City flying across the screens. They run 24 hours per day and change with the seasons.

Find here a documentary about the project Liberate Your Avatar evidencing the exciting collaboration of Lets Go Global with artist Paul Sermon, which was part of the arts and events programme for the Manchester Urban Screens Conference.

In a showcase of international Urban Screen initiatives, Our Friends Are Electric introduces the concept of urban screens to the Melbourne audience in anticipation for the next Urban Screens Event - Urban Screens Melbourne 08 from 3rd-8th October 2008.

From the subways of Paris to electronic billboards in cities such as Toronto, Berlin and Amsterdam, Our Friends Are Electric is a series of projects created specifically for public screens throughout the world. The series will include a range of video art programs in addition to individual artist initiatives created from collective, worldwide contributions.

Beginning with the launch of the Streaming Museum, the first international moving image gallery to be broadcast both in
cyberspace and public space over seven continents simultaneously, Our Friends Are Electric celebrates how today’s cities are
becoming connected through a network of urban screens.

Featured initiatives:

The Streaming Museum
Visual Foreign Correspondents
Videospread
The Vernacular Terrain
Do Billboards Dream of Electric Screens?
Upgrade! International
Best of Transmedia
At Play

This project, curated by Kerrie-Dee Johns and Mirjam Struppek, is presented by Federation Square and the International Urban Screens Association - a network of international collaborators.

www.mediaarchitecture.org/mediafacades2008

Myths and Potentials of Media Architectures and Urban Screens
Berlin, October / November 2008

The MEDIAFACADE FESTIVAL BERLIN 2008 builds on the successful international Mediaarchitecture Conference held in London in 2007. This festival will explore the integration of social media and images into façade structures as communicative element and its effect on urban space. It will be the beginning of a long-term urban screens network with the aim to coordinate a creative program for architectural digital surfaces in Berlin.

The city of Oslo is an interface, a space for social interaction and cultural diversity. The comparably small size of the city centre creates a dense urban situation in which housing and working go closely together. Large parts of the city centre seem to be finished, but with the new development of the harbour site Oslo will get a new face. Changes also happen slowly and less visible such as residential movements from one district to the other which are caused by appreciations of real estates. However Oslo offers a rather laid back urban environment with a lot of street life.

http://oslo.urban-interface.net