The Digital City

Hello France, South Korea, and Australia:
Welcome and bienvenue to the Preservation of Community Assets blog, the blog dedicated to issues of architecture, historic preservation, urban planning and design.  It's always great to have new faces.  I can't do this blog without people reading so the more the better.  Thanks for your support and I hope you'll keep coming back.

All right on to today's subject.  First, I have to apologize for yesterday's very short post, I was on my way to see the latest Bond movie Skyfall and I only had a few minutes.  Skyfall was the best Bond movie ever.  Although it was disheartening seeing James Bond blow up a Scottish Gothic manor house and I got pretty panicked during the opening sequence when James Bond was chasing a bad guy through the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul.  I was worried the place was going to get trashed like the Elrod House in Diamonds are Forever.  Fortunately, the Bazaar and Hagia Sophia survived.

Now on to the topic at hand, really.  Digital technology and the urban landscape titled Invisible City (What is) the Nature of Los Angeles.  This topic comes to us through a great panel discussion that took place at the West Hollywood Public Library on Thursday April 25, 2013.  The discussion, sponsored by the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (http://www.aialosngeles.org) Committee on The Environment, featured four panelists: Amy Murphy USC School of Architecture associate professor, Dana Cuff UCLA School of Architecture and Urban Design professor, Christine Outram founder of City Innovation Group, and Alessandro Marianantoni Senior Researcher of REMAP UCLA.  Professor Murphy moderated the panel and the remaining speakers each took ten minutes to discuss their work, then they fielded questions.  The panel focused on the way digital technology is becoming more integrated into the urban landscape from the more pragmatic to the esoteric.  Oddly, the album Bored with the Internet and Prozac, a side project from Nick Rhodes and Warren Cuccurullo came to mind during the topic of the Internet and privacy.  Why was that, I have no idea.

The main focus of the panel discussion was the architectural implications of digital technology.  Professor Cuff looked at cyburbs (cyber suburbs), technoptia, and the City of Los Angeles.  In the pragmatic sense, mobile telephony-the use of cell phone technology.  One example was Millennium Park in Chicago, Illinois (?).  Digital technology was used to capture the faces of the people visiting the park.  Another example was "Movable Type," the use of digital technology to capture what's going on at the New York Times.  Kind of cool.  Pop-up shops was used as another case study.  Professor Cuff introduced the concept of "Political Shopping," making the shopper a smarter consumer.  This ties into Pop-Up shops which focus on a specific brand or item.  Political shopping caters to market forces, making use of shopper profiling in order to provide customized information and target the market, supplying tagged products.  The Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibits (LACE) Facade which works with cellphone technology to provide patrons with real time information for clubs in the Hollywood area.  Intelligent bus stops is another application that's slowly being rolled out.  Ambient information would provide subtle timely transit information to bus riders.  Very handy and would probably make mass transpo more palatable.  Wouldn't be great if you could pay your bus fair with your cell phone or debit card instead of fishing in your purse for change or having to renew your bus pass every month.  If you're a graduate student without a car, kiosks could serve as public works of art while providing real time information.  They would be quick,visually powerful, light, and inexpensive.  Professor Cuff also suggested using digital technology to create cultural events such as "Westwood Blows Up."  This would be an event based around a removable installation intended to generate a buzz and bring life back to Westwood.  This three weekend event would use a variety of technology, pieces of a puzzle would be spread out around Westwood Village and participants would bring these pieces together to create an installation-Pop Up Westwood-part of the LA 2050 Program-technology as a social process and making things happen.

The next speaker was Christine Outram the founder of City Innovation.  Ms. Outram described herself as a Civic Technologist-a person who's interested in integrating technology into the city.  Ms. Outram focused on how data affects the physical architecture (i.e bricks and mortar).  One example was "smart dust," micro chips that would be integrated into different things, effecting how we plan things.  She suggested that data was a new asset class.  On the pragmatic level bus stops could be sources of useful information.  This was the second instance of bus stops being cited as a public source of information.  People take the bus, either by choice or by circumstance, thus can be used as data market places.  The information can be accessed through a cell phone application.  This begs the question, despite the pervasiveness of cell phones, what if a person doesn't have a mobile phone?  Specifically, I'm referring to the elderly or indigent, how would they access transit information?  It was suggested that the city was a computer platform.  Ms. Outram cited New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's program to re-invent the pay phone.  Those things still exist?  Data and technology can be used to digital arts districts in cities such as San Francisco, perfect, a city near Silicon Valley.  This would integrate experience with data.  The artists, who will design the data, are the people in the digital world.  But, where is the architecture profession?  To provide the delight and beauty such as a prototype of information on a pole throughout New York City as an example of reusing existing infrastructure.  This would integrate user experience linking people to place through technology, providing an extra layer.

The final speaker on the panel was Alessandro Marianantoni, a Senior Researcher at REMAP UCLA.  The first project he discussed was the facade of the Otis College of Art and Design in Westchester, California.  Digital technology was used to create an installation for the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Futurist Manifesto.  Text was deconstructed zeroglyphics-creating deconstructed poetry to symbolize an element of fragmentation.  Mr. Marianantoni also described elements of fragmentation in relation to a visualization of carbon dioxide particles in the United Kingdom using information taken from flow meters.  Digital media layers were used in Italy as a way to construct an album of residents.  A medieval wall was used as a layer of digital media.  This creates a layer of engagement through story telling.  Another layer of engagement is through story telling using video.  Through the Freeway LA project, video bus presentations of poetry are install on buses traveling along Wilshire Boulevard.  Interesting way to bring literature to the masses.  It would create a fairytale connecting different neighborhoods..

Data technology has definite practical aspects.  One example is data transfer through the commuting app Wayz.  The issue of privacy and the pervasiveness of the Internet is always a concern that can never be fully addressed.  The cycle of data is also difficulty because of the built-in obsolescence.  The social, economic, and political implications becomes a part of architecture in such examples as monitoring security.  Ideas of branding versus homogeneity, information sustainability all were lightly addressed.  Designers have a role in shaping the physical and digital experiences.  Materiality was addressed in terms of smart materials, whatever that meant.  Corporate entities manage data.  Citizen science, using the social media for good-citizen science.  Indonesia is the fourth highest tweeting nation in the world, Jakarta is the highest tweeting city.  The tweets are abut everyday things such as housing and the price of rice.  This contrasts with the analog way the United Nations collects data.

In short, digital technology is slowly but surely remaking architecture and the way we interacting with the built environment.  It is changing the nature of that experience through customized real time information that has the capability of going beyond the quotient.  It is a brave new world.