My starting point was something I’ve long been obsessed with – desire paths. Desire paths are the footpaths created by the public when the formal paved routes of a space don’t represent the most efficient, or desired, route between points A and B for the public, and they chose their own paths, their desired paths, as shown above. I wanted to find a way to capture the desired movement of people in a public space and use this incidental movement as a tool to enable a sense of contribution, connection and ownership between individuals and the shared spaces of the city.

Working with designer Jon Stam (centre, above) and programmer and Studio MSP guru Mattijs Kneppers (far left), we identified a space in the NDSM area of Amsterdam and set out to create a system to transform it into a platform for aesthetic narratives created by the movement of the public.

The beauty of only having a couple days to create a prototype for a project is that you instantly shift to hacking and rapid prototyping mode. So we grabbed a Kinect, some cables, a few blocks of Styrofoam, booked some time on a CNC machine, and went at it to communicate our idea. The full narrative outlining the concept and the playback system we devised for the space during night time follows. For those who want the quick walk-through of the concept, our summary presentation can be found at the bottom of this post; for an even quicker bite, here’s a video of us demoing it:

Concept Overview
We hacked the Kinect to serve as a prototype of a public camera overlooking the space, layering it with the ability to pick up a single object or colour on a visitor when they enter the space, and then remember that object and track it as it, and the person, moves through the space. If visitors to the space want to remain anonymous, they simply enter the space and walk through. If someone wants to take ownership of their movement in the space, they touch in at one of the check points with an RFID tag on their key fob, and they are given a unique colour path, which which they can draw something in the space, and then download an image of what they’ve drawn with their movement if they wish.

As the visitor walks across the space, his path leaves a trail in the grid of LED lights are embedded in the surface of the space. The next visitor to enter the space will see the trail left by the previous visitor, and other recent ones as the ghost of their travels are held by the LED lights in the pavement, each previous path fading slowly with time. The space holds a living history of its use throughout the day, and becomes a canvas for those who have ID’d themselves when they entered the space.

Night Time Use
The space holds the memory of its use at night. When dusk falls, a playback of the daily travels through the space begins, each path glowing and traffic patters growing as the timeline of the space’s use from the previous day is played back over night, as this video shows:

Through this playback of the day’s movement in the space, a relationship builds between those who use the space during the day and those who use it at night. The brightness and density of the light paths in the space at night will depend upon the traffic patterns in the space during the day – the more traffic during the day, the brighter the space will be at night. Ultimately, the normally ephemeral qualities of safety and security in the space at night become factors created and influenced by its use during the day.

For those who use the space both during the day and at night, the relationship between the two realities will form. Perhaps a few co-workers will be gathered to create some crazy shapes in the space during the day for them to enjoy as they come home that night. Or paths will be formed in circles to see if pedestrians at night will follow.

From a purely aesthetic point of view, every night, the design of the space will be different, directly correlating to the use of the space during the day, its animations, patterns and luminosity being the creation of those using the space 12 hours earlier.

Platform for Play
People are not the only thing able to be tracked in the space. Someone can place a ball on the square to be ID’d, and it will be tracked as well as it moves throughout the space. Children can enter from different entrances and invent a game where their movement become games pieces on a large urban board.

The space no longer becomes a passive area for its population, but an active participant in their daily lives, enabling creativity, connection, safety and narrative to be built during its daily use.

Platform for Data
In addition to the personal and narrative relationships enabled by use of the space, the space will generate data for use by the city. Data created by the space will be visual use patterns; data of the visual flow and use of the space.

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On Wednesday, 14 September, I will be giving a talk and taking part in a panel discussion on the topics of Trust and the Internet of Things as part of PICNIC 2011 in Amsterdam.

The PICNIC Festival is an annual three-day event that blurs the lines between creativity, science, technology and business to explore new solutions in the spirit of co-creation. This year’s theme is Urban Futures, with a focus on sustainability, infrastructure, society, design and media. PICNIC Festival 2011 takes place from 14 to 16 September at NDSM Wharf in Amsterdam.

The event on Wednesday is the second of a discussion series on the relationship between trust and design following the premiere session earlier this year in Milan. It also coincides with the publication of the second issue of Trust Design, done in collaboration with Volume Magazine. The current issue, Trust Design and the Internet of Things, edited by me, explores how trust can be designed in our future cities as the Internet of Things makes our urban realities increasingly data aware.

The issue features an introduction by myself, with contributions from Kevin Kelly, Bruce Sterling, Joost Grootens, Julian Bleecker, Adam Greenfield, and others. You can read more about the current issue here.

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1. In Milan, Talking Trust and Design On Thursday 14 April I will be in Milan, talking...

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Amsterdam's Citizen M, Beethovenstraat

A couple weeks ago I was in New York City to give a talk and Masterclass at Eyebeam on my work with open source cultural models. After NYC I was off to Amsterdam for a week to work with the Premsela Foundation for Dutch Design and Fashion, so I thought back-to-back sessions in two great cities would allow me to run a bit of a “pod hotel” comparison between the two.

The Pod Hotel, New York

In NYC I chose the, yes, Pod Hotel on East 51st Street near 3rd. Every room is extremely clean with a pleasing minimal design, and you can basically create your own room experience at the macro level when you book – single, double, king, bunk beds, with private bathroom or shared bath, and so on, with the variables you choose being reflected in the price. There are some nice touches such as free wifi throughout the hotel (not as standard in all hotels as it should be), a decent mini stereo with an external port for you to plug in your iPod to get your own tunes filling the room, but the thing that really stood out for me with the Pod Hotel was the social site you are invited to join once you make a reservation. Once you book your room, you receive an email with login details to enter an area of their website where you will find headings of “drink with me”, “shop with me”, “eat with me” with listings and email addresses of people who are going to be in NYC the same time as you and would like to get together with other travellers to experience the city together.

Artist's Rendering of Life in Citizen M

Amsterdam’s Pod offering is Citizen M on Beethovenstraat, near the city’s World Trade Centre financial district. It is actually the second Citizen M to hit Amsterdam, after their premiere at Schiphol Airport. Citizen M is an entirely different breed of a pod hotel experience. While its critics may comment on it being insanely over-designed and over-concepted, which is true, there is an entertainment value to these same things which I sometimes enjoy.

Citizen M is a design hotel on steroids. As the press release states:

Here, past the touch-screen check-in and check-out terminals, exclusive partner and renowned design firm Vitra provides even more environments and new furniture. There’s the legendary Marshmallow sofa by George Nelson, the brand-new Vegetal chairs by the famed Bouroullec brothers … above its extra-long bar with many plug-in points and white Eames bar stools are 14 Asian-inspired lantern lamps from Vitra’s Home Collection … There’s even a special corner for kids, featuring colourful child-size Panton chairs, the fabulous Porcupine Desk by Hella Jongerius and cute plywood elephants by Ray and Charles Eames.

The Philips Mood Pad (image copyright Philips)

Within the design festival disguised as a hotel, the thing that really stood out for me was that each of the 215 rooms was entirely an customisable environment, controlled entirely by a universal remote created by Philips call the Mood Pad. The Mood Pad is the secret to creating an “Ambient Experience” for the guests. As Philips says:

There are two main elements to the system. Firstly, the Ambient Experience combines a host of various ambient products, including dynamic LED lighting, VoiP phone, free wifi and FlatTV which contribute to a guest’s overall experience of the hotel room. Secondly, Philips has also created a unique back-end network design solution, which enables all different software platforms to work together seamlessly. This means that individual hotel rooms, and all functionality within the rooms, are linked to a central server that manages everything from room temperature and curtain settings, to the welcome message guests receive upon arrival in their room.

Now, it was indeed pretty damn impressive to be presented with a palette of “themes” for your room’s ambience. By pressing the TV theme, the lights dim, the TV comes on, curtains close… the Romance theme brings up chilled lounge music, lights go down…

Citizen M in full Ambient Experience Mode (image copyright Citizen M)

So for all the wonders of Citizen M and its fully customisable Ambient Experience, here’s what bothers me: there was no true personal customisation to the aesthetic. Why not go one step further and put some digital photo frames in the room and put some Bluetooth access onto the remote so I can upload some photos that mean something to me or remind me of the people who are waiting for me at home while I’m staying there? There’s an impressive sound system hidden in the walls of the room, and a dedicated wifi network, so how about letting me stream one of my playlists to make my listening experience, well, MY listening experience? It was interesting that while Citizen M was a veritable feast of design and user experience in the rooms, the longer you spent in the rooms, the more these things became apparent, and the colder the experience became – figuratively and literally. There were times when I thought back to the simple joys of opening at window in NYC’s Pod Hotel and plugging in my iPod that made me overlook the Vitra-o-rama in Citizen M.

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For those who would rather read than watch, an interview with me and an overview of Urban Play is on design.nl, with some great images from the street hits of Mark Jenkins and Windowzoo in addition to the design interventions.

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After waking up a bit groggy from the festivities of the Urban Play opening party last night, I went for a walk around the installation sites to see how they had progressed after their first night in the public realm, and, well, I got a little more than I had expected when looking for Stefan Sagmeister’s piece: it was gone.

I had asked Stefan to create a new work for Urban Play, and his piece – a sentence designed using 250,000 Euro cent coins – blew me and everyone away each day as it progressed. I had expected a certain ebb and flow to take place within the piece, which is of course the point of the entire Urban Play project, but to have the entire thing completely disappear overnight was more than anyone had expected. After recovering from the shock, I did some research and discovered that the story behind its removal was stranger than anything I could have imagined.

It seems that the Amsterdam police were called by a resident of one of the overlooking buildings early Sunday morning to report that someone was “stealing an artwork”. As the story goes, people were pocketing a few of the coins, which was also expected, but things got a bit out of hand when a resident saw this happening. So the police responded, and, in a rather bizarre instance of police efficiency, they proceeded to “secure” the artwork, by sweeping up the entire installation.

The event is superbly captured on the flickr page of anjens, who lives in a flat overlooking the site. 

I will update with more info if and when I get any, but for now, I’d like to give my huge thanks to Sagmeister’s team of Joe Shouldice and Richard The, who along with an amazing team of volunteers worked for many days, literally from dawn to dusk, to install the piece. It was a beautiful addition to the Urban Play project, and will be sorely missed.

For now, let’s remember the way it was on Sagmeister’s page on the project.

UPDATE: So, the police say we can have the coins back. Anyone want to suggest what we do with them now?

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Until I can find the time for some quality updates, you can take a look at my flickr photos of the preparations here.

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There has been a tremendous response to the Ikea Hacker contest and forthcoming exhibition I’m doing with Platform 21 in Amsterdam – some insanely good DIY Ikea innovations are coming in, and some completely unexpected Ikea Hacks, such as the one above from Daredo, where the Ikea store is turned into a workout area, its products being re-purposed into exercise equipment. Be sure to subscribe to see more as the final entries pour in.

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dblt (diablito) from Scott Burnham on Vimeo.

It’s been very satisfying to watch 3D urban intervention come into its own in recent years due to the historically unparalleled roster of people hacking and remixing the physical city with their work. But even out of this immensely talented pool, Esparza has emerged as something of a game-changer. His Urban Parasites – small robotic creatures made from recycled consumer goods which wander, climb, crawl and explore the marginal areas of the city – bring a fresh, unexpected dimension to the city itself and to urban intervention in general.

While his early works required direct human interaction to be animated, he said in a recent conversation that he then began looking at the natural energy sources in the city, using for example “wind or water to help a shapeless sculpture move through the irregular urban geography.” His combined interest in mechanics and a frustration with the lack of an entirely self-sufficient animated object in the early stages on his interventions introduced him to the study of robotics, and “the way they can express or project their ideas, wishes, or fears.”

To hear him talk about the “ideas, wishes or fears” of robotics in the city is only the tip of the iceberg in understanding his emotional and philosophical approach to the inter-relationship of his objects and the city. Inspired by the street vendors (ambulantes) of Mexico City, who get the power for their sidewalk shops from nearby electrical posts, Esparza’s creatures also use the electric cables for power and as a means of movement, such as with diablito (little devil).  And on the ground below, his “ppndr-s” (pepenadores) intervention is Esparza at his best. Abstract, mechanical beetle-like creatures, made of recovered and recycled consumer electronics and discarded materials, pick and forage their way through piles of trash which have gathered in the corners of the city’s streets:

ppndr-s (pepenadores) from Scott Burnham on Vimeo.

I always find immense satisfaction in work which uses existing, cast-off areas of the city as opportunities for interaction and animation. But more than that, the pleasure lies in seeing the perplexed, confused and eventually amused look on the passers-by as they begin to decipher what is taking place. Which, as Esparza says when thinking about the larger picture of cities in general, is quite substantial. For him, the “micro” interventions of his work, are directly part of what is happening at the “macro” level:

“I believe that the city, as a concentration of human beings, is the epicentre of the most radical transformations in human history – it is also the materialisation of a human project that facilitates the meeting of imagination, knowledge and information. All this happens in an environment for survival, where social and economical relationships and other aspects depend on a continuous negotiation and fight for power with others. The city is a live organism, in which many life forms subsist. I also think technology is an essential part of the city. It creates trends and situations, which are influenced by and subordinated to the environment, but sometimes these make their own rules…”

clgd (colgado) from Scott Burnham on Vimeo.

From small mosquitos which fly around the inside of subway cars to the amazement of children, to odd creatures which move towards lamps and lightsources in the corners of buildings, Esparza’s work opens new areas of expression in the ongoing narrative of creative interaction with the city, and I’m honoured to be working with him. A complete overview of his work can be found at his Parasitos Urbanos website.

If you don’t want to miss any of the articles in the Urban Play Focus series, please subscribe.

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As part of Platform 21‘s excellent Checking Reality programme, I have been asked to give a talk on “Hacking Reality” this Friday at their space in Amsterdam, how the virtual world and digital culture is altering our interaction with the real world, in particular in the realm of street art and urban intervention. To read more about my talk, go here.

Friday 6 June, 20 00
Platform 21
Prinses Irenestraat 19
1077 WT Amsterdam

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