12-16.03.2007 | Taşkışla

Instructors: Mona Mahall (M.A.) – Aslı Serbest, University of Stturgart

Organizers: G. Çağdaş, T. Türkaslan Bülbül, A. Sökmenoğlu, E. Gürbüz

Animating urban surfaces – via digital media – might fulfill functions for the activation or re-
activation of urban spaces. To re-act on differing urban contexts, to re-invent them, or to
emphasize them, means to reflect conceptual, social and aesthetical challenges to globalized
metropolis. And as Istanbul, melting different cultures and religions in a dense living together,
was globalized centuries ago, it today is the urbane city par excellence. In this way, designers
always have to re-act within their works to its specific and dynamic situations. They have to
modify, to re-launch, and to re-program the existing, in order to introduce new meaning,
which artistically or architecturally reflects city changes and modifications.
Thereby, new technologies are unavoidable, as they offer forms of intervention, of simulation,
and amplification.

During one week we will introduce the open source and java-based programming language
Processing, which can help us to develop new concepts for existing urban surfaces, by real-
time processing, by data analyzes (e.g. motion and brightness tracking, sound and temperature
analyzes), and information visualization or sonification – as reflections of current city states.  
We will work on ideas of intervention, of modification and of production, for specific places
we found to work on. And we will try to find answers on:
    How to change aesthetics of existing city surfaces?
    How to design relational concepts, which respond to urban variables?
    How to develop these concepts with the help of digital media?