A new urban art
In my column Ouvir Imagens on Rádio USP this Monday, March 19, I discussed the impact of technologies and media in the city on urban art. I highlighted VoiceOver, a project by the urbanism and design studio Umbrellium, currently taking place in London in partnership with Furtherfield.
Contemporary cities have been expanded by digital technologies, and the presence of networks and media changes architecture, design, landscape, and urban art. Some almost commonplace examples of this process are LED façades and sensors in buildings; apps such as Waze, which monitor traffic through information shared by drivers on the streets; and the proliferation of devices providing real-time information about public transit. Together, these examples have a counterpart: a substantial increase in the ability of public and private powers to monitor and track our actions.
Umbrellium, a British architecture, design, and urbanism studio, explores this new setting, pursuing the possibilities of building new models of cities open to participation and engagement. In partnership with the art platform Furtherfield, it is developing a project in London called VoiceOver, which discusses the future of city life and points to other possible intersections between art, technologies, and urban space.
The debate, which runs through April 15, takes place neither in an auditorium nor in a virtual assembly, but through equipment developed by Umbrellium: a luminous antenna connected to a radio transmitter and installed in neighborhood residents’ windows.
People communicate remotely, expressing their opinions, and their comments are broadcast publicly as audio while the antennas change color in response to their voices. The real-time transmissions can be heard only by those present, but the project can be followed through its documentation on Twitter, where some results are available. Later, all the recordings will become part of an installation to be exhibited at the Museum of London.
The result is a temporary sphere of sharing, a network of light and sound projected from the informational spectrum into public space. It thus points toward richer urban experiences based on open networks and distributed intelligence.
Find out more:
Umbrellium: http://umbrellium.co.uk/
Furtherfield: https://www.furtherfield.org/
VoiceOver Finsbury Park: https://www.furtherfield.org/events/voiceover-finsbury-park/