Presentation To Conference Densities

Generation-C Densities Richard Coyne Architecture: School of Arts, Culture and Environment James Stewart Research Centre for Social Sciences Mark Wright Division of Informatics and ECA The University of Edinburgh AHRC project: Branded meeting places

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Generation-C Densities (connected communicating consumers) Richard Coyne Architecture: School of Arts, Culture and Environment James Stewart Research Centre for Social Sciences Mark Wright Division of Informatics and ECA The University of Edinburgh AHRC project: Branded meeting places

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Smart Mobs e.g. Rheingold, H. (2002). Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge, MA, Basic Books.

The power of the crowd thus comes across in its capacity to overwhelm the physical constraints of urban planning and to blur social distinctions by provoking a sense of estrangement. Its authority rests on its ability to promote restlessness and movement, thereby undermining the pressure from state technocrats, church authorities and corporate interests to regulate and contain such movements…. As a medium, the crowd is also the site for the generation expectations and the circulation of messages. … as a kind of technology itself. … The insistent and recurring proximity of anonymous others creates a current of expectation, of something that might arrive, of events that might happen. As a site of potential happenings, it is a kind of place for the generation of the unknown and the unexpected. … Rafaeil, V. 2003. "The Cell Phone and the Crowd: Messianic Politics in the Contemporary Philippines." Public Culture, 5(3): http://communication.ucsd.edu/people/f_rafael_cellphonerev_files.htm.

e.g. Spanish anti-terrorist protest, UK petrol strike, WTO, Indonesian revolution, May2007 chinese demonstration

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Real Time Rome, Venice Biennale. Sep 2006 (MIT Senseable City Lab)

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Brands are a key resource and mode of interaction in markets and communities in 21st cities Objects/Actors mediating commercial and cultural relations

Identity – Extension • Emergent – Performance » Appropriation Branded Spaces, Brand communities, Brand personalities

Ahonen, T., and Moore, A. 2005. Communities Dominate Brands: Business and Marketing Challenges for the 21st Century, London: Futuretext. Klein, N. 2005. No Logo, London: Harper Perennial. Lury, C 2004, Brands, the Logos of the global economy,London: Routledge. Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson Capital's brandscapes Journal of Consumer Culture 2006 6: 327-353 Douglas B. Holt 2006 Toward a sociology of branding Journal of Consumer Culture 2006 6: 299-302

BRAND

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The tactics of consumption, the ingenious ways in which the ‘weak’ make use of the ‘strong’, thus lend a political dimension to everyday practices. de Certeau, M. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley: University of California Press, p.xvii.

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The ‘strong’ are the slaves of their brands and technologies Explore the Appropriation of Brands and Communications media,

Tools for coping with and configuring density Physical Place Information Work Consumption People Rules Untangling Networks

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Brands and personal ICTs both provide orientation, security, simplification, common signs and reliable connections. They allow appropriation of complex spaces, and linking of distant places and people. What are implications for flow of people and ideas and emergence of new temporary and permanent societal features?

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Brands, personal media and social encounters

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3 ‘research by design’ projects - 3 avenues of

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exploration • Invisible Art – the visual appropriation of branded space – Expression of ownership and subversion of brandscape

• PhoneTag – Street game ‘Tag/Capture the flag’ with ‘brands’ – Brands and brandscapes as objects of play – Strengthening of brand via ludic appropriation

• Comera – Login to branded places and signal social networking systems – exploration of the merging of online and physical branded spaces, fluid movement of relationships between two domains (mySpace, Bebo, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook etc) – New online ‘built’ environments

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Virtual environments (MMORPGs) Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games World of Warcraft, Entropia, Second Life …

Density issues Virtual urban densities Texture replaces density “Prim” concentrations Avatar overheads Sparse populations Meeting places as concentrations Overlays of everyday sparseness and virtual concentrations

MVRDV-esque urban constructions

Lonely avatars in highly textured places

Virtual flagships and brand as texture

The importation of everyday real-time textures

textured meeting places

The seriousness of VR land offers … deals

[8:21] Frank Lassard: west of here to edge of simulation [8:21] You: yes, that should be fine [8:22] Ai Austin: Sea adds extra prims due to area. But do you really need to build in water? if so you would be better off round a bay - like the ones Frank has built [8:23] You: we are used to making do. sometimes you can be more inventive with a little [8:23] Ai Austin: area to back of your original plot is also just trees.., and could be split off Management School and joined to you to add prims... but again, its best not to do that. [8:23] Ai Austin: we will have experimental zones on some new low prim islands I hope. better for experiments. …

Dense communications: multi-modality

Interactive “brand theatre”

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Contextual positioning Shared visual and spatial information

at do such systems have to say about urbanism? better MMORPG architecture? simulations of urban environments?

teraction between

density of objects, structures, systems, informatio

people densities

communication densities

mmunication and multimodality

e-mediation” seeing the new in terms of the (very)

nfiguring concentrations of things, people, comms

ont of stage and back stage issues

C-generation has new resources for coping with, and configuring new densities and complexities.