Valentina Tanni has just prepared an article about artworks using the possibility to listen to emotional expressions on social networks (in the specifics, love), mentioning VersuS among the examples.

Click here to read Valentina’s article titled “Mappare l’amore” (Mapping love) on Artribune.

And VersuS has been featured on the italian edition of Wired magazine with a short highlight of our installation at the Share Festival 2012.

VersuS on Wired Italia

So you might want to check them out and keep on following the VersuS project, also in its next steps: the conference at NEXA Center in Turin on December 14th and on the new ConnectiCity website.

Happy realtime cities to you all :)

This article starts from the analysis of our recent project VersuS/ConnectiCity, in its declinations for the realtime analysis of the emotional lives of cities and for the observation of the realtime digital communications exchanged on social networks during the protest of October 15th in Rome.

This is the translated abstract of the paper:

“On OCtober 15th in Rome the large protest stimulated by the Spanish Indignados and by the Occupy Wall Street movement took place along several different planes, traversing the city in different ways.

The analysis of the activity on social networks in the time/space of the protest shows with extreme clarity a continuous mutual penetration between digital and analog worlds, pushing us to hypothesize the possibility of a liquid, mutating fusion of the two dimensions, defining a new city in which the worlds of molecules and bits merge and flow together.

This observation becomes the opportunity to redefine the concept of publishing, transforming it into a domain which is able to traverse arts and sciences in the creation of knowledge, educatio, culture, information and awareness processes focused onto the enactment of concepts such as ubiquity, multiplicity and emergency.”

The project will be presented on Thursday November 3rd 2011 (at 12:00) in Turin, at the Fablab Italia in occasion of the Share Festival. (at Stazione Futuro, via Castelfidardo 22, Turin, Italy)

VersuS / ConnectiCity

VersuS: love vs turin, visualizing the realtime lives of cities from salvatore iaconesi on Vimeo.

How do people express their emotions on social networks?

Information has become ubiquitously accessible, thus transforming our perception of cities and of the ways we work, learn, communicate and relate to other people.

VersuS analyzes the digital lives of cities to suggest a scenario in which digital and analog realities interweave and become one.

By performing realtime content harvesting on social networks we are able to perform natural language analyses on the conversations running between users, to peek into their emotions, wishes, expectations and desires.

We can make this information available and accessible using information visualizations, mobile applications and generative design artifacts, thus creating the tools which enable the creation of a new form of public space which merges the digital and analog lives of people, transforming them into active agents in a new idea of citizenship, enabling novel forms of expression and representation.

In “love VS turin”, we focus on an emotional approach, visualizing the expressions of love and passion of the citizens of the city of Turin, in a realtime collective conversation.

The visualization is put side by side with 3D objects produced using various digital fabrication techniques, and which represent a tangible representation of the emotional condition of the whole territory of the city of Turin.

“Love” can be replaced with other emotions, thus enabling scenarios of focal importance for ecology, public administrations, security, economy and the overall possibility to evaluate the wellness of the people on a certain territory.

VersuS is designed as an evocative tool for people, institutions and organizations, fostering the creation of new, positive, imaginaries for the future of our lives and our relation with the planet and with our fellow human beings.

VersuS is a concept by Art is Open Source and FakePress Publishing, and it is part of the ConnectiCity initiative.

It has been created together with the Fablab Italia and with the Piemonte Share Festival, in a transdisciplinary process in which arts and sciences collaborate to the creation of innovative, breakthrough, scenarios.

VersuS will be officially presented at the 2011 edition of the Piemonte Share Festival together with the Fablab Italia.

Check these websites for more information:

http://www.artisopensource.net
http://fakepress.it
http://www.toshare.it
http://www.fablabitalia.it/

see the video on Youtube

Squatting Supermarkets at SMIR 2011

This outstanding initiative joined forces across the italian/french border, between the cities of Mondovì and Embrun, to restore two ancient churches that were left to decay and dedicate their renewed spaces to the creation of a process which, moving across arts, sciences, humanities and economy, researches the possibilities offered by technologies to promote innovation practices with a social impact and with opportunities for development for the people in the territories in which all of this takes place.

Squatting Supermarkets  :

“uses the logos and packaging graphics of products as AR fiducial markers. A content management system allows attaching information and interactive experiences to logos, instantly transforming them into open, accessible, emergent spaces for communication. A mobile application allows consumers to use their smartphones to take pictures of the logos on the products’ labels and to use them to access the augmented reality layers of information.”

In Mondovì and Embrun we joined forces with the local public administrations and with a series of traditional producers of food with historical heritages reaching back hundreds of years to explore the possibilities for them offered by ubiquitous technologies.

Squatting Supermarkets at SMIR 2011

We found out an incredible opportunity for research and action: we produced packaging for these products which integrated markers which would allow for experiencing a series of augmented reality experiences in which the producers told the story of the product, the traditions behind them, and exposed the enormous values which are embodied in their local, traditional practices: complete sustainability, social integration,  local development, an economic model which is oriented to an holistic idea of value, encompassing the enterprise, the people that work int it, the environment, society, traditions and a vision on the future.

The experiences also offered those assets which made Squatting Supermarkets such a breaktrhough experience: realtime infoaesthetic representations gather data from a multiplicity of sources and make it available using augmented reality directly from the product, including ecology and sustainability profiles, social network buzz, and the possibility to contribute to the overall information environment by openly providing ratings, comments and info-contributions, transforming the experience of consumption into an open, free dialogue among all stakeholders, in which new values, ethics and possibilities constantly emerge. 

REFF RomaEuropa FakeFactory the Book

Art is Open Source and FakePress will be launching the preview of the book “REFF RomaEuropa FakeFactory“, produced by DeriveApprodi and FakePress, at the Share Festival, in Turin, Italy.
On November 6th we will participate to the conference “Publishing Art 2.0: Next Step Publishing – New Scenarios of Art Publishing“ at Artissima.
Here is the link for the Facebook Event
Here is some info about the Piemonte Share Festival
Here is some info about FakePress
Here is some info about the REFF Book
Here is some info about DeriveApprodi
Here is some info about Artissima

more info on Squatting Supermarkets here:

http://www.artisopensource.net/2009/10/27/squatting-supermarkets/

http://www.artisopensource.net/2009/10/25/squatting-supermarkets-italiano/

http://www.artisopensource.net/2009/11/13/squatting-supermarkets-reports-and-next-steps/

Several thousands visitors, hundreds of customized food cans, hundreds of QRCodes printed to link products’ stories, dozens of hours of live Shoptivist TV, 3 workshops, a ShopDropping action in the city centre of Turin, an augmented reality tour at Eataly (a big shopping centre focused on organic foods), hundreds of questions and the relative answers.

These are the numbers. Read on for the details…

Equilibrium. Squatting Supermarkets focuses on the possibility to reinvent reality.

We are all immersed in complex dynamics: simple, daily gestures hide global effects, complex consequences, and we all are the target of planetary strategies that are never clear enough. Turn a light switch on, buy a can of tomatoes, watch TV, drive your car. We constantly are part of global interests producing information that is far from complete.

Squatting Supermarkets enters the supermarket with this idea in mind. Shopping, buying, paying, choosing products are common tasks. When we enter supermarkets we instantly become the center of multiple interests: labels, signs, sounds, voices, aisles, shelves all tell messages suggesting our choices and hiding the whole story.

The Installation

Three experiences.

First.

An iPhone is held in front of a package of coffee, its viewfinder framing its logo and showing a microdocumentary creating a 3 minute narrative on the global situation of coffee production. Percentages, stories of distribution, revenue, profit, communication, social responsibility, sustainability. Recipes for your eco-sustainable cup of coffee. This is just one of the informations that shoppers can experience while choosing their buys at the supermarket. The idea is centered around the iSee application by FakePress.

Take a picture of a logo using your mobile phone and, if it has already been added to the database, the logo gets recognized (about 80% accuracy for this operation, if you have a steady hand… and getting better): information sources are shown on the device’s screen, allowing you to choose from social responsibility, sustainability, ecology, finance.

Attention is towards producers, and to the global policies and strategies that are designed and enacted through the products filling our daily lives.The objective is to show the part of the story that is seldom told, and to tell it right there, just-in-time, when you are there, choosing your product.

Second.

An Oracle. A big eye watches you, awaiting. Products sit on their shelves, ready to be bought.

The first experience told stories about manufacturers, distributors, marketers.

The second one tells the stories of people, of families, of individuals making choices, producing food, objects.

Grabbing products and placing them in the Oracle revealed stories that will never be written on the labels: an anonymous package of olives told the tale of a man from Palestine, cultivating olive trees under the bombs of Israeli warfare; a transparent bag of salt allowed you to enter a deep valley among the mountains of South America, where people dig, dry, carry enormous quantities of salt in the most incredible manners; a pack of multicoloured candy brought you to a peculiar assembly chain in Bangladesh, in an industrial complex that is barely more than a straw barrack, and people live their daily lives among flies, heat and humidity, wore-down machinery, hazards and a few coins in their pockets.

The other part of the story. Embedded into the products.

Third.

First there were the companies, then it was the people. The third experience is all about the shoppers.

The supermarket is a process. Its architecture, its sound, its shape and volumes are designed for people to enter, choose their merchandise, proceed to the cashiers, pay and leave as fast as they can.

No space for expression, for sharing informations and points of view. Only the marketable survives.

We thought we could change that. We tried with the third experience.

Shoptivism TV is a digital TV channel designed to be recorded and viewed inside supermarkets. It is produced by the people. Grab your mobile phone, scan a product and start recording: happy people telling recipes, angry people telling unsatisfaction, informed people telling how things are, creative people telling stories.

Augmented Reality

Stepping aside frm the hype, Augmented Rality (AR) can mean many things. It can mean dinosaurs walking down your favourite street. But it can also mean to augment ordinary reality with new possibilities and opportunities.

We wanted to do just that: have a chance to reinvent the present, the real, adding new sensorial spaces, new sensibilities that can be achieved through digital media and contemporary devices.

Computer vision, location-based media, wearable and pocketable technologies, gestural and natural interfaces can turn complex tasks into simple ones.

Squatting Supermarkets is just that: augment ordinary reality with new possibilities; invade, squat, occupy time and space with expression and different voices; recontextualize, reappropriate, redesign strategies. Squatting Supermarkets’ intent is to recode the present.

Installation Setup

The three parts of the installation have been built with the fundamental help of many students from the Albertina Arts Academy of Turin and from the MultiDAMS. Arts, Crafts and scenographic support,  as well as an incredible deal of conceptual and dialogic exchange, were the key factors that brought to the definition of the final installation. Choosing materials, lighting, assemblage strategies and space design was really fun and it was a chance to dig into the themes of the installation. While our fingernails were breaking and our clothes getting dirtier, we had a chance to tell and discuss stories, bulding an augmented reality of our own.

On the technical side, the three experiences were built using software components implemented using multiple technologies.

The iSee iPhone application was built using Objective-C and Apple’s standard SDK. Some peculiar technologies were used as well, causing the application to be rejected from distribution on the Apple Store: this is the effect of an incredibly harassing strategy Apple is using against its international community of developers. But this is another story that will be told in just a few days.

The image recognition engine is built in two stages. Captured images of logos and products are first pre-processed on the iPhone (image colour adjustment, thresholding and basic feature recognition algorithms are applied in this phase) and the result is sent to a server for comparison with the items already added to the database (a feature comparison process is applied, where the presence of angles, straight lines, regular curves, areas of solid colors or juxtaposition of them all become parameters that are used to compare images coming from mobile phones with the ones of the stored logos and products). Once a logo is eventually recognized, standard SQL procedures allow for association of various information sources.

We currently are integrating:

• Corporate Watch
• CorpWatch
• NASA’s Earth Observatory
• MIT’s SourceMap

Custom contents are also progressively being produced and used, such as microdocumentaries, interviews, researches.

The Oracle is completely done using Processing. Many parts of the processing framework have been used. Efficient and error-free functionalities could not have been achieved without the help of Rolf van Gelder whose enhancements to our little QRCode library for Processing were of fundamental importance.

Two pieces of software were used on the third part of the installation. The main one was a webTV application integrating the streams coming from the LiveStream account we created to distribute the contents live (well.. almost live :) ) to the audience of the Share Festival with the streams coming from the interviews and visitors interactions with the installation.

The second component of this part of the installation was, again, made using Processing. An infovisualization gathered in realtime the communications arising in social networks (on Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook) about the products we used in the other parts of the installation. This visualization was used whenever nothing was going on in the Shoptivism TV channel.

All was coordinated through a simple software layer built using Processing that took care of the generation of the sound environment (featuring triggered hypnotic loops of pure supermarket sound-madness) and the automatic live direction of the various software components, handled through locally networked control messages.

Workshops

Three workshops were performed.

The first one was done with the students of the MultiDAMS in Turin. Here we explained the mechanisms running the Shoptivist TV: how is a TV channel made for supermarkets structured? What technologies can be used? What does it mean to direct, edit and manage a multi author, free access, distributed, ubiquitous TV channel? What are the legal implications of letting people freely record a TV channel inside commercial spaces?

The students were wonderful and immediately activated, learning to use interfaces and grabbing visitors explaining them the wonders of free expression.

The second workshop saw me together with Luca Simeone and Federico Ruberti from FakePress detailing the multiples perspectives involved in Squatting Supermarkets. I introduced the artistic concept, Luca did a beautiful presentation of the anthropologic and interaction design strategies we are researching on to build FakePress and Federico thoroughly presented and explained impressive data collected with the collaboration of Cary Hendrickson on the economic, financial, social and ecological opportunities brought on by these practices.

The third was a continuous state of workshopping we happily embraced with the groups of MultiDAMS students coming in with professor Giulio Lughi. He brought in wave after wave of students, providing us a wonderful and enthusiastic audience to deal with and also allowing us to face questions, doubts and unthought perspectives in a wonderful way (many thanks professor!).

A more peculiar form of workshop was also performed, but it deserves a specific section.

So here comes:

ShopDropping!

Possibly the most exciting and replenishing thing happening for us during the Share Festival, we got several students involved in a creatively subversive action.

Starting from the concepts explained in the Squatting Supermarkets project, we decided that it would be of fundamental importance to get bodies involved in the critical assertions we were making: let bodies reclaim spaces and possibilites through creativity and action!

On Friday morning we gathered the students in front of the Museo Regionale delle Scienze Naturali. After a short explanation we were off for the action.

Three supermarkets, the FNAC and La Rinascente stores in Turin city centre were invaded with narratives and detournments.

The action included two parts.

1) invasion

The cans coming from the Squatting Supermarkets installation were placed among regular supermarket products. These out-of-place products proved to be quite powerful: their aesthetics, together with the fact that they were not part of the shops’ information systems, created multiple bugs in the processes of the commercial premises. The unexpected and unaccounted for turned into a tool for breaking down the daily processes ruling our lives.

2) free narratives

Microstories were distributed to the students under the form of stickers with urban haikus printed on them. They were to be attached on commercial products, over the barcode defining their prices and inventory identification. When people eventually bought the “processed” products none of them would pass the barcode reader, forcing both the clerk and the consumer into reading our little stories. Free form expressions telling tales of ecology, of carelessness, of reconsidering our lives, of applying critiques to our daily gestures.

This was a fantastic experience, both for us and for the students. The possibility to create our own narrative spaces in the places where no such thing is usually allowed was a powerful experience. We had to actually pull students out of FNAC, as they were enjoying the process too much :)

Connections

During the festival we leveraged the TV Channel to connect to other interesting events and people, further promoting the possibility for innovative forms of expression in symbolic spaces.

We first connected to San Francisco with Jonathon Keats. Jonathon told the audience the story of his incredible artworks, and in the clever ways in which the constantly manage to break down the schemes of markets and other complex global forces we are surrounded by. The audience particularily enjoyed the story of the Antimatter Bank Jonathon is bringing up in San Francisco: antimatter against global crisis!

We then connected with the inauguration party of the Hub in Rome. The Hub started in Egland and it turned out to be a really good idea: accessible spaces all over the world to start dialogues, actions, enterprises, between technology, culture, sustainability, social strategies. The Hub Roma just opened up its premises and, if the attitude and excitement they show in what they’re doing don’t lie, we’re set to see some truly interesting things going on over there.

Squatting Supermarkets @ Eataly

We’ll tell you more in the next post about this, so this is just a starter.

We agreed with the management of Eataly to create an event in which the people from the Share festival could have enjoyed visiting the beautiful supermarket dedicated to organic, local, sustainable foods, using Augmented reality techniques. We had an incredible time doing it, and people were delighted to see stories coming directly out of the producst they bought daily. The experience has been both interesting and critical, as people were truly enlightened by the possibility to learn more about the things they eat and drink, in such a direct way.

More on this and on its evolutions in the next post.

The Prize

On the last day of the Share Festival we also had a truly nice surprise.

Squatting Supermarkets won the “Green Prize” offered by Turin’s Environment Park for the most ecologic approach.

Thanks to everyone!

We really need to thank a lot of people. We couldn’t have made it without all of you. So here go the credits:

for the Squatting Supermarkets installation:
Concept, software and artistic direction: Salvatore Iaconesi (aka xDxD.vs.xDxD)
Arts, Crafts & Scenography: a fantastic group of students of the Accademia Albertina of Turin with the direction of Oriana Persico

the iSee application was produced by
Fake Press

for the “Squatting Supermarkets: introduzione pratica e teorica allo Shoptivism” workshop
Concept & Direction: Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico
The group of participants: Silvia Aimone, Roberto Brogi, Eleonora Cappai, Federico Manassero, Barbara Raimondi, Riccardo Rea, Federico Trovarelli, Salvatore Tuscolano.

for the “Complex Shopping Narratives” workshop
Artistic Statement: Salvatore Iaconesi
Antropological introduction & Interaction Design Theory: Luca Simeone
Strategic Marketing & Communication Research: Federico Ruberti
Eco-sustainability & Alternative Economic Models Research: Cary Hendrickson

for the Shopdropping action
Salvatore Iaconesi, Oriana Persico, an incredible group of students from Multi Damd and Accademia Albertina, Collettivo Aut Art (Milan), a student from Accademia of Venice

Photography & video:
Gianfranco Mura and Maya

Augmented Reality Tour @ Eataly
Concept & Direction: Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico
Contact & Coordination: Simona Milvo (Eataly)
Interview: Dino Burri (Eataly)

Special Thanks to
Tone and is dog, Maria, Davich, prof. Giulio Lughi, Massimo Melotti, Gadda, Lo|bo, Aut Art, Les Liens Invisibles, Maya, Gianfranco Mura, Stefan, Mirella, Marie, Franca Formenti, Dario Carrera, Conny Neri, Ivan Fadini, Jonaton Keats, Anna Masera, Dario Migliardi, Roberta Bosco, Alessio Oggioni, Filippo Giannetta, Kathryn Weir, Luca Giuliani, Pete Ippel, Stefano Sburlati, Rolf van Gelder, Silvia and the team of students of Multi D@MS and the all organisation of Piemonte Share Festival (Simona Lodi, Chiara Garibaldi, Luca Barbeni, Chiara Ciociola and the guest curator Andy Cameron) for the beautiful hospitality and work.

All the people that spent time with us during the Festival

Buying, wearing, eating, using. Our lives are full of objects of which we know very little about.

Shop’s and supermrket’s shelves only tell partial stories made from companies, efficient productions, happy farmworkers laying down coffee boxes on trucks with the logo of Nestlè, solar panels amidst fields and atop the roofs of factories who seem to have really stopped vomiting their foul toxic wastes in rivers and air, replacing them with new by-products of production that smell like straw and wheat.

iSee, Augmented Reality for complex shopping narratives

All this happens if we look in one direction. And if we look in the other we see the aisles of the supermarkets spreading messages telling the tale of happy families (politically correct ones: a man, a woman, possibly mixing races and continents, with children, with the only possible alternative to be found in the images of career boys&girls, replacing family with busines and fitness) buying things using credit cards, placing sincere trust in the ear of wheat almost protruding from the box of the product X that they throw into their shopping cart. Just as they trust the words biological, sustainable, ecologic showing up in products of all kinds.

Great commercial distribution points take narratives to an architectural level, designing our experiences up to the deepest levels of detail: the sequence of racks, shelves, themes, suggestions, colors, turns, tight spots; the reassuring sound announcing incredibly special offers; social, ecologic and economic themes, by which all bread is that of the old times, every shampoo has low ecologic impact, every automobile reduces polluting emissions, and any pack of coffee is produced by locals living on cheerful mountains upon which everyone peacefully smiles.

Visions that are partial, designed, monodirectional. Not all of the time. We must say that: luckily we can choose among many producers that have made the transition towards sustainability, ecology and the respect of diversities and of fragile populations. What we need to state is that for everything concerning these issues the possibility to access knowledge and information is an element of primary importance.

Art and creativity often confronted these points of view. The  Supermarché Ferraille come to mind with their improvised store displays, their surreal advertisments, their distorted products. Or the AdBusters, their subversive and detourned communication campaigns. Or the performances by Banksy,  National Cynical Network.Or, in Italy, the ones by Candida TV,  Serpica Naro,  Anna Adamolo,  Luther Blissett,  Liens Invisibles. (… and loads of others. So much tht it would be truly interesting to list and map all f the actions of this kind)

Supermarché Ferraille

A narrative layer was added to ordinary reality in all of these actions, creating liberated spaces, free for personal interpretation. Fakes, detournments, distorsion, surealism and noise become tools that can be used to create opportunity for information, reflection and involvement for bodies and subjectivities that finally become aware of the naked king, with a laugh or with a sincere astonishment, opening up to the possibilities offered by doubt, discussion and the sharing of information, dialogue, knowledge and experience.

AdBusters @ Nike

The Net

Open and acessible possibilities are available, but we are still hard put to defining or discovering their grammars, practices and strategies.

Networks bring with them a series of strategies and practices that potentially allow for reconsideration of several fundamental issues.

Creating information in virtuous and collaborative fashons. Producing and disseminating knowledge. Becoming aware of the progressive de-materialization of commodities and taking advantage of it creating new peer to peer production tools and infrastructures. Invading spaces that were untouchable, thanks to ubiquitous technologies, and opening to pluralized, emergent views. Creating spaces for discussion and collaboration everywhere and anytime.

Synthetizing intelligence, competence, knowledge and opportunities using technologies in contemporary ways. Moving away from the languages of corporations and technocracies, and bringing back technologies and protocols to destinations that are more human, corporal,  physical. Artificial intelligence is not to be found in the monstrous automatic responders that cinema and some science fiction has constantly shown us, but more in the possibility to synthetize content using networks and the possibility to participate to processes and reasoning. Robots move away from those things that try to replicate human behaviour, becoming invisible presences integrated into the environment, thought for an artificially-natural use on bodies and relational domains. Interfaces themselves disappear, replaced by gestures, manipulations, traversals, gazes.

Technology disappears and becomes a consolidated part of the world, a kind of Third Landscape in which information, communication, digital emotions and sensations stand side by side with spontaneous vegetation growing along the cracks of the concrete blocks, augmenting space and reality.

Augmenting reality. Adding spaces for interpretation, expression, critique, using technologies.

We are already doing it: on social networks, on blogs, on mobile phones on SPIMEs.

Candida TV

Corporate rush

Observing corporations is truly interesting.

A brand that can afford to avoid curating its network prsence and reputation does not exist anymore, internationally. Digital reputation and presence builders and curators. Creators of non conventional communication campaigns. Crowdsourcers, viral marketers, SEOs, product placers, aggregators, creators of false crowds of digital workers disguising themselves as ordinary digital people infiltrating social graphs, discussion forums, streams, feeds, twits, disseminating messages and suggestions.

These are becoming common practices for large economic and political organizations and are already well established as tools that can be used to obtain strategic margin in the battles for communication and marketing among the large and not-so-large.

Scandals born on the web and transformes on the web in promotion and profit. Theatrical pieces digitally hosted on user generated content websites, in which false individuals (or even real ones… what is the difference?) expressing false claims about true companies using fake videos, followed by real denials, fake facts, false promises and changes in attitude by real corporations.

Corporations constantly use the practices of adoption and assumption.

The free practices of the internet become a territory for seizure by corporations suddenly becoming promoters and supporters of open licenses, of the freedom of speech and expression for people (users, really), of the possibilities to communicate, participate, share.

It is an explosion of twits, posts, comments, competitions, causes and events. It is a dizzy progression of terms passing through to the other side. Corporate managers were once well willing to breaking the legs of anyone having the nerve to commenting on their actions. As of today, corporations provide at least half a dozen digital location in which to relate to them, telling what you think about their work, what colour you would like the next packaging of their product, what hairdo and dress code you appreciate in their managers and, most of all, they ask you to state how much you love the Internet, giving you the possibility di communicate in a oh-so-free way with your favourite corporation.

This is obviously only a purely narrative dimension used to operate further control, not to adopt truly open practices.

Governance and strategies are never shared, and the web and other digital communication channels become a lounge in which the story of the positivist corporation can be told, a place in which to completely eliminate the possibility for real critique, confined in maximum 140 characters of space. Furthermore, their strongholds are more than granted by the fact that corporations communicate the positivistic and possibilistic philosophies that are typical of their online presence and that are shared with the languages of entrepreneurship. Reinterpreted in a wave of california-ness, they suggest imaginaries that are far from the embraced ones ones, built on control and power.

Everything gets encompassed in corporate languages, and stuffed with innovation, change and openness.

Nothing changes.

What’s up?!?

A desperate situation?

Yes, a little. Obviously.

Corporations can still access capital and resources, even if surrounded by the paradoxes of the continuous global ecosystematic crisis.

Attack is systematic, and sees corporations invading cities with technological aperitifs, meetings for creativity, parties for innovation. Centres for creativity are built, and foundations for young entrepreneurs, incubators for the geniuses coming straight out of Twitter. Local administrations and true culture and innovation producers abide, trying and hoping to tap into the resources. They do this even in bona fide , imagining to eventually being able to promote critical or cultural point of view. Nothing of this obviously happens and everything gets fagocitated by the languages and processes of the corporation. Young entrepreneurs become incubated, cultural producers become innovators, scientific researchers turn into R&D, philosophers become strategists, anthropologists become market strategists, artists become creatives.. etcetera, etcetera, etcetera

It’s the corporate magic: margins drift further apart but with internet they can communicate more.

Squat!

Whet/Where/When/Why.

We live in a world that is filled with codes, images and symbols that power dresses in significates, visions, expectations, desires, politics, strategies. Power owns codes, languages and practices, aiming to extend control and to provide people with packaged interpretations, boxed desires, synthetic ethics, and plastic ambitions.

Turning from menace to ex-menace, digital technlogies and communications are bing transformed into further space fr codification. Creating new public spaces, limiting private ones, defining access policies by offering services and infrastructures. And, most of all, formalizing acceptable critical practices: from call centers to twitter: “stop speaking to operator 428! From now you can speak directly to our CEO! You have 140 characters for it! Think about it, he even answers….”

Subvertr by Liens Invisibles

Critique must move on.

Changing languages, places, methodologies, practices. It must go backinto space, bodies, objects, inside architectures, along the paths that we walk along in our daily lives. It must disseminate codes and symbols, touching visceral, behavioural and reflexive domains.

Fortunately, the worls cannot just be reduced into rigid and predefined codes, and there will always be spaces, cracks, interstices between a code and the other. It has been true with architecture, in the buildings of abandoned industries. Psychologically, with the TAZ. Physically, with squats, raves, occupations. And in contents, with subvertising, detournements, surrealism, fakes.

Action must take place in between the codes and create signs, words, shapes, flows. Recontextualizing everything, superimposing meanings, interpretations and spaces to add further ones, out of control. Losing the desire to establish dialogic dynamics with power, and speaking over, beside and below it.

Technology offers opportunities to generalize squatting approaches, making them accessible and diffused.

To adopt squat as a methodology: identifyng un-coded spaces, make them accessible, use them as a communication, action and expression platform.

Reality++

We can add elements to reality. And interpret others.

Mobile technologies, SPIMES, computer vision techniques allow creating connections between physical and information worlds.

These techniques have been used in the past by commercial and military industries, and allow taking information directly onto bodies, objects and architectural spaces. Pattern and image recognition, augmented reality, GPS, sensors, smart tags can be used to tag things and places, creating bridges with the data and communications we want to associate to them. Through ubiquitous applications implemented on mobile phones and devices we can have experience of these connections, we can see them through these devices, creating new sensorialities, new added senses that are not sensible to light, sounds or tastes, but to information, communication, correlation.

It is possible to write in space, above it, creating a new context that coexists with the ordinary world. Living outside of any control, due to its immateriality. I can write anywhere, read anywhere. I can reclaim the buildings of power. I can criticize the places of commerce. I can whisper in urban spaces, directly to the ears of the people. I can scream in places that I am not allowed to enter.

Squatting Supermarkets II

iSee

Turning the corner of the aisle. Cold. Frozen products. Sounds of shopping carts, bottles, plastics, bags, cardboard, rolling pasta and cereals. Light completely white. Reds disappear or flatten completely, leaving out the reflections on the shiny plastic of serial packages of standard food items wih geometrically acceptable shapes.

Cold and words, in front and behind. Requests for information, calls to other aisles, requests for consensus, children getting lost.

A small accident takes place behind me, just as I lift a package taken randomly among others: two shopping carts collide, pouring out cardboard boxes, synthetic fibers holding together oranges that look all the same, bottles labeled in geometrically psichoactive ways. The fast bureaucracy of the accident ends and everything orderly starts back up : people start following their directional vectors, dictated bi habit and special offers.

I grab the pack back up, simultaneously extracting a smartphone from my pocket: a rapid automatic swipe of my thumb on the touchscreen unblocks it.

Colored icons in one hand, a cold, wobbly package in the other. I run through the icons, finding one with an eye insistently staring back at me, white on black. I activate the application and immediatly frame the package in the viewfinder: red, white, blu contour, thick typeface, readable. A short wait: “Product recognized: XYZ”. Options on the screen “Available information: ecological footprint, social responsibility and sustainability, alternative products. Or you can access the public discussion”. 4 icons.

Squatting Supermarkets III

Squatting Supermarkets is a platform. Mental and technological. It is an attitude suggesting the use of several technologies to create added spaces to reality: for critique, expression, action.

The idea was born when different paths merged.

Some of them were extremely physical, such as the  Superfluo,(Superfluous, but also super-fluorescent), a supermarket in Rome we used to go to because its first floor had been squatted with a joyful action built on  music, useless things and queer performances, rediscovering human relations and creative and sustainble forms of economy, while on the other floors amazed people went about their regular shopping.

Superfluo, (Valeria Guarcini, Dr.Doom, Chiba)

Other paths were extremely immaterial, and featured technologies that had been used to reinterpret the web,  search engines, information flows offered by  governments a social networks.

Other ones were designed to invade bodies and minds with  new forms of sensation and communication, creating brand new forms of identity , or bringing back old ones, reimagined in the surreal worlds of virtual realities.

It is NeoRealismo Virtuale, (NeRVi,Virtual NeoRealism), the creation of digital immaterial spaces superimposed on bodies and architectures. Places for narratives, performance, conscience and knowledge flows.

Squatting Supermarkets IV

Squatting Supermarkets combines several platforms:  iSee, an iPhone application used to create information and communication systems localized on logos and symbols; Ubiquitous Publishing, a set of open technologies that can be used to create location and architecture based contents, accessible directly from the places tht we walk through by using mobile phones and devices, together with simple, affordable augmented reality techniques; architettura rel:attiva, DpSdC and OneAvatar, a series of technological platforms that connect bodies and architectures to the internet and to virtual worlds.

Squatting Supermarkets

Two goals.

On one side, to systematyze practices and technologies, creating an open framework that can be used and evolved to instantiate augmented reality (or, berret, Virtual NeoRealist) spaces, connecting bodies and information, implementing accessible, relational and natural interaction schemes.

On the other side, to act, starting multi-author, diffused, emergent narratives.

Squatting Supermarkets @ ToShare 2009, Market Forces

Squatting Supermarkets will be shown at Piemonte Share Festival, as the special project of the  “Market Forces” exhibit, in Turin 3rd – 8th November 2009.

Squatting Supermarkets

A permanent installation and an experiencial workshop will show the many faces of the concepts and practices described in Squatting Supermarkets.

A narrative line will tell the backstage story of the market, the life of products, of their producers, their movements, links, aggregations.

The objective is to go beyond the view of the world offered by global powers and to tell the other side of the story, made by people, cities, natural environments, energy resources, poverty, richness, differences.

Here the three steps of the narration.

1) The Environment.An iPhone is placed so that people can look at a supermarket shelf through its visor. By touching on the screen the products visible on the shelf, visitors can visualzie information on their environmental impacts, on the ecologic and social responsibilities of manufacturers, on statistics for global production, assembly, transport. The sounds of the supermarket mix to the voices telling the stories, statistics and information.

2) The Stories.A supermarket shelf comes to life. When people approach the products the sounds, voices and images of their producers animate, creating a relationship with them, telling their stories and the ones of their families, habits, cultures, of the conditions in which they produce those products that ended up being there on the shelves, after travelling thousands of miles.

3) Bodies. After having granted expression to the products, the third part of the installation is dedicated to the expression of people traversing supermarket spaces. The paths, hand movements, sounds of voices and words, of shopping carts, al become a generative video and audio soundtrack.

The experiential workshop (November 5th) will allow us to discuss the technical and conceptual details regarding the design and implementation of the framework and of the installation, and we will also be able to try out other prototypes of devices and applications.

Comprare, indossare, mangiare, usare. Le nostre vite sono piene di oggetti di cui sappiamo realmente poco.
Gli scaffali di negozi e supermercati raccontano storie parziali, fatte di aziende, di produzioni efficienti, di contadini felici che poggiano sacchi di caffè su camion con il logo della Nestlè, di pannelli solari in mezzo alle campagne e sui tetti delle fabbriche, che sembra proprio che abbiano smesso di versare nei fiumi e nell’aria i loro maleodoranti rifiuti chimici, sostituiti da nuovi prodotti collaterali della produzione, dall’odore di fieno e paglia.

iSee, Augmented Reality for complex shopping narratives

Questo guardando in una direzione, quella della produzione. Ma anche dal lato del consumo le corsie del supermercato mostrano famiglie felici (e, mi raccomando, un uomo, una donna e dei bambini; o, al massimo, l’alternativa della persona in carriera, che sostituisce nell’immaginario la famiglia con il business e il fitness), che acquistano con la carta di credito, che si fidano della spiga di grano che, in maniera rassicurante, spicca dalla confezione del prodotto che lanciano nel carrello, proprio come si fidano delle parole “biologico“, “sostenibile” ed “ecologico” che figurano su prodotti di ogni genere.
I grandi punti di distribuzione portano la narrazione a livelli architettonici, progettando la nostra esperienza fin nei minimi dettagli: la sequenza di espositori, scaffali, temi, suggestioni, colori, svolte, strettoie; i suoni rassicuranti che ci annunciano opportunità imperdibili; i temi sociali, ecologici ed economici, per cui tutto il pane è “quello di una volta“, tutti gli shampoo sono “a basso impatto ambientale“, ogni automobile “riduce le emissioni dannose” e ogni sacchetto di caffè è prodotto dai contadini locali su ridenti montagne, dove tutti sorridono tranquilli.
Una visione parziale, progettata, unidirezionale. Non sempre, c’è da dirlo, in malafede: possiamo, per fortuna, scegliere tra migliaia di produttori che hanno oramai scelto la via della sostenibilità, dell’ecologia e del rispetto delle diversità e delle popolazioni deboli. C’è anche da dire, però, che per quel che riguarda questi temi la possibilità di accedere a informazioni e conoscenza diventa un elemento di primaria importanza.

Molte volte l’arte e la creatività hanno affrontato questa suggestione. Vengono in mente i Supermarché Ferraille, e le loro vetrine improvvisate, i loro cartelloni pubblicitari surreali, i loro prodotti distorti. O AdBusters, e le loro campagne di comunicazione sovversive e detournate. O ancora le performance di Banksy, del National Cynical Network. O, in Italia, di Candida TV, di Serpica Naro, di Anna Adamolo, di Luther Blissett, di Liens Invisibles. (… e, per fortuna, di moltissimi altri. Tanto che sarebbe realmente interessante elencare tutte le azioni di questo genere.)

Supermarché Ferraille

In tutte le loro azioni uno strato narrativo si aggiungeva alla realtà “ordinaria“, creando spazi liberati per l’interpretazione personale. Il “fake“, il “detournato“, la “distorsione“, il “surreale” e il “rumore” diventano in questo senso possibilità di informazione, di riflessione e di coinvolgimento per corpi e soggettività che, scoperto il “re nudo” tramite una risata o un sincero stupore, si aprivano all’opportunità di dubitare, di discutere, di informarsi, di creare dialoghi, di condividere informazioni, conoscenze ed esperienze.

AdBusters @ Nike

La Rete

In questo momento siamo di fronte ad una serie di possibilità aperte ed accessibili, ma di cui ancora stentiamo a definire grammatiche, pratiche, strategie.

La rete porta con sè e rende accessibili una serie di tecnologie e di pratiche che, potenzialmente, rimettono in discussione diverse questioni.

Creare informazione in maniera virtuosa e collaborativa. Produrre e disseminare liberamente conoscenza. Rilevare ed utilizzare la progressiva smaterializzazione della merce creando nuovi strumenti di produzione peer to peer, localizzata. Invadere spazi prima “intoccabili”, grazie alle tecnologie mobili, ubique. Creare ovunque ed in ogni momento spazi di discussione e collaborazione.

Sintetizzare intelligenza, competenza, conoscenza e opportunità secondo un uso contemporaneo della tecnologia. Spostandosi, quindi, dai linguaggi “dell’azienda” e della “tecnocrazia“, per riportare tecnologie e protocolli a destinazioni più umane, corporee, fisiche. L’intelligenza artificiale non è più da cercarsi in quei mostruosi risponditori automatici cui ci ha abituato il cinema e certa fantascienza, ma piuttosto nelle possibilità di sintetizzare contenuti grazie alla rete e alle possibilità di partecipare a processi e ragionamenti. I robot prendono le distanze da quei “cosi” che tentano di replicare comportamenti umani, diventando adesso oggetti invisibili, integrati nell’ambiente, pensati per un uso artificialmente-naturale sul corpo e nelle dimensioni relazionali. Le interfacce stesse scompaiono, rimpiazzate da gesti, da manipolazioni, attraversamenti, sguardi.

In tutto questo, la tecnologia “scompare“, diventando un pezzo consolidato del mondo, una sorta di terzo paesaggio in cui accanto ai ciuffi d’erba che crescono tra le crepe del cemento troviamo informazioni, comunicazioni, emozioni e sensazioni digitali, ad aumentare lo spazio, la realtà.

Aumentare la realtà. Aggiungere spazi interpretativi, espressivi e critici, usando le tecnologie.

Lo stiamo già facendo: sui social network, sui blog, con i telefoni cellulari, con gli SPIMEs.

Candida TV

Corporate rush

E’ interessante in questo senso osservare l’atteggiamento delle corporation.

Non esiste più un marchio a livello internazionale che possa permettersi di non curare la propria presenza sulla rete. Curatori di reputazione online e di presenze sui social network. Creatori di campagne di comunicazione non convenzionale. Crowdsourcers, viral marketers, SEOs, product placers, aggregatori, creatori di false folle di operai digitali che, travestiti da persone digitali ordinarie si infiltrino in grafi sociali, in forum di discussione, in stream, twit, feeds per diffondere mesaggi e suggestioni.

Queste stanno diventando prassi per i colossi e, adesso, sono già gli strumenti con cui i meno grandi riescono ad ottenere margini di vantaggio nello scontro delle comunicazioni di marketing.

Scandali nati sul web e trasformati, sempre sul web, in promozione e profitto. Piece di teatro digitale ospitati nei siti di user generated content, in cui soggetti falsi (o veri.. cosa importa?) denunciavano fatti veri di aziende vere con video falsi, a cui seguivano smentite vere, fatti falsi, promesse false e falsi cambiamenti di atteggiamento da parte delle reali corporations.

Le quali seguono comunque la pratica dell’adozione e dell’assunzione.

Le pratiche libertarie della rete diventano così territorio di conquista, con le corporation che diventano improvvisamente fautori e sostenitori delle licenze aperte, della possibilità di espressione delle persone (degli utenti, in realtà), delle possibilità di comunicare, partecipare, condividere.

E’ un’esplosione di twit, di post, di commenti, di concorsi, di cause, di eventi. E’ un vertiginoso aumentare di termini che “passano dall’altra parte“. Se fino a ieri i dirigenti erano pronti a spezzarti le gambe se osavi commentare o anche semplicemente suggerire, oggi ti mettono a disposizione almeno una mezza dozzina di luoghi digitali in cui raccontare cosa ne pensi del loro operato, di che colore vorresti la prossima confezione del loro prodotto, di quale pettinatura e stile di abbigliamento apprezzi in un dirigente e, soprattutto, di quanto ami internet e la possibilità di colloquiare così apertamente con la tua corporation preferita.

Questa è, naturalmente, una dimensione puramente narrativa utilizzata non per adottare una reale apertura, quanto per operare ulteriore controllo.

Non vengono mai condivise governance e strategie, e il web e le comunicazioni digitali diventano un salotto in cui narrare le gesta del corporativo positivista, un luogo in cui eliminare di fatto ogni possibilità di critica reale, ridotta a scambi di massimo 140 caratteri. Oltretutto assumendo posizioni di forza garantite dall’esprimere filosofie positive e possibilistiche, di origine californiana, che suggeriscono immaginari ben lontani da quelli del controllo e del potere abbraciati dalle realtà corporative.

Tutto viene inglobato nel linguaggio aziendalista, infarcito di “innovazione“, “cambiamento” ed “apertura“.

Nulla, in realtà, cambia.

What’s up?!?

Situazione disperata?

Un po’ sì, naturalmente. Nel pieno del paradosso della crisi globale ecosistematica sono ancora le corporations a poter disporre e distribuire fondi e risorse, grazie a pratiche oscure (almeno per noi “assenti” dai vertici delle corporazioni stesse) e al fatto che, semplicemente, possano accedere ai fondi “finti” ed “inesistenti” creati grazie a pratiche finanziarie piuttosto che produttive.

L’attacco è sistematico, e vede le corporazioni invadere le città con aperitivi tecnologici, meeting della creatività, serate per l’innovazione. Sorgono centri per i creativi, fondazioni per i giovani imprenditori, incubatori per i geni usciti direttamente da Twitter. Le amministrazioni locali e i reali produttori di cultura ed innovazione si piegano, cercando di attingere alle risorse. Anche in buona fede, magari, pensando di riuscire a promuovere punti di vista critici o culturali. Ovviamente nulla di ciò accade, e tutto viene fagocitato dai linguaggi e dai processi dell’azienda per cui i giovani imprenditori si ritrovano “incubati“, i produttori di cultura diventano “innovators“, i ricercatori diventano “R&D“, i filosofi diventano “strategists“, gli antropologi diventano “market strategists“, gli artisti diventano “creativi“, eccetera, eccetera, eccetera.

La magia si applica ancora: i margini si allontanano ancora sempre di più. Solo che, con internet, si possono parlare molto di più.

Squat!

Cosa/Dove/Quando/Perchè.

Siamo in un mondo pieno di codici, pieno di immagini e di simboli che il potere veste di significati, visioni, aspettative, desideri, politiche, strategie. L’appropriazione, ad opera del potere, di codici, linguaggi e pratiche è volta ad estendere il proprio controllo, e a fornire alle persone interpretazioni preconfezionate, desideri in scatola, valori sintetici e ambizioni di plastica.

Da minaccia ad ex-minaccia, le comunicazioni e le tecnologie digitali si stanno trasformando in ulteriore spazio per la codifica. Coniare nuovi spazi pubblici, delimitare quelli privati, stabilire le politiche dell’accesso e della fruibilità offrendo infrastrutture e servizi. E, soprattutto, formalizzare i processi di critica: dal call center a twitter. “Non parlare più con l’operatore 428! Da oggi puoi parlare direttamente con il nostro Amministratore Delegato! Hai 140 caratteri per farlo! Pensa che, addirittura, risponde...”.

Subvertr by Liens Invisibles

La critica si deve spostare.

Cambiare linguaggi, luoghi, metodologie, pratiche. Deve tornare nello spazio, nel corpo, sugli oggetti, dentro le architetture, nei percorsi e nei luoghi del nostro quotidiano. Deve creare e disseminare codici e simbologie, toccando i domini viscerali, comportamentali e riflessivi.

Il mondo, fortunatamente, non può ricondursi a codifiche rigide e predefinite e, quindi, sono e saranno sempre presenti spazi, varchi, interstizi tra un codice e l’altro. E’ stato vero architettonicamente, con i palazzi dimenticati dall’industria. Psicologicamente, con le TAZ. Fisicamente, con i centri sociali, i rave, gli squat, le occupazioni. E nei contenuti, con il subvertising, il detournement, il surrealismo.

Agire tra i codici, in mezzo alle crepe tra le codifiche, e creare segni, parole, forme e flussi. Ricontestualizzare tutto, sovrapporci significati, interpretazioni e spazi per aggiungerne ancora altri, al di fuori del controllo. Perdere il desiderio di dialogare con il potere, per parlare e agire sopra, di lato, sotto.

La tecnologia può offrire adesso opportunità di generalizzare tutti questi approcci, e di trasformarli in strumenti diffusi e accessibili.

Adottare lo squat come metodologia: identificare spazi non codificati, renderli accessibili, usarli come piattaforma di comunicazione, azione ed espressione.

Realtà++

Possiamo aggiungere elementi al reale. E reinterpretarne altri.

Le tecnologie mobili, gli SPIME, le tecniche di computer vision consentono di creare collegamenti tra il mondo fisico e quello dell’informazione.

Queste tecniche, utilizzate fino ad ora dall’industria e dai militari, portano l’informazione direttamente su corpi, oggetti ed architetture. Il riconoscimento di pattern e immagini, la realtà aumentata, i GPS, i sensori, gli smart tag permettono di marcare cose e luoghi, creando un ponte tra questi e i dati che li riguardano. Usando applicazioni ubique, magari implementate sui telefoni cellulari e i dispositivi mobili di nuova generazione, è possibile avere esperienza di questi collegamenti, di “vederli” attraverso i dispositivi che, di fatto, portano nel reale delle nuove sensibilità, dei sensi aggiuntivi che non sono reattivi a luce, suono o odori, ma all’informazione, alla comunicazione, alle correlazioni.

E’ possibile creare una scrittura nello spazio, sopra di esso, sovrapposta e coesistente al mondo ordinario. E fuori da ogni controllo, in virtù della propria immaterialità. Posso scrivere dovunque, e leggere dovunque. Posso rivendicare nei palazzi del potere. Posso criticare nei luoghi del commercio. Posso sussurrare alle orecchie delle persone negli spazi urbani. Posso urlare dentro i luoghi a me inaccessibili.

Squatting Supermarkets II

iSee

Svoltare l’angolo della corsia. Freddo. Prodotti surgelati. Rumori di carrelli, suoni di bottiglie, plastiche, buste, cartone, rotolar di pasta e cereali. Luce completamente bianca. Scompaiono o si appiattiscono completamente i rossi e rimangono le luci riflesse sulla plastica delle confezioni seriali di alimenti standard dalle forme geometricamente accettabili.

Freddo e parole dietro e davanti, richieste di informazioni, chiamate verso altre corsie, richieste di consensi, smarrimenti.

Mentre sollevo il pacco scelto tra tanti tutti uguali, un piccolo incidente dietro di me: si scontrano due carrelli; vomitano parallelepipedi di cartone, reti in fibra sintetica con dentro arance tutte lucide ed uguali, bottiglie dalle etichette geometricamente psicoattive. La piccola burocrazia dello scontro finisce e tutto riprende nell’ordine: le persone ricominciano a seguire i propri vettori direzionali, dettati dalle abitudini e dalle offerte speciali.

Riafferro il pacco ed estraggo al contempo il cellulare dalla tasca, facendo scorrere il controllo di sblocco con un rapido quanto automatico e calibrato strisciare del mio pollice sullo schermo tattile.

Icone colorate in una mano, una busta fredda e molle nell’altra, piena di mozzarelle dozzinali. Scorro le icone e ne trovo una con un occhio, insistente, bianco su nero. Attivo l’applicazione e subito inquadro con lo schermo del cellulare il logo sulla busta. Premo sul touch screen un pulsante che, nuovamente, raffigura un occhio. L’immagine si ferma, immobilizzando il centro della busta, i suoi colori e le sue forme: rosso, bianco, contorno blu, carattere spesso, leggibile. Una breve attesa. “Prodotto riconosciuto: Mozzarella XYZ”. Le opzioni sullo schermo: “Sono disponibili informazioni su Impatto ecologico, Responsabilità sociale e sostenibilità, Prodotti alternativi. Oppure accedi alla discussione.” 4 icone.

Squatting Supermarkets III

Squatting Supermarkets è una piattaforma. Mentale e tecnologica. E’ un atteggiamento che suggerisce l’uso di diverse tecnologie per creare spazi aggiuntivi alla realtà ordinaria: spazi per la critica, per l’espressione, per l’azione.

L’idea nasce dalla congiunzione di percorsi differenti.

Alcuni estremamente fisici, come quelli che si incontravano all’interno di Superfluo, il supermercato di Roma il cui primo piano è stato a lungo invaso da una gioiosa azione fatta di musica, cose inutili e performance queer, riscoprendo relazioni umane e forme di economia creativa e sostenibile.

Superfluo, (Valeria Guarcini, Dr.Doom, Chiba)

Altri estremamente immateriali in cui le tecnologie venivano usate per reinterpretare il web, i motori di ricerca, i flussi di informazioni offerti da governi e siti di social networking.

Altri ancora a invadere corpi e menti con nuove forme di sensazione e comunicazione, creando identità completamente nuove per forma e sostanza, o riportandone in vita di vecchie, reimmaginate nel surreale mondo delle realtà virtuali.

E’ il NeoRealismo Virtuale, la creazione di spazi immateriali digitali sovrapposti a corpi ed architetture, come luoghi della narrazione, della performance, del flusso di conoscenza e coscenza.

Squatting Supermarkets IV

Squatting Supermarkets combina diverse piattaforme: iSee, una applicazione iPhone per la creazione di sistemi di informazione e comunicazione localizzati su loghi e simboli; Ubiquitous Publishing, un insieme di tecnologie usate per creare contenuti territoriali ed architettonici, fruibili direttamente dai luogi attraversati usando dispositivi mobili e realtà aumentata; architettura rel:attiva, DpSdC e OneAvatar, una serie di piattaforme tecnologiche in grado di collegare corpi e architetture ad internet e ai mondi virtuali.

Squatting Supermarkets

L’obiettivo è duplice.

Da un lato, mettere a sistema pratiche e tecnologie, per creare un framework aperto per creare spazi di realtà aumentata, per collegare corpi e informazioni, per realizzare forme di interattività tecnologica accessibili e naturali.

Dall’altro lato attuare azioni e avviare narrative multiautoriali, diffuse, emergenti.

Squatting Supermarkets @ ToShare 2009, Market Forces

Squatting Supermarkets sarà presente al Piemonte Share Festival, come special project nell’ambito della mostra “Market Forces“, a Torino dal 3 all’8 Novembre 2009.

Squatting Supermarkets

Una installazione permanente ed un worshop esperienziale esporranno in varie forme i concetti e le pratiche descritte in Squatting Supermarkets.

Una trama narrativa mirerà a raccontare il retroscena del mercato, della vita dei prodotti, dei loro produttori, dei loro spostamenti, accoppiamenti, accorpamenti.

L’obiettivo è oltrepassare la visione del mondo offerta dai poteri globali e raccontare l’altra parte della storia, fatta di persone, città, ambienti naturali, risorse energetiche, povertà, ricchezze, differenze.

Tre sono i movimenti della narrazione.

1) l’Ambiente. Un iPhone è disposto in modo da permettere ai visitatori di guardare uno scaffale di un supermercato attraverso il visore. Nell’inquadratura, tocando sullo schermo i prodotti sullo scaffale, appaiono informazioni sul loro impatto ambientale, sulle politiche ecologiche e di responsabilità sociale dei loro produttori, sulle statistiche globali della loro produzione, assemblaggio, trasporto. I suoni del supermercato si miscelano a quelli di voci narranti, che raccontano le statistiche e le informazioni.

2) le Storie. Lo scaffale di un supermercato prende vita. Avvicinandosi ai prodotti le voci, i suoni e le immagini dei loro produttori si animano, a stabilire un rapporto con i frequentatori del supermercato, a cui raccontano la propria storia e quella delle loro famiglie, le loro abitudini, le condizioni in cui producono i prodotti che vanno a finire lì, sullo scaffale.

3) i Corpi. Dopo aver dato la parola ai prodotti, la terza parte è dedicata all’espressione delle persone che attraversano gli spazi del supermercato. I percorsi, il movimento delle mani e di altre parti del corpo, e i suoni e le parole di soggeti, carrelli, oggetti, diventano una colonna sonora e una ambientazione visiva generative per l’ultima parte dell’installazione.

Il workshop esperienziale (il 5 Novembre 2009) ci permetterà di raccontare i dettagli tecnici e concettuali dietro la realizzazione del framework e dell’installazione e di sperimentare dispositivi ed applicazioni.