In this lesson we analyzed a series of initiatives which used ubiquitous technologies and a structured approach to interaction on social networks to design innovative scenarios for large-scale events of international relevancy.

The cases shown during the lesson have been selected because of the effectiveness of their design, which achieved the result of both enhancing the experience of the event through novel forms of awareness and interaction, and also to leverage in specific, significative ways the opportunities offered by these technologies.

Chevy at SXSW

At SXSW 2011 Chevrolette designed a complete presence using a series of strategies which allowed them to enact a powerful brand awareness campaign by integrating physical and digital events in really natural ways.

• a series of spaces designed as lounge areas allowed visitors to benefit from free wireless connection and to engage in fun, interesting, socially collaborative activities which also suggested they generate  online content on social networks
• a series of activities involved Chevy cars to provide useful services to visitors, such as giving them rides across the city of Austin; visualizations were used to show in event space the paths of these city traversals, generating beautiful geographical patterns
• all activities had direct evidence on social networks, either by showing in the event the results of the event-relevant communication taking place in real-time on social networks and by providing multiple occasions for visitors to generate online content such as photoshoots, little contests, participatory narratives in conferences to which you could participate by joining in Social Network discussions
• a partnership with Gowalla allowed to offer advanced, fun and unexpected location based services and initiatives which were seamlessly integrated with the overall event experience; for example visitors who were already registered to Gowalla received messages as soon as arriving at Austin’s airport, giving them welcomes, instructions and small games also of the collaborative kind to which to participate
• special events were created specifically for active social network users
• Here is an article describing a couple of additional features of Chevy’s presence at SXSW

Joyce 4th anniversary

A completely different approach was used by Joyce, the exclusive fashion brand, to celebrate their 40th anniversary.

The wish to create an extraordinary experience allowed Joyce to integrate multiple technologies in the event, providing natural interaction techniques such as the following one (see Reactivision for concept on how this works) or projection mapping, turning entire architectures into spectacular screens:

Artvertiser

Through Artvertiser we analyzed the possibility to create augmented vision practices to transform the perception of spaces.

Augmented Shadow

Through the Augmented Shadow project we learned ways in which it is possible to use physical objects to naturally interact with digital processes and narratives, opening up scenarios in which it is possible to invent novel ways to interconnect people, events, places and processes.

Zugara Augmented Shopping

Through the Zugara augmented shopping experience we analyzed how it is possible to take existing practices, such as trying on clothes while shopping, and substantially reinvent them, using novel forms of digital interaction applied to obtain natural forms of interaction.

We then expanded the concept by analyzing the strategies behind the realization of Prada’s concept stores.

Daito Manabe’s Faces

We then investigated on novel uses of technologies which allow to interact directly with people’s bodies. One example was Daito Manabe‘s faces transformation software, allowing you to “wear” the faces of famous people.

Coca Cola Village

Coca Cola Village example was used to analyze how Near Field Communication and social networks could be used to both create exciting experiences in events and to also create powerful communication strategies that can produce and spread novel forms of communication. At the village, guests were given RFID bracelets which they could use when attending the various environments, such as pools, playgrounds and events. Each bracelet was associated with the guest’s Facebook account. By simply passing their arm near a sign depicting the famous Thumb Up of Facebook’s “I Like” action, guests would publish onto the social network that they were having fun performing that specific activity.

Sony Vaio Scavenger Hunt

Then a scenario about a Scavenger Hunt created by Sony for the presentation of their Vaio products was analyzed to understand the use of QRCodes and location based technologies to create participatory events in which the interactions would take place in the space of the city.

The Netherland Film Festival

The Netherland Film Festival used Augmented Reality to create a narrative experience that visitors could access while moving from one venue to the other. Disseminated bits of a story were accessible using augmented reality by pointing a smartphone to passer-by’s, to see callout balloons pop up over their heads, transforming them into unexpected actors of an AR movie.

The Tourist in Dallas and Ralf Lauren’s 4D experience

Then a series of examples of projection mapping techniques was shown to explain how to transform entire architectural surfaces into screens, to visualize both engaging sensorial experiences or to experiment in the visualization of realtime data.

Here below are the slides using during the lesson:

Our contribution will engage the possibility of designing large-scale events using methodologies which allow to create seamless experiences which join together physical and digital environments to achieve multiple objectives.

breakdancing in the street

In the first introductory lesson, we started by analyzing the image above. It shows people watching a breakdancing show in via del Corso in Rome.

What we did was to imagine what was going on beyond the appearances. If we look at it from a specific perspective, all the people in the picture are busy generating ubiquitous digital information. Each of them probably has a mobile phone in their pocket. Some of them are taking pictures, which will possibly end up on social networks and probably be even geo-tagged to associate to them the information about where the shots were taken. Maybe some of them will publish something like “great breakin’ street show in Rome today!” on Twitter. Each of them probably has some sort of digital means of payment, such as ATM or credit card.

From such observations, we figured how multiple layers of activity are simultaneously going on in a single space, and we could imagine representing them visually or in some other form, for example using Augmented Reality, to have the perception of something which goes beyond our “natural” vision of the world we live in, beyond the landscape.

What we envisioned is that it is now possible to transform each physical space into an augmente space, in which ubiquitous technologies can be used to stratify digital information and interactive experiences onto the ordinary reality.

This produces an entire new vision for our cities and, more in general, for our physical spaces, which now are able to embed digital information creating novel scenarios for the activities  of our daily lives.

We interpreted this as a generalization of the term Screen.

screens everywhere

We are used to seeing screens everywhere in one way or the other.

Each advertisement, each led display, each timetable at the train station, each menu outside a restaurant, each weather and temperature display, each microwave oven. Multiple things in our environment show information in ways which we would have no problem in defining as “screens”: surfaces of some kind showing information and/or narratives.

Some places are more explicit in being filled with screens, such as Times Square (NY), shown in the image above.

Yet it non difficult to imagine how it is possible to transform virtually any surface into a screen designed to show information and offer opportunities for interactivity.

Through Ubiquitous technologies, mobile devices, augmented reality, location based systems, near field computing, sensors, electronics, wearable devices, electronic gadgets, smartphones and multiple types of display technologies, each space, each surface and even thin air can become a screen, radically augmenting the physical environment by layering onto (and interweaving into) it multiple digital experiences.

We noted how this approach radically changes the definition of public space.

In its classical definition, public space is somewhat a description of borders, of boundaries, which we, public administrations, cultures, common practices, symbols and temporary agreements define as such.

In this new scenario, public space becomes a simultaneous compresence of multiple definitions. By adding an Augmented Reality layer to a space I can transform it into a public space for discussion, for example. In that same space I can add other opportunities for public, shared interaction, which may or may not be related to one another. Furthermore, people from diverse locations can converge into a single digital public space and, thus, into a physical space, as the information and narratives which they generate materialize in a single location regardless of where or when they have been generated.

This approach transforms space/time into a read/write framework for multiple simultaneous forms of expression.

Such possibilities drastically interact with our notion and perception of place.

In his book “The Image of the City” Kevin Lynch describes the ways in which we recognize places, the elements which we use in our perception of place to identify it: aesthetics, materials, lights, configurations of buildings and streets, signage, people’s walking patterns… In the consideration of an augmented place (Digiplace,as Zook & Graham describe it) we experience a different geography: emergent; ubiquitous; multiple; open-ended; capable of hosting at the same time multiple perspectives, layers of information, narratives.

This issue calls for new methodologies in designing space and the processes which take place in it, across time, geography and ubiquitous digital presence and interaction.

The need to positively design this new idea of space, which fluidly mixes physical and digital domains, requires modifications to our practices.

This is exactly our approach in our contribution to the Master of Exhibit Design:

• Create a novel vocabulary, a novel language, a novel usage grammar for space, in which digital tools, ubiquitous technologies, screens and interactions form a series of new possibilities, materials, methodologies which can be used to design space and the processes which take place in it, taking into account the idea of a space which is multi-layered, interactive, emergent, in which multiple people and information can converge ubiquitously, and which can be interconnected in real-time with all the parts of the planet;
• focus on the technologies and methodologies which we can use to enact these processes, and learn how to keep up with their rapid evolution, constantly identifying new tools and “materials” to design spaces and interactions, and integrating them into our design practice;
• learn how design processes change, to account for these additional possibilities;
• learn how to activate these new ideas for space, connecting them to social networks and ubiquitous experiences, using computers, mobile phones, smartphones, devices, gadgets, interactive systems, natural interactions and, most of all, creating the narratives and cognitive accessibility and effectiveness which are able to let people tune in to the novel possibilities and modalities.

During the lessons we will focus on the following approach:

lessons approach

There will be a horizontal and a vertical classification of the themes discussed in the lessons:

• vertically, we will perform activities which will engage three main issues:
• natural interaction, meaning the modalities of digital interaction which are implemented using common, natural, physical, widely known and accessible gestures and practices, such as touching/moving physical objects, wearing devices under the form of pieces of clothing, traversing spaces with interactive features in them, looking at things, speaking, showing ourselves or objects to vision devices, triggering sensors with our behaviour
• screens, in the many ways in which we can imagine to create a screen today, using those technologies and methodologies which permit to realize portable screens, screens on smartphones, transforming objects into information displays, transforming entire architectural surfaces into screens, and understanding the concepts and methodologies according to which we are able to publish information and opportunities for interaction onto them, from the incredibly small, to the incredibly large;
• next-step social networks, investigating the ways in which it is possible to ubiquitously interconnect people, engage them in events or processes of other kinds, create information in real time using sensors, interactions, content harvested from social networks, interconnecting person to person, person to place, person to object, object to object, visualizing this information and allowing people to naturally and accessibly interact with it.
• horizontally we will analyze issues which cover the whole scenario of designing public space and the processes which take place in it:
• the methodologies which allow innovation to take place, including the adoption of technologies
• the mutation of design practices, to take into account the possibilities offered by ubiquitous technologies and natural interactions
• the activation of this new form of space/time/process, by designing the strategies of the multi-modal, trans-media communication which becomes a fundamental element in the creation of place

We will do all of this starting from the idea of the Great Event.

A Great Event, such as the Olympics, major conventions, city-wide happenings, film festivals and things like that, are peculiar in the fact that they create important processes in the city for the length of their duration.

A city is a specific type of place, as in its territory multiple processes, of large, medium and small scales, constantly interweave, engaging society, administrations, companies, groups of citizens, and addressing major issues such as health, security, mobility, environment and pollution, energy, law, regulations, cultures, commerce.

The creation of a major event in a city requires multiple types of action, and the design of the event itself is only one of them, the others being the search for a suitable location; the establishment of relationships with local administrators, companies, citizen representatives; the request for licenses and permissions; the assessment of issues related to health and security; the dialogue with organizers, sponsors and territorial subjects. This type of overall activity describes a Great Event as an ecosystem of practices with great impact on the urban texture of the place it is organized in, from points of view which are economic, commercial, social, cultural, communicational, and requiring different types of interventions on both the territorial configuration and on the administrative, bureaucratic and civic apparatuses of the city.

In the following lessons of the course we will focus on the ways in which a Great Event can be designed to incorporate the technologies and methodologies described above into the definition of a city-wide process which is able not only to realize an harmonious and effective interrelation between physical and digital spaces, but also to promote novel practices which are able to interconnect people worldwide, across cultures, languages and approaches.

The Great Event which we will describe will take place in a physical location, but it will also interconnect in real-time people from all over the planet. In the physical space natural interactions, ubiquitous screens and networked processes will allow people to produce and experience real-time information and to relate, learn, and participate in novel ways, suggesting new scenarios for entertainment, citizenship, commerce, knowledge, culture and awareness.

Here below you can find the slides used in the first, introductory lesson.

Here Below are some of the videos used during the lesson:

McLuhan incontra Pompei

Organized by MediaDuemila as an event for the centennial celebrations of the birth of Marshall McLuhan, the event will feature the official launch of a project dedicated to knowledge, education and scientific experimentation dedicated to the students and young generations of the city of Pompei: “McLuhan meets Pompei: writing in the times of Social Networks. From graffiti to Augmented Reality”.

Derrick de Kerckhove, MediaDuemila’s scientific director, will lead the project which will have its official start

October 20th, from 9:00am to 1:00pm
at the Theatre “Di Costanzo e Mattiello”
Pompei

and will present the fundamental contributions by:

• Matteo Ciastellardi (University of Milan, University of Barcelona)
• Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico (University of Rome “La Sapienza, FakePress Publishing and Art is Open Source)
• Candida Livatino (Graphologist)
• Maurizio Pellegrini (Ugo Bordoni Foundation)
• Maria Pia Rossignaud (Director of “MediaDuemila”)
• Antonio Varone (Director of the “Scavi di Pompei”)

The project will continue in December with a Connective Intelligence Atelier and with the creative laboratories for digital communication titled “The Electronic Man and the Digital Wall”, promoting the acquisition of knowledge and skills on ubiquitous technologies and media, and the reflection on global society, characterized by the continuous interconnection of human beings, cultures, nationalities and languages, just as forecasted by McLuhan.

Here on MediaDuemila you can find a short text that describes our intervention in the event and in the project.

Here are some extracts, translated in english:

“Ubiquitous technologies materialize new and fascinating forms of writing as well as new forms of sensibility and planetary awareness, in a scenario which sees our perception of the world radically mutated.

[...]

The impacts of this mutation have effects on the ways we work, learn, communicate, relate and spend our free time. Digital networks and technologies are at the base of this mutation and determine a drastic change in out models for thought and expression.

[...]

In ‘The Electronic Man’ a suggestive and effective narration shows these new spaces for possibility and opportunity, and makes them observable.
A global performance forms the foundation of a research project which has been able to enact a new form of planetary writing and sensibility.
Thousands of QRCodes have been disseminated by internet users in their cities, and are forming the access portal to participating to this global experiment: the creation of a connective body and identity, and the acquisition of an externalized, added sensoriality, through a technological device.

[...]

As of today, around 50 thousand people all over the world participated to the performance/experiment, creating a scenario which bears very high interest for scientific and cultural research, due to the material possibility to observe and experience these novel possibilities: accessible ubiquitous technologies, relating people across multiple cultures and social contexts, on a planetary scale; augmented reality, ubiquitous publishing, natural interfaces and geo-referenced systems which are able to create and enable usage of new forms of writing, new sensibilities and tools for awareness and communication.

[...]

In Pompei the technologies used for the Electronic Man project will be explained and given to students and teachers. Together with them we will create a performative workshop in which these methodologies and techniques will be used in practical scenarios, inventing new forms of citizenship and processes which are able to narrate the story of the territory, people’s identities, the value of the production and the richness of the culture of the land and of the people who inhabit it.

[...]

Appropriating these languages, creating usage grammars for them, freely activating them in our daily lives: these are becoming the conditions and toolsets of the global citizen and of a new form of citizenship which is truly capable of transforming human beings into active agents of our societies, more aware, tolerant and conscious of the value of its territory and of fellow human beings.”

The Electronic Man

A conceptual and theoretical analysis of the project has been accepted for presentation at the Planetary Collegium‘s annual conference: Consciousness Reframed 12 “Presence in the Mindfield” 

Here below, the abstract we presented for the conference/publication:

Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 movie “Modern Times” shows human beings changing the ways in which they perceive the world by establishing contact with a new set of technologies.

Time-keeping devices are possibly the most effective agents of change represented in the movie: visually ubiquitous, these devices have had radical impact on lives of human beings well out of the walls of industry, drastically changing our perception of time in ways that are not only powerful and all-encompassing, but also very intimate, influencing the very structure of the our perception of the world.

“Time” is now a machine-mediated experience in our whole lives, from as soon as we wake up in the morning by listening to an alarm sound.

Our sense of time is not the only one changed by technologies, as our experiences of space, our vision, our proprioception have changed as well, and several entirely new senses have emerged since the entrance of digital technologies and networks in our daily lives.

This concept can be framed into the wider set of theories connected to Neuroplasticity, starting from the early insights of William James (1890), up to the experiments of Ramachandran in the beginning of the 1990′s, to the studies of Merzenich and Jenkins (1990) and to the analysis of behavioural consequences of synaptic rewiring by Doidge.

We joined the worldwide celebrations of the centennial of Marshall McLuhan’s birth, in 2011 with an act of global performance art by investigating and enacting the scenarios for the emergence of new, externalized senses through the use of ubiquitous technologies.

McLuhan’s theory of the Electronic Man according to which the “Electronic man like pre-literate man, ablates or outers the whole man. His information environment is his own central nervous system” (McLuhan, Counterblast, 1969) was juxtaposed to de Kerckhove’s description of how “we are invited to refine our proprioception to extend our point of being (rather than our point of view) from wherever we are to wherever technically extended senses can allow us to reach” (The Skin of Culture, 1997).

The objective was to envision, design and realize a global system which would enact a digital sense, externalized on a mobile device such as a smartphone.

Stickers connecting to the performance through a QRCode were disseminated across cities in the world. By scanning the QRCode people can join in the performance. Whenever anyone interacts with the performance, all the smartphones of the other participants vibrate, thus establishing an instantaneous neo-tactile sense.

More than 35000 people joined in the performance, across continents, nations, languages and cultures.

The paper will analyze the methodology, design and implementation of the performance. The analysis and evaluation of the results of the performance will be also disclosed and described, from the point of view of the possibility to create new synthetic, accessible, usable and effective senses externalized onto digital devices, extending people’s sensorial experience of the world to their global info-scape.

And here below is the information about the conference:

PRESENCE IN THE MINDFIELD: Art, Identity and the Technology of Transformation

12th Consciousness Reframed International Research Conference

The conference will look at the exploration of the plurality of self through which we navigate the actual and virtual universes of our making. Transdisciplinary discourse, the adoption of new technologies, the invisible forces and fields of the sciences, the recuperation of abandoned metaphysical and spiritual models of being, can all find expression within the context of this conference.

Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Portugal

November 30 to December 2, 2011.

Organisation: Skilled Art Project

In cooperation with the Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth, England, Fábrica das Artes, CCB, Lisbon and Artshare, Aveiro, Portugal

UPDATE:

CLICK HERE to find the full list of presenters

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. 

“Training Future Anthropologists by Innovative Means: Professional Vision from Augmented Reality NKISI Representations”

Here is a link to download the PDF of the abstract.

Here is the Future of Education Conference website

Augmented Reality NKISI

The paper deals with a research that we’ve been performing for a while with FakePress. This specific instance of the research is done by Salvatore Iaconesi, Luca Simeone and Federico Monaco, and it is perfectly integrated with the other researches FakePress is performing to analyze interesting scenarios in which augmented reality techniques and technologies can be used to promote new forms and practices for education.

In this project a NKISI statue from Congo is connected to a computer vision system which allows recognizing its features in realtime. Each feature can be then connected to digital information through a specifically taylored Content Management System.

The result is that the statue can be connected with information that is accessible directly from the statue itself, for example by moving it in front of a camera that feeds its image to the computer vision system and then shows the fetched information on screen.

This is an incredibly stimulating area for research which has applications in multiple fields, allowing us to populate objects and places with easily accessible digital information, thus potentially enacting entirely new forms of publication, education and expression.

Here is the abstract:

“Augmented reality learning tools can give significant contributions to the development of anthropological practices. The steps to acquire a professional vision in a specific research field can be supported and enhanced by ITC applications creating content for students and practitioners. Digital tools can be created and supported by versatile cross-medial Content Management Systems, allowing for the creation of networked and collaborative knowledge ecosystems that can extend the reach of digital communication onto physical artifacts, geographic locations, architectures and even bodies. Here users/researchers/students are able to stratify layers of information in ways that are directly accessible from the physical objects/places/spaces of research/study, and that allow achieving a state of continuous correlation of data, information and points of view that is extremely effective and usable: users can behave as publishers of their own impressions and experiences, or as designers building their own tools needed for their fields of activities. Innovation in education seems possible even in Humanities and specifically in fields such as ethnography research, where the practices of scientific enquiring and methodology depend strongly on how they are reproduced and transmitted. The adoption of augmented reality learning tools can be helpful for education in Cultural Anthropology and opens itself new transdisciplinary horizons of research for Information Science and Anthropology.
In this case study, NKISI, power figures from Congo, are used to create a materialized learning and knowledge sharing environment, implemented using advanced augmented reality techniques. The design encloses the choice of objects, their encoding as learning facilities, the representation of possible usage scenarios of the platform, and the definition of the scope of the AR experiences, from the point of view of the acquisition of professional skills.
The case study covers an end to end process in which the description of cultural processes and insights is used from the beginning as a basic tool both in the specific case (describing the salient characteristics of the NKISI) and as a methodological scenario that allows apprentices and students to describe and to add their experiences of the cultural meaning of these ethnic representations. Learning by doing seems not always possible and the access to virtual representation of foreign cultures can be a good compromise between a static picture on a book and the learning experience with a real ethnical artifact. Only through a testing activity in a real learning environment a new tool can be shaped according to users’ needs and can be compared to how professional vision is gained by training and experience in other ways and by other educational means”

We are building a specific strategy on these teaching activities, at several levels and from varied perspectives.

So, here it goes:

The objectives

We have several short-term and long term objectives:

1. to create an education path that deals with cutting edge technologies and methodologies, producing and disseminating knowledge and technical skills that can represent real opportunities both for students and for society
2. to research on possibilistic scenarios whose aim is to identify and propose the possible evolutions and mutations of publishing practices, along the paths of emergent, emotional, disseminated, multi-author, cross-medial, recombinant, informational narratives
3. to create a pragmatic cultural process in which a true understanding of digital cultures is the key to understand the possibilities offered by a multicultural, tolerant, communicational, empathic world
4. to create a process in which several languages and voices take part in a dialogue: the languages of creativity, anthropology, communication science, business, art
5. to create tools that foster multidisciplinary collaboration and the perspectives, for students, to collaborate in ways that go beyond the classroom, learning how to open dialogues with researchers, academics, entrepreneurs, artists, and the people of the streets and of social networks
6. to create a process that is focused on an ethnographic approach to design: understand cultures, populations and single individuals to create products, services, works of art and creativity that are truly sustainable, ecologic, tolerant and socially responsible, from points of view that are philosophical, environmental, economic, aesthetic, psychologic
7. to enact true innovation processes, creating real opportunities for students
8. to experiment new forms for education and for the sharing of knowledge, based on ethics; on liquid conceptions of education and of the roles defined among students and teachers; on the vision that knowledge and information – and its free access, sharing and dissemination – are today’s most valuable assets; on the idea of nomadic practices as tools that are usable to create liberated spaces in which to create, imagine, design and implement;
9. to promote the possibilities offered by digital, ubiquitous technologies in terms of adding layers of information on ordinary reality, creating a multiperspective, poliphonic, interpretative views of the world; augmented reality and disseminated urban narratives as the key to reinvent reality and the present;
10. to promote a design approach centered on experiences, emotion, empathic domains; the imaginary is possibly the most crucial factor in social change and the most fundamental force for creativity.

The courses

The courses are about “Multimedia Design”. The first step of our action will be to reinterpret this definition (which is quite old-fashoned) to promote innovative approaches.

Three courses are involved:

• Multimedia Architectures held by Luca Simeone will be focused on a high level approach describing theories, methodologies and formal practices connected to Interaction design; here is the syllabus of the course.
  
• Multimedia Graphics, held by Federico Ruberti will be greatly restructured from its original intentions, drifting away from being a “Photoshop course” and turning into a path along the aesthetic, historical and philosophical reasoning that brought us to the current state of the art of digital cultures and creativity. As you will see in the course syllabus, the focus will be equally divided between the teaching of the history of all the XXX-media (multimedia, intermedia, transmedia…)  and the formal framing of all of the practices connected to the invention, planning, design and implementation of cross-medial products and services.
• Experimental Multimedia Technologies and Communications, taught by me, Salvatore Iaconesi, will be the place where the two high level, historical approaches will be put together. As you can see from the syllabus, the course’s program is centered on the enactment of theories and formalisms, through practice, design and production. The focus will be on classic web intraction design, on information design and aesthetics, on physical computing, on ubiquitous technologies, wearables, spimes and location based platforms, all on the idea of multiplatform environments (computers, mobile, devices, wearables, bodies, objects and architectures) along the ways described through our FakePress project.

The three courses will mutually synchronize and interact, acting as a single complex 360° course. Even the exam will be merged.

An online social network has been created for students and professors to constantly interact on the education process, to share materials, information sources and to establish continuous, emergent collaboration paths among all individuals involved.

The system itself will be completely rebuilt by the students. During the first lesson we invited students to imagine the shape, tools, information and interactivity of their ideal education digital ecosystem. We will gather all of their suggestions to (possibly) completely redesign the website, thus creating a complete learning environment that will have all voices represented. This process will be focal to many of the activities performed during the courses.

Furthermore, students will form groups to create a Project Work, which will be a fundamental tool that will allow us for the enactment of the strategy described in the previous section. While we will provide a thematic track to create a narrative flow along all project works, students will be free to give shape to their specific ideas, and we will only act as enablers in this process, discussing with them the feasability of their visions, the opportunities and possibilities offered by the different approaches.

Strategy

All of this will be integrated into a wider process.

Together with The Hub we are creating a collaborative process in which different universities, faculties and disciplines cooperate in the creation of complete social innovation scenarios. Together with Dario Carrera of The Hub Roma we created a research path with his students of the course of Management of Nonprofit Organizations and Social Enterprises of the Faculty of Economics at the Tor Vergata University in Rome. Students will study and research on innovative projects such as iSee or on actions of social creativity and activist art such as Squatting Supermarkets to invent and formalize business models that are focused on the social innovations that are achievable using ubiquitous, mobile interactivity and disseminated, location-or-object based contents: mobile computer vision systems, natural interactions, accessible social expert systems, emergent p2p collaboration practices, critical shopping, ubiquitous communication practices for sustainable economies.

The basic models have already been produced and are currently in review: they will be used in the project works to design the economic feasability of the projects that will, thus, form a real-life scenario.

Each group of students will thus create a prototype or working version of an experience, product, service or cross media publication along the lines defined by FakePress, using ubiquitous technologies, location based information systems, mobile, wearable and standard electronic devices, or spime based ones.

Open Day and Exhibit

The results of the Project Works will be featured in an open day which will be freely accessible from any interested individual. We will have invited guests in the academic, scientific and artistic worlds of digital cultures. The exams will also be open for anyone to see.

We are coordinating with Rome’s Cultural Policies Council to provide a remarkable exhibition space for all of the projects to be exposed, and to have a final party to relax a bit and to promote student works and skills to enterprises, companies and institutions.

Selected projects will also follow a series of specific paths.

First of all, they will be featured in a selection of international conferences on design, sustainability, technology, digital cultures. We will specifically act towards the promotion of both the most innovative works produced, and of the process used in the education path, as an formal methodology for innovative education and its connection with the creation of significative opportunities for students, companies and institutions.

We will also select interested students to participate to paid stages with relevant parties among design and communication agencies, technological enterprises, cultural institutions, museums, digital arts and creativity festivals, research institutes and so on. We already have selected an international series of interested parties for this part, but we will disclose te list of partners as soon as we have formal confirmations. There will be many surprises here. :)

Students who will wish to continue along  research/academic paths will also be directed and assisted in the selection of PhDs and master courses in the best international colleges.

Project Works that will be deemed as being particularly significant will become actual FakePress cross-medial publications.

Conclusions

This is a complex scenario that we envisioned and enacted, and that will take time and effort to complete.

As a matter of fact, the three FakePress members are doing this for free.

For more than one reason.

We feel that innovation in education and cultural practices, with specific reference to the current situation found in most italian universities, is a fundamental tool for social evolution and for the creation of opportunities for the young individuals that often see their possibility for autnomy and self-determination deeply limited by a lack of perspectives that is only parti conjuntural.

Low investments on research and on the accessibility of higher level studies and appropriate technologies and methodologies; inadequate programs and formal tools; useless skills. And most of all a deep negative impact on peoples’ imaginaries brought on by a constant state of crisis that invades environment, mind, society, economy.

We feel that classic politics seldom approach and never confront these issues, claiming the themes of knowledge, innovation and education and turing them into propaganda that rarely finds pragmatic outcomes.

We feel that an alternative is possible, and it definitely passes through the offering of new practices for education, new roles for students and teachers and for the use of creativity and new imaginaries and languages to obtain resources, spaces, possibilities.

We don’t feel like complaining. And we  feel that solutions can be found by producing, acting, sharing informations and knowledge. And by creating economies that are, more than all, empathic and emotional. For a real ecosystem of the mind that allows us to embrace new collaborative, sustainable ethics.