VISUALIZAR'08: Database City Workshop-Seminar

> Visualizar'08: Seminar Documentation

[Download full VISUALIZAR'08 program in pdf -Spanish-]

Murmur project, by Writing Academic English (Italy)

After the experience of VISUALIZAR's first edition on November 2007, where the social, cultural, political, artistic and scientific possibilities of data visualization were tackled, VISUALIZAR 2008 will be focused on the city context. Urban environments, which are becoming increasingly dense, complex and diverse, are one of contemporary society’s largest “databases”, daily generating volumes of information that require new methods of analysis and understanding.

How can we use the data visualization and information design resources to understand the processes governing contemporary cities and better manage them? What can we learn from studying traffic and pedestrian movement flows through the streets of Madrid? What would happen if we filled the streets with screens providing information updated each moment about water and electricity consumption?

For two weeks, lectures, presentations, and an intense project development programme involve participants from all over the world in a collaborative process that culminates in seven new proposals for the city.

Workshop

 Representing Data Cities

The projects developed during VISUALIZAR'08 explore questions such as:
· What role to information networks and structures play in the construction of a modern city?
· What can we learn about cities via the data flows generated by their everyday activity? Can we develop tools to visualize this data to help us improve urban design and management?
· How can we integrate dynamic representation of information in buildings and urban spaces?

Otyher possible objectives might include the development of:
· Visualization tools that enable us to understand how citizens use urban spaces.
· Visualization tools that map and represent big cities’ social and cultural diversity.
· Visualization tools that show the relationship between networks and the urban spaces where they are located, be they service networks (traffic, public transport, electricity or water networks) or information networks (telephone networks, radio and television broadcasts, data networks).
· Visualization tools that represent the activity in specific locations, and that display and integrate them as an architectonic element.

Tutors:

Andrés Ortiz (Bestiario): del 3 al 11 de noviembre

Fabien Girardin: del 3 al 11 de noviembre

Aaron Meyers: del 11 al 18 de noviembre

Santiago Ortiz (Bestiario): del 13 al 18 de noviembre

Assistants:

Steven Pickles (Pix) y Martín Nadal

The approach of the tutors

This workshop is a unique opportunity to gather artists, designers and researchers to consider the digital city of the future. Pioneer works visualized the data flows generated by our everyday activities in the city to show previously invisible urban processes. I will encourage participants to go beyond mapping the emerging patterns of these new urban data and explore analysis techniques (e.g. data-mining, statistics, user interaction). It is the necessary next step to understand and assess their real meaning and potentials for the digital cities of the future. Fabien Girardin

Format

This workshop aims to be a collective platform for research, production, and learning, offering substantial help and support in developing the projects selected. The proposals will be carried out in multidisciplinary task groups comprised by the author(s) and interested collaborators, with conceptual and technical advice from the teaching staff.

During the workshop, various activities are scheduled such as talks, presentations, seminars or specific mini-workshops.

International Seminar

Visualizar'08 includes an international seminar on November 3, 4 and 6, with the participation of some of the most relevant figures of data visualization field, such as José Luis de Vicente (director of the workshop),  Bestiario Collective and Fabien Girardin (tutors), Juan Freire, and Adam Greenfield.

Go to VISUALIZAR'08 seminar program

Developed Projects Showcase

The nine developed prototyes developed during the intensive two-weeks workshop will be showcased in Medialab-Prado from November 18 through January 11, 2009. Free admission.

With the support of Madri+d