I've used this term quite liberally in the previous post, and I'd like to add a bit more credence to my employment of this term. We're looking at a world which is beginning to value individual contribution (into a larger scheme of things) more and more - think open-source engineering,
On the Open Source trend, Jeff Burke, the Principal Investigator for Remapping LA, has furnished a few links:
1 Open Source at 90mph
Inspired by Linux, the OScar project aims to build a car by tapping the knowledge of a volunteer team. It won't be an easy ride, but their journey is important.
2 The Open Prosthetics Project is producing useful innovations in the field of prosthetics and giving the designs away for free.
3 Open source collaboration meets construction, by Rebecca Fernandez. Two hundred years ago, there were very few proprietary home builders. Most construction was done in a collaborative, community-based environment.
These reflect current trends in thinking - the zeitgeist of the 21st century, if you may - of the world we live in, on how we can actually change - or at least affect, by means of contributing to - the environments we live in, and/or the content we're exposed to. Think Blogger, Wiki, Youtube... Rightly so, Time Magazine has named you (and I) its Person of the Year:
"The "Great Man" theory of history is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that "the history of the world is but the biography of great men." He believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous who shape our collective destiny as a species. That theory took a serious beating this year.
Read more about it here....(2006 is) a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes....We made Facebook profiles and Second Life avatars and reviewed books at Amazon and recorded podcasts. We blogged about our candidates losing and wrote songs about getting dumped. We camcordered bombing runs and built open-source software....America loves its solitary geniuses—its Einsteins, its Edisons, its Jobses—but those lonely dreamers may have to learn to play with others. Car companies are running open design contests. Reuters is carrying blog postings alongside its regular news feed. Microsoft is working overtime to fend off user-created Linux. We're looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation, and it's just getting started, as millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity get backhauled into the global intellectual economy.Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred. But that's what makes all this interesting. Web 2.0 is a massive social experiment, and like any experiment worth trying, it could fail. There's no road map for how an organism that's not a bacterium lives and works together on this planet in numbers in excess of 6 billion. But 2006 gave us some ideas. This is an opportunity to build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician, great man to great man, but citizen to citizen, person to person..."
This set me thinking, what would be the real-world manifestation of a Web 2.0-like environment? The leap from text-, image- and video-based content to real, customisable virtual environments was manifested in Second Life, introduced to me by Jeremy Chan, my colleague at NUS Architecture... Kudos to you, Jed! (Read the Wikipedia entry here.) By now it needs little introduction, but effectively, it's a virtual world which allows participants (who are Second Life 'citizens' on a subscription basis) to create virtual environments and interact with other avatars within these environments. (Side note: The massive servers which handle all that data is handled by San Francisco-based Linden Lab, and are termed "The Grid"... perhaps because the name "The Matrix" had already been used?)
Think of Second Life as a cross between The Sims, SimCity (and Sim-etc.), and MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons/Domains). Anyhow, here are some screenshots, courtesy of the official Second Life website.
Think of Second Life as a cross between The Sims, SimCity (and Sim-etc.), and MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons/Domains). Anyhow, here are some screenshots, courtesy of the official Second Life website.
There's so much rave about it that performing artistes (Suzanne Vega, 'Luka') have jumped on the bandwagon and will perform "live" on Second Life. That takes a bit of a leap of faith to grasp - that the artiste will be performing live, virtually - but what is undeniable is the mass appeal of such an environment which allows users to sit in front of their laptops and participate in a concert, rather than brave the wind and snow and head down to Woodstock or the ilk and risk getting drugged in the process.
Well, enough about Second Life. My point was, Web 2.0 is convergent in its perceived divergence (in terms of content creation). It brings communities together, warts and all, and allows for immersive (on-screen, at least) interaction with a virtual environment. There exists a central "patrolling" structure which can be implemented if/when necessary, that is to say, Linden Lab has the option of enforcing etiquette and protocol which participants have to follow, should anyone go astray.
It is at this point that I bring in the potential of the Remapping LA project. It could in fact take the rubric of virtual environments such as Second Life and MUDs into a new level. The multi-user, multi-participatory environments in these said virtual environments are merely the tip of the iceberg. Could we take it a step further and manifest such interaction and immersive environments in real life? The expanse of land (32 whopping acres) of the LA State Historic Park certainly allows for various types of media technologies to be employed - land area is no issue. What would be worth considering would be the cultural influences of the park, given its proximity to the Chinese and Hispanic migrant communities in Los Angeles, and the ramifications that whatever intervention(s) on the park would have on these communities.
The resulting park would, of course, be guided by a structure in its operation and in its content, and the physical interventions on it would, unlike in Second Life, be more heavily influenced by real-world architectural and physical sensibilities (thus, still obeying Newton's Laws).
On architecture, I chanced upon a website (and met one of the principals of the organisation), AUMStudio, led by Ed Keller, design tutor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCIArc), and architect/multimedia designer. Here are a few teaser images, before I post my thoughts on them (images copyright of AUMStudio):
Well, enough about Second Life. My point was, Web 2.0 is convergent in its perceived divergence (in terms of content creation). It brings communities together, warts and all, and allows for immersive (on-screen, at least) interaction with a virtual environment. There exists a central "patrolling" structure which can be implemented if/when necessary, that is to say, Linden Lab has the option of enforcing etiquette and protocol which participants have to follow, should anyone go astray.
It is at this point that I bring in the potential of the Remapping LA project. It could in fact take the rubric of virtual environments such as Second Life and MUDs into a new level. The multi-user, multi-participatory environments in these said virtual environments are merely the tip of the iceberg. Could we take it a step further and manifest such interaction and immersive environments in real life? The expanse of land (32 whopping acres) of the LA State Historic Park certainly allows for various types of media technologies to be employed - land area is no issue. What would be worth considering would be the cultural influences of the park, given its proximity to the Chinese and Hispanic migrant communities in Los Angeles, and the ramifications that whatever intervention(s) on the park would have on these communities.
The resulting park would, of course, be guided by a structure in its operation and in its content, and the physical interventions on it would, unlike in Second Life, be more heavily influenced by real-world architectural and physical sensibilities (thus, still obeying Newton's Laws).
On architecture, I chanced upon a website (and met one of the principals of the organisation), AUMStudio, led by Ed Keller, design tutor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCIArc), and architect/multimedia designer. Here are a few teaser images, before I post my thoughts on them (images copyright of AUMStudio):
I won't go into the details of the projects themselves; if you're interested, you can view the details and synopses on the AUMStudio website. For the moment, suffice to say, they involve the integration of multimedia and architecture. The visualisations above give a sense of environments that bridge between the real and the ethereal - composed of architecture that is in turn composed of media walls that are not necessarily flat planes; architecture that allows one to experience different and multiple environments by means of projection screens and reality-augmentation.
While the nature of the above projects - Second Life and the work of media/architecture studios such as AUMStudio - do not necessarily serve as a precursor for the Remapping LA project, the bases on which they are structured gives some direction, at least as far as the environmental design aspect of the LA project is concerned. Naturally, there will have to be many other influencing factors and forces at play, and it is only via open, coordinated discussion that they can be addressed and incorporated, if necessary.
One such discussion was effected in a meeting between UCLA, myself and WDI on Nov 29, 2006, at the Disney R&D Studios at Glendale, California. Details of the outcome will follow in a future posting.
While the nature of the above projects - Second Life and the work of media/architecture studios such as AUMStudio - do not necessarily serve as a precursor for the Remapping LA project, the bases on which they are structured gives some direction, at least as far as the environmental design aspect of the LA project is concerned. Naturally, there will have to be many other influencing factors and forces at play, and it is only via open, coordinated discussion that they can be addressed and incorporated, if necessary.
One such discussion was effected in a meeting between UCLA, myself and WDI on Nov 29, 2006, at the Disney R&D Studios at Glendale, California. Details of the outcome will follow in a future posting.
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