Skip to main content

Part of the book series: Future City ((FUCI,volume 5))

Abstract

Digital media artists have exploited pervasive technologies to explore urban ecology . Through their interventions, they challenge a city’s inhabitants to consider and experience their local communities in alternate ways that may lead to new approaches by citizens for sustaining and enhancing their living conditions. This chapter reviews a breadth of digital-based work including graffiti, cartography, and security.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Currently, Korea leads the effort in building these cities, with fifteen currently planned. Songdo, Incheon, is the largest, presently nearing completion. Built on 1,500 acres of land reclaimed from the Yellow Sea off Incheon, about 35 miles from the South’s capital Seoul, Songdo has been designed as a sustainable city with more than 40 % of its area reserved for green space, including a 100-acre park, 16 miles of bicycling lanes, charging stations for electric vehicles, and a waste collection system that eliminates the need for trash trucks. It is the first city in the world to have all major buildings meet or exceed LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) requirements. By its completion date in 2015, the city is planned to contain 80,000 apartments, 50 million square feet of office, and 10 million square feet of retail space. Computers have been built into the houses, streets, and offices as part of a wide area network. Ironically, in 2003, the organization Birds Korea called for a halt of the reclamation project due to concerns at the loss of important tidal flats. Prior to reclamation, the Songdo tidal flats had supported several threatened water bird species and provided a staging ground for migratory waders as they traveled between the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

  2. 2.

    http://www.thegreeneyl.com/omnivisu

  3. 3.

    http://www.gravitytrap.com/artwork/sniff

  4. 4.

    http://www.gravitytrap.com/artwork/its-you

  5. 5.

    http://www.soundtoys.net/toys/infrasonic-soundscape

  6. 6.

    http://www.chinablueart.com/EiffelTower.htm

  7. 7.

    http://www.chinablueart.com/AquaAlta.html

  8. 8.

    http://www.zero-th.org/RecycledSound.html

  9. 9.

    http://www.biomapping.net/

  10. 10.

    http://brianhouse.net/works/forty_eight_to_sixteen/

  11. 11.

    “Graffiti.” Oxford Dictionaries. Retrieved 2014-05-05.

  12. 12.

    http://www.graffitiresearchlab.com/blog/projects/laser-tag/#video

  13. 13.

    http://www.muonics.net/blog/index.php?postid=15

  14. 14.

    http://www.vrurban.org/smslingshot.html

  15. 15.

    http://www.vjsuave.com/

  16. 16.

    http://www.omai.at/

  17. 17.

    http://www.urbanscreen.com/

  18. 18.

    http://www.urbanscreen.com/usc/1124

  19. 19.

    http://www.urbanscreen.com/usc/41

  20. 20.

    http://grafarc.org/

  21. 21.

    http://www.republiclab.com/projects

  22. 22.

    http://brianhouse.net/works/yellow_arrow/

  23. 23.

    The project was suspended in 2006 and the website archived to Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/yellowarrow/collections/).

  24. 24.

    http://fffff.at/qr-stenciler-and-qr-hobo-codes/

  25. 25.

    A QR code (quick response code) is a form of two-dimensional barcode used widely to communicate URLs and other short text sequences through camera-based smartphones.

  26. 26.

    http://www.streetwithaview.com/

  27. 27.

    http://www.gpsdrawing.com/gallery.html

  28. 28.

    http://www.gpsdrawing.com/gallery/land/meridians.html

  29. 29.

    http://www.gpsdrawing.com/workshops.html

  30. 30.

    http://www.appliedautonomy.com/isee.html

  31. 31.

    http://www.ubermatic.org/life/

  32. 32.

    http://www.recyclism.com/twopointfour.php

  33. 33.

    http://cvdazzle.com/

  34. 34.

    CV Dazzle is derived from CV, an acronym for computer vision, and Dazzle, a type of World War I naval camouflage which employed cubist-inspired designs to break the visual continuity of a battleship and conceal its orientation and size.

  35. 35.

    http://www.evidencelocker.net/story.php

References

  • Altavilla A, Tanaka A (2012) The quiet walk: sonic memories and mobile cartography. In: Proceedings of the 9th sound and music computing conference, pp 157–162. http://smcnetwork.org/node/1650

  • Barrett D (2013) One surveillance camera for every 11 people in Britain, says CCTV survey. The Telegraph, 10 July 2013. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveillance-camera-for-every-11-people-in-Britain-says-CCTV-survey.html

  • Baudelaire C-P (2010) The painter of modern life. Penguin, London

    Google Scholar 

  • BBC News (2009) 1,000 cameras ‘solve one crime.’ BBC News Online, 24 Aug 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/8219022.stm

  • Benjamin W (1997) Charles Baudelaire: a lyric poet in the era of high capitalism (No. 7). Verso Books

    Google Scholar 

  • Benjamin W (1999) The arcades project. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Mass

    Google Scholar 

  • Crampton JW, Krygier J (2005) An introduction to critical cartography. ACME: Int E-j Crit Geogr 4(1):11–33

    Google Scholar 

  • D’Ignazio C (2009) Art and cartography. International encyclopedia of human geography, vol 1. Elsevier, Oxford, pp 190–206

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • de Lange M, de Waal M (2013) Owning the city: new media and citizen engagement in urban design. First Monday 18(11)

    Google Scholar 

  • Featherstone M (1998) The flâneur, the city and virtual public life. Urban Stud 35(5–6):909–925

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feng R, Prabhakaran B (2013) Facilitating fashion camouflage art. In: Proceedings of the 21st ACM international conference on multimedia, ACM, New York, USA, pp 793–802

    Google Scholar 

  • Fischer PT, Hornecker E (2012) Urban HCI: spatial aspects in the design of shared encounters for media facades. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, ACM, New York, USA, pp 307–316

    Google Scholar 

  • Franinovic K, Visell Y (2007) New musical interfaces in context: sonic interaction design in the urban setting. In: Proceedings of the 7th international conference on new interfaces for musical expression, ACM, New York, USA, pp 191–196

    Google Scholar 

  • Jeffries A (2013) Privacy is ‘off the table’ in a ‘post-9/11 world,’ says New York City police chief. The Verge, 26 Apr 2013. http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/26/4270876/privacy-off-the-table-nyc-police-commissioner-ray-kelly-argues-for-more-cameras

  • Koppel N (2008) Little angel was here: a Keith Haring collaborator makes his mark. New York Times, 5 Aug 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/arts/design/06hari.html

  • Lauriault TP, Wood J (2009) GPS tracings–personal cartographies. Cartogr J 46(4):360–365

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lefebvre H (1991) The production of space, vol 30. Blackwell, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Phillips SA (1996) Graffiti. Dict Art 13:271

    Google Scholar 

  • Pijanowski BC, Villanueva-Rivera LJ, Dumyahn SL, Farina A, Krause BL, Napoletano BM, Gage SH, Pieretti N (2011) Soundscape ecology: the science of sound in the landscape. Bioscience 61(3):203–216

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scheible J, Ojala T (2009) MobiSpray: mobile phone as virtual spray can for painting BIG anytime anywhere on anything. Leonardo 42(4):332–341

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schienke EW (2002) On the outside looking out: an interview with the Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA). Surveill Soc 1(1):102–119

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz A (2013) Chicago’s video surveillance cameras: a pervasive and poorly regulated threat to our privacy. Northwest J Tech Intell Prop 11(2):47–60

    Google Scholar 

  • Shaya G (2004) The Flaneur, the Badaud, and the making of a mass public in France, circa 1860–1910. Am Hist Rev 109(1):41–77

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Southworth M (1969) The sonic environment of cities. Environ Behav 1:49–70

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Francis T. Marchese .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Marchese, F.T. (2015). The Art of Urban Engagement. In: Marchese, F.T. (eds) Media Art and the Urban Environment. Future City, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15153-3_11

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15153-3_11

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-15152-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-15153-3

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics