Video highlights from PICNIC Festival 2011
The videos of the presentations at PICNIC Festival 2011 (14-16 September, Amsterdam) are now online.
Jake Barton on Urban Collaboration and Storytelling
What will inspire and connect cities of the future?
At our core, we are linked together by the stories that we collectively tell. How can we create experiences that can bind us to each other, even as our technologies, economics and cultures are increasingly diverse and challenging?
Drawing on examples from the 9/11 Memorial Museum, Change By Us and the Frank Gehry-designed Eisenhower Memorial, Jake Barton explores collaboration at the urban scale.
V. H. Celaya and R. A. Celaya on Art to the People!
Victor Hugo Celaya and Ricardo Andrés Celaya are the founders of ARTO – Art Beyond Museums, which main objective is to take ART TO THE PEOPLE.
The Celaya brothers explore the power of art as a communication tool, an instrument to integrate cities and a vehicle for change. They discuss how disruption plays an essential role in making this happen. They share their experiences producing innovative art projects with the sole intent of promoting social inclusiveness and empowering people.
Lorenzo de Rita on The Best City Never Seen
It seems that history is full of cities thought up, imagined, and dreamed of, that were eventually never realized. Admirable projects, magnificent places, utopian plans… human fantasy has built many more cities than what we see on a map.
The Best City Never Seen is a 20-minute tour into the ruins of paleo-futuristic cities hoping to inspire a new way of thinking about cities and discovering the latent potential of the cities we now live in.
Adam Greenfield on Another City is Possible
So where do we find ourselves, after a solid decade of smart city rhetoric? What was promised to us, what has been delivered, what were the results, and what remains possible? Which cities have successfully capitalized on emergent technology, and which have made the wrong bets? Whose interests are reflected in smart city discourse, and whose have tended to be overlooked or pushed to the side?
This talk with Urbanscale founder and managing director Adam Greenfield aims to cleave hype from genuine potential, decode the claims currently being made for urban informatics, and lay out a set of criteria by which future proposals can be evaluated.
Ben Hammersley on Rioting, Ballet and Elvis’s Hips
Smart cities, ubicomp, and other technological wonders are all very well, but cities are made of people, and people are weird.
Ben Hammersley looks at how cultures and society change, how technology can outpace good manners, and how designers and makers can change the world without getting into a fight, punching an artist, or taking off their ballet shoes. Featuring music, silly jokes, some quantum physics, and no slides whatsoever!
Eric van Heeswijk and Jasper Koning on Holland from Above
Ever wondered if Holland runs like a clock, how does it look? And why doesn’t it go wrong? Holland from Above is a project from innovative Dutch broadcaster VPRO where cameras take the bird’s eye view on the Netherlands and discover the beauty of patterns and stories you have never heard before.
What makes the project even more special is the unique data visualization, for TV, but in an interactive form also on the web. Jasper Koning and Erik van Heeswijk explain why the VPRO wants to do this complex and labor intensive crossmedia project and let you peek behind the scenes.
Matthias Hollwich on the Aging City
We have to start a revolution! The way we age in America is inhumane and inadequate. We might live a good life after retirement, but the last three years are hell. There are 17,000 nursing homes in America, and 17,000 reasons to not move into any of them. The dignity of aging needs to be reinstated and we cannot do that by chasing eternal youth.
Matthias Hollwich, architect and co-founder of HWKN and Architizer, explores a new way for society to deal with aging, by outlining how we can pioneer our own future selves, and how architecture and urbanism can be re-engineered to support new living typologies, service proximities, and social relevance and space. Become part of the New Aging revolution and join the conversation!
Lawrence Lessig on Help U.S.
How are governments responding to the entitlement, engagement and sharing brought about by the Internet? How can policy “mistakes” be fixed in “high functioning democracies”?
Harvard law professor and Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig describes how policy errors in the United States are having unintended negative consequences and he implores “outsiders” to help US to correct its mistakes with balanced, sensible policy alternatives.
William McDonough / Green Challenge Keynote Lecture
Opening keynote lecture at the Green Challenge Award Ceremony by honorary jury chair and sustainability architect and author William McDonough.
Saskia Sassen on Urbanizing Technology
Scott Snibbe on Biophilia, An App Album
Media artist and developer Scott Snibbe present Björk’s Biophilia – the first app album – and discusses how the emergence of music apps for mobile devices promises to reacquaint listeners with an immersive, intimate music experience that has been lost in the age of the digital download. He will particularly share Björk’s view, which he enthusiastically embraces, on how technology can bring people closer to nature and music.
