Contents Open 11 Hybrid Space

Open 11
Hybrid Space. How wireless media are mobilizing public space

The public domain is a place where people act and create a ‘communal world full of differences’. This space has become ‘hybrid’ in nature: a complex of concrete and virtual qualities, of static and mobile domains, of public and private spheres, of global and local interests. Last but not least, hybrid space is formed by wireless and mobile media like GSM, GPS, Wi-Fi and RFID. These media are deployed as control mechanisms, but also as alternative tools for increasing and intensifying public agency. A select company of artists, designers, architects and urban designers is investigating its implications and possibilities and putting them to the test.

Overview Open

Jorinde Seijdel
Editorial
Online article

Eric Kluitenberg
The Network of Waves
Living and Acting in a Hybrid Space

The emergence of digital media has meant that in recent years the use and significance of traditional public space has altered radically. The newest developments in information technology make use of apparatus which is less and less noticeable, so making a critical attitude more difficult. Eric Kluitenberg, researcher in the field of the significance of new technologies for society and guest editor of the present issue, draws attention to a number of activist strategies to encourage public and private action in a hybrid space.
Online article

Saskia Sassen
Public Interventions
The Shifting Meaning of the Urban Condition

Saskia Sassen, professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, is specialized in the influence that globalization and digitization processes have on the transformations of urban space. In this essay, she looks at the possibilities of artistic practice to ‘make’ public space that can produce unsettling stories and make visible that which is local and has been silenced.
Online article

Howard Rheingold and Eric Kluitenberg
Mindful Disconnection
Counterpowering the Panopticon from the Inside

In this article, media experts Howard Rheingold and Eric Kluitenberg ask us to consider if unquestioned connectivity – the drive to connect everything to everything, and everyone to everyone by means of electronic media – is necessarily a good thing. To stimulate ideas, the authors propose a possible alternative: a practice of ‘mindful disconnection’, or rather the ‘art of selective disconnectivity’.
Online article

Assia Kraan
To Act in Public through Geo-Annotation
Social Encounters through Locative Media Art

Locative media art makes artistic use of location-aware and time-aware media to promote social encounters between users and locations. The social contact is usually experienced via a PC. Assia Kraan wonders whether the shared location is only the pretext or also the location for social activity.
Online article

Klaas Kuitenbrouwer
RFID & Agency
The Cultural and Social Possibilities of RFID

RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) is rapidly finding new applications and this is giving rise to concerns about threats to privacy. It’s therefore worth thinking about how individuals can have a say in which privacy they are willing to share with whom and when. If citizens can acquire more access to particular RFID implementations, then RFID can also become a support for other, socially interesting value systems. Recent developments in online culture provide exciting ideas for this.
Online article

Koen Brams and Dirk Pültau
‘Once It’s Gone, It’s Gone’
Interview with Jef Cornelis about the television films Mens en agglomeratie (‘Man and conurbation’, 1966), Waarover men niet spreekt (‘Things that aren’t mentioned’, 1968) and De straat (‘The street’, 1972)

Since the early 1960s the Flemish television producer Jef Cornelis has explored the conditions of television as a public medium. A number of his early films look at the changes that have occurred in urban public space. Reason for Open to publish an interview with him by Koen Brams and Dirk Pültau as part of a broader investigation of Cornelis’ work.
Online article

Noortje Marres
Column
Online article

Elizabeth Sikiaridi and Frans Vogelaar
Soft Urbanism
Neighbours Network City (NNC) in the Ruhr region

Elizabeth Sikiaridi and Frans Vogelaar of invOFFICE for architecture, urbanism and design in Amsterdam are investigating the interaction between the physical and the digital public domain in contemporary urban networks. They are interested in the way that the built environment relates to the space of mass media and communication networks and how these influence each other. On the basis of the project Neighbours Network City for the city of Essen in the Ruhr region, they reveal how this design research is taking shape.
Online article

Marion Hamm
Reclaiming Virtual and Physical Spaces
Indymedia London at the Halloween Critical Mass

Using the Halloween Critical Mass bike ride as an example, Marion Hamm analyses how cyberspace overlaps the physical space of a protest demonstration on the street and how a construction of what she calls ‘geographies of protest’ is developing. Marion Hamm is affiliated with Indymedia, a worldwide network of independent media centres.
Online article

Daniel van der Velden, Katja Gretzinger, Matthijs van Leeuwen, Matteo Poli, Gon Zifroni
Hybridity of the Post-Public Space
Logo Parc and the Zuidas in Amsterdam

At the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, a research project is underway, on the public space of the Zuidas business district in Amsterdam. This project, entitled Logo Parc, looks into the value of the Zuidas as a ‘symbol’. In addition, proposals are being developed for a conception of the public space as a new type of space. The present essay, along with its accompanying pictorial material, is one of the results of the project.
Online article

Max Bruinsma
Play with Time and Space
Optionaltime by Susann Lekås and Joes Koppers

In Almere’s new city centre, Susann Lekås and Joes Koppers are creating a work of art entitled Optionaltime, which plays a fascinating game with time. The screen is literally a hybrid space and mirrors both the real and the virtual surroundings. On screen, they are mixed together.
Online article

Arie Altena
Publishing Everywhere and Anywhere
Droombeek in Enschede

In 2000, an explosion in a fireworks factory wiped out the entire Roombeek district in the city of Enschede. Stichting Droombeek (Droombeek Foundation) responded with a digital project that enables individuals to call up memories of the area with the click of a mouse.1 Using digital technology, residents add their own images and stories to the website, which can then be accessed by visitors to the digital district, who may in turn add their own experiences to the mix. By linking the present to the past in this way, the website becomes a ‘lived’ space.
Online article

Artists contributions

De Geuzen
Mobile Work/Travail Mobile
Online article

Kristina Andersen and Joanna Berzowska
Worn Technology
The Alteration of Social Space
Online article

Supplement
CD-rom Amsterdam REALTIME (2002)
Esther Polak, Jeroen Kee and the Waag Society