Sentient City Survival Kit

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http://survival.sentientcity.net/

Sentient City Survival Kit - Quick Start Guide
by mark shepard

The Sentient City Survival Kit is a design research project that explores the social, cultural and political implications of ubiquitous computing for urban environments. It takes as its method the design, fabrication and presentation of a collection of artifacts, spaces and media for survival in the near-future sentient city.

As computing leaves the desktop and spills out onto the sidewalks, streets and public spaces of the city, information processing becomes embedded in and distributed throughout the material fabric of everyday urban space. Pervasive/ubiquitous computing evangelists herald a coming age of urban information systems capable of sensing and responding to the events and activities transpiring around them. Imbued with the capacity to remember, correlate and anticipate, this “sentient” city is envisioned as being capable of reflexively monitoring our behavior within it and becoming an active agent in the organization of our daily lives.

The project aims to raise awareness of the implications for privacy, autonomy, trust and serendipity in this highly observant, ever-more efficient and over-coded city.

Mark Shepard is a media architect and researcher whose work addresses new social spaces and signifying structures of contemporary network cultures. His research investigates the implications of ubiquitous computing for architecture and urbanism.

Recent work includes the Tactical Sound Garden [TSG], an open source software platform for cultivating virtual sound gardens in urban public space. It has been presented at various arts venues internationally. In 2006 he co-organized Architecture and Situated Technologies, a 3-day symposium bringing together researchers and practitioners from art, architecture, technology and sociology to explore the emerging role of “situated” technologies in the design and inhabitation of the contemporary city. He is co-editor of the Situated Technologies Pamphlet Series, published by the Architectural League of New York.

Mark is an Assistant Professor at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, where he holds a joint appointment in the departments of Architecture and Media Study.

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