Agenda
Workshop: Urban Interventions and Critical Making, 6-7 March 2018
Research group [urban interfaces] and Utrecht University’s research master program Media, Arts & Performance organize a two-day workshop in collaboration with Creative Coding Utrecht (https://www.meetup.com/Creative-Coding-Utrecht/), and artists Ruben van de Ven (https://rubenvandeven.com) & Cristina Cochior (http://randomiser.info), in partnership with Het Nieuwe Instituut (https://hetnieuweinstituut.nl), and HKU (https://www.hku.nl).
During the workshop, participants from different professional practices and academic backgrounds collaborate in teams to design prototypes for frictional urban interfaces. This is done through a ‘critical making’ approach. Critical making was a term coined by Matt Ratto, “to describe the combination of critical thinking with hands-on-making: a kind pedagogical practice that uses material engagements with technologies to open and extend critical social reflection”. During the workshop, participants take objects apart, literally and figuratively, and as part of the process learn to infer and to intervene – by means of prototyping, reverse engineering, hardware hacking, design narratives, fabrication and other methodologies – in the material layer of digital technologies. At the end of day two, participants present their team project, which explores and elucidates urban frictions in technologically mediated cities.
With this workshop, the Media- and Culture Studies department explores and extends existing collaborations with the professional fields of coding, HKU, and cultural institutions. More information: https://urbaninterfaces.sites.uu.nl/two-day-pressure-cooker-workshop-urban-interventions-and-critical-making/.