Open Knowledge Conference, Geneva 17th-18th September 2013
"In the last few years we've seen government open data initiatives grow from a handful to hundreds, and we've seen open data become important in areas such as research, culture and international development. This event will explore how open data is not only expanding geographically but also touching new sectors and new areas. How should governments and international institutions such as the UN react to these changes? How should business take advantage of new opportunities and contribute to the open data economy? How do citizens and civil society organizations turn data into accountability and into change?"
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
MediaCity 4: reflecting on pluralities and globalities of MediaCities
International Conference, Workshops and Exhibition University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
3-5 May 2013 Call for Paper Abstracts DEADLINE: 12 November 2012
"What new lines of inquiry and emergent relations between urbanity and digital media are found in non-Western cities, in post-Capitalist cities, in cities hosting civic turbulence or crossing international boundaries? What urban-medial relations are taking shape differently in urban milieux that may have been heretofore overlooked? These cities are deserving of more attention than ever before, as sites of population growth, of new cultural and social formations, of new entanglements between urban life and contemporary media, communications and information technologies, and more. MediaCities promises to expand our understanding of both media and the city today, and to articulate new sites of practice and working methods for an expanding field. ...
Areas of interest may fall broadly into several themes, with the assumption that others will appear in the process of proposals and discussion leading up to the event, always expanding our lexicon and mental maps of MediaCities globally. These themes are: Other Urbans, Uncommons, Zero Growth Cities, Media Geographies and Bordervilles."
(Jordan Geiger)
Fig.1 Reuters/Sheng Li (2011), "ethnic Dong minority woman uses her mobile phone to take a picture of herself after a Kam Grand Choir gathering in Tongguan village of Liping county, Guizhou province". [http://pixtale.net/2011/10/21st-century-china/#img33]
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Richard Sennett: The Architecture of Cooperation
"The theme of the lecture addresses a question: how can we design spaces in the city which encourage strangers to cooperate? To explore this question, I'll draw on research in the social sciences about cooperation, based on my book, and relate this research to current issues in urban design."
(Harvard Graduate School of Design, 28 February 2012)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Island: Stephen Walter's London Series
"London is one of the great living palimpsests of our time. Its layers of history and its constant energy to re-invent itself fuels this vast grey magnet. I was spurd on by the great Map Makers of London's past - John Roque, Greenwood and Phyllis Pearsall (the originator of the A-Z). Informed by my own insights and knowledge, I combined further research on the Internet and through writers such as Peter Ackroyd and Ian Sinclair.
The resulting map, a spoof of the historical ones of old, would challenge the first impressions of its viewer; touching on the Capital's vastness, its secrets and its undercurrents. With this process in mind, I began to edit the information, keeping what I felt were historically important, interesting, relevant and amusing. These fantastical additions and epithets are purposefully innocent and acidic, trivial and serious. The Map is as much about the personality of its viewer than it is about of my own. In other words it acts as a mirror.
Britain is a collection of islands and it undoubtedly forms part of our identity. This provincialism; the centre of many industries and in particular the London Centric Art world and its rise again to a world city status add to its identity as an icon, separated from the rest of the country. I wanted to perceive London as another one of these 'islands', and so when mapping the coastline around its Borough edges I was happy to discover Carshalton Beaches coinciding with this border."
(Stephen Walter)
Fig.1&2 Stephen Walter, "The Island"
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
