Shortlist 2013

The City you Dreamed of

 

When we were kids people would say “Draw your dream city”  And we would. With colourful abandon. But now we're grown up. We're living in these cities. Are they the ones you dreamed of?

Tumbling out of the back of a re-appropriated tip-up truck will come huge building blocks, all colours and shapes. An open invitation to play, build your dream city, knock it down, and then build it again. Colour it in, move it around, inscribe it with your undying love and share your dreams with the person next to you.

As kids everything had the potential for magic, so embedded sensors will allow us to make unexpected combinations of blocks sing, light up and slide open. Throughout the two months the truck will meander through the city, surprising people in their daily routine and encouraging them to re-imagine their city.  Capturing their creations on stop-time cameras and through the sensors inside the blocks.

Films of Bristol's dream cities will be projected in a central location- alongside new beautiful data mashups of blocks' movements.

With every city we tour to, footage of the inspiring creations will be collected, creating a testament to the cities we want to build. The cities we dream of.

Playable_City_Laura_Kriefman

This Playable City Award idea is brought to you by:

Laura Kriefman, a choreographer and creative technologist.

She loves exploring objects and how technology can help make everyday things magical again, how we can encourage people to pick things up, move differently and loose their self consciousness. Laura is a 2011-2012 fellow of the Clore Cultural Leadership Programme.

Her dance company, The Guerilla Dance Project (GDP) specialises in public engagement experiences that make places dance. Rapidly becoming the UK experts in finding the dances in everyday life GDP offer event and installation based work that tackles public attitudes to objects, cities or environments, changing the way people use and see them.

Recent critically acclaimed augmented dance work includes Hidden Fields (Arnolfini, Bristol, Barbican and Cultural Olympiad) and Rolling Stones (Southbank Centre). Previous work includes two ground breaking pervasive dance games Segue (National Theatre and Latitude Festival), Eye- Spy (Victoria and Albert Museum) and the shows Not Looking For Anyone (Victoria and Albert Museum, The Place), Sal od Svile (Zagreb) and TimeLapse (The Place).

Comments

Hi All,

I'm making 3 little films that expand on a specific element of the project:

Here's the first. It's Truck and Travel, and why this project is designed to move...
Let me know what you think!

The City You Dreamed Of: Trucks and Travel.

The City You Dreamed Of: Trucks and Travel. from Laura Kriefman on Vimeo.

Posted by Laura Kriefman (not verified) | 17 Dec 2012 at 17.19

Hiya,
Can you tell me a bit more about the 'beautiful data mashup' it sounds exciting but I'm not sure what it is.
Thanks and good luck with the project.

Posted by Marie (not verified) | 19 Dec 2012 at 15.52

Love it! Love the idea of the blocks just arriving in a space anonymously and without warning.

How heavy will they be ? Can kids as well as adults play? What if someone nicks a block? Can it go to other cities too? Actually, can it go to rural places maybe as well, would love to come across it in the middle of the moor!

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) | 19 Dec 2012 at 15.53

Hi there,

Thanks for your comments: Good questions!
The majority of the blocks will probably be made of firm upholstery Foam- it's light enough for everyone to handle, and it holds it's shape so you can build complex structures. It's fire retardant and easy to embed the sensors into.

The blocks will be quite big- A rhomboid (3d rectangle) will be about 2 foot x 1 foot x 1 foot. So quite fun to handle. The idea will be that the blocks are big enough to make an impression, and for you to feel productive in your building, but small enough to be easy to handle.

With all my work I'm happiest when 3 yr olds are playing alongside 73 yr olds -so I hope so! And it would be great to bring it to the moors- how amazing would that location be to respond to.

The idea is that we can tour the project to cities all over the world- and that we capture the different designs and imaginations of each city. Somethings might be similar everywhere we go, but I think each city will produce a distinctly different style that reflects the architecture and ideas of the city people currently live in. A snap shot of all the designs will be shown in each subsequent city, and we will create an online channel where people can see all the Cities we dream of.

Posted by Laura Kriefman (not verified) | 20 Dec 2012 at 12.46

Thanks for asking about the "data mashups"

Mash up is term that comes from the programmers community- and means that data or software from two different sources has been combined to make something new. It's often used to create visual interpretations of something that as a spreadsheet might be unintelligible.

In my eyes it's one of the most beautiful digitally native art forms, and a comunity I've wanted to engage with for ages: Our sensors generate data all the time- that's how we can make them make music. So what happens if you record that data and give it to someone completely new- what will they combine it with? What will they be inspired to do? How will it look?

That the ultimate full circle- make something happen in public, that magical because of the sensors, give the data to someone else and let them create new art- ALL because a member of the public moved the objects in the first place. It's a really creative use of information and a different way of representing anonymously how people have played with the blocks.

There's some great examples here, if you would like to find out more: http://infosthetics.com/

and Wiki's got some good information about mashups. hope that helps! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid)

Posted by Laura Kriefman (not verified) | 20 Dec 2012 at 14.42

Here's my second little film:
Bricks and Pieces: Making it Real.

Playable_City_Bricks_And_Pieces from Laura Kriefman on Vimeo.

Playable_City_Bricks_And_Pieces

All questions very much welcomed.

Posted by Laura Kriefman (not verified) | 3 Jan 2013 at 15.54

This sounds like an awesome idea! Making things magical again is just what we need.

Posted by Hannah & Kate (not verified) | 4 Jan 2013 at 22.27

I love the idea of a big truckload of giant building bricks, the simplest ideas are often the best, most effective and this is a real world fun experience that also has some depth to it in that it is asking people to connect to their ides of what their dream dream city might be. I confess I haven't been able to decipher quite what the mashup and technological elements might be but I think if they don't overcomplicate the actual play element here then it is one of the most appealing ideas of the lot..

Posted by rach (not verified) | 5 Jan 2013 at 20.10

Completely agree with the above - simple yet exciting because of the scale of the pieces involved. Like the fact that the technological element is there as a surprise additional factor (in terms of the blocks themselves) rather than being the main 'draw'. Can we quote on these ideas?

Posted by Jo Verrent (not verified) | 7 Jan 2013 at 11.11

Final film:
All that pesky technology:
sensing the magic: technology explained:

sensing the magic: technology explained. from Laura Kriefman on Vimeo.

sensing the magic: technology explained.

Posted by Laura Kriefman (not verified) | 8 Jan 2013 at 17.14

Wow! So there is a fair deal of complexity hidden within the project, but the way its explained here it all seems possible (even easy!). Wanna see this happen!

Posted by Jo Verrent (not verified) | 8 Jan 2013 at 17.37

I love the physicality of your idea and the movement and 'designing potential' of the blocks, there seems so much 'underneath' the project, a relatively simple idea with layers of depth and complexity. I like the way you have talked about the project, I can visualise it really well. My 3 year old son loves building blocks and, even more so, tipper trucks, this project would be his dream come true!

wishing you all the best of luck with your project

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) | 8 Jan 2013 at 18.54


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