DUL were involved in a number of activities during the recent UN climate change summit, COP15, in Copenhagen. But some focus was given to extending the event to the streets of Aarhus (Denmark's second largest city) in the shape of "Klimakanalen" (The Climate Channel). With a simple but varied setup -- a mobile urban screen, original content (news flashes, twitter comments, ticker, images, movies, citizen info, advice) and a cross-media infrastructure (app, mobile and web) -- journalists, citizens and activists brought the event and the theme of climate change to Aarhus as well.
We are getting ready for the biggest gameshow on earth. On the 18th December 2009 DUL's Interface Aesthetics group in collaboration with The People Speak will host a world-changing game show as part of the Copenhagen Climate Forum called “Who Wants to Be…?”: the show where the audience makes up the questions, the answers, and the rules! Details of how to get there are on the Climate Forum website. The mission: to have fun seeing if a group of people people having fun can make better decisions and raise more money than the politicians at Copenhagen!
Pledge your $10 and get access to the big event on Kickstarter.com:
We have run Talkaokes at Hopenhagen at Rådhuspladsen. It has been a very rich experience with lots of people coming. Images here
The climate trend app is an innovative and different way to keep up with news, opinions, emotions and environmental sensors before, under and after COP15, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (December 7-18, 2009).
The app is not simply a newsreader, a social network, a measuring apparatus or a game. It's a bit of all of that, and more.
The Danish tech radio show Harddisken features Center for Digital Urban Living this week. Host Anders Høeg Nissen (not the guy shown in the picture on the right, that's Henrik Føhns) went exploring among the DUL research projects, especially those relating to the climate change debate. This was what he could fit into the half hour:
As part of the project "Digital Stories" within DUL's Civic Communication group, a team headed by journalist Lars Kabel has developed and produced a digital publication, an eMagazine, covering the environmental situation in Indonesia. The project is testing and uncovering journalistic methods and editorial potential in the total integration of facts, text, audio, video and blog.
Introducing the Planetary Pledge Pyramid from The People Speak on Vimeo. Our friend from The People Speak, Saul Albert, introduces the world-changing game developed by DARC/Digital Urban Living and The People Speak. Planetary Pledge Pyramid is an attempt to establish a platform for a global discussion on climate changes and to take Web 2.0 to a new level. We have often seen how people can support a cause.
In this game all ideas come from the participants, who themselves back the best ideas with real money to make them happen. At a time when the politicians may very well fail in deciding anything on the climate issue, Planetary Pledge Pyramid introduces an alternative system for decision-making and effectuation. http://apps.facebook.com/pppgame/
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Is it just opportunism that art and artists flock around the climate issue? Is it harmful to art to be related to this big issue? Is it a return to dogmatic art with the ‘right’ opinions?
Or is it only natural (sic) and necessary that artists enter the debate? Is it perhaps an integral question to art, that has often been concerned with depicting nature, landscapes, changing realities? Does digital art have a special role or potential?
Read articles (e.g. Søren Pold's "Imaginary Interfaces in the Blue Sky" that argues for the special potential of digital art in relation to climate change) and enter the debate staged around the Rethink exhibitions (SMK, Nikolaj, Den Frie and don’t forget Moesgaard!) here: http://www.rethinkclimate.org/debat/rethink-art/
Digital Urban Living is participating in COP 15 and Rethink with several projects. More about this soon!
