Symposium

Enactive Encounters in the City
Karmen Franinovic
Zero-Th Association
http://www.zero-th.org/

Summary
In the contemporary city, our roles as active participants in public life often vanish in the cloud of pervasive private aims. The embedding of interactive technologies in urban spaces has opened new possibilities for participatory public events, and for the reconsideration of the meaning of the urban environment itself.

To develop an open interactive system that is physically embedded in the city is to provide context for the emergence of social interaction, and to welcome a variety of physical interactions and movements; in brief, to create a new set of potentials. My work focuses on design of systems for a variety of public spaces and cultural settings, whose interactions bring the body (often the whole body) into sensorial and social exchange with its surroundings and the people in it. Their interfaces are moving, and invite human movement, although they are fixed in a specific location. They may be called enactive interfaces, as they centered on sensorimotor activity, without requirement of symbolic or iconographic explanation or understanding. In my work, I use a range of such interfaces to compose interactive systems that aim to seamlessly engage people in active physical interaction.

It is my aim to discuss such new sensorial and social relations that can emerge from such environments as are placed in the urban setting. Finally I will argue based on the findings of my research and practice that such spaces are capable of subverting established bodily, social, and behavioral practices in the city.

Biography

Karmen Franinovic is the director of Zero-Th Association. She teaches courses in programming and interaction at the department of Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montréal. In her work, Karmen focuses on the critical and creative use of interactive technology in architecture, public space and everyday life. She seeks in her work to stimulate social and bodily interaction by means of physical and intangible spatial structures, and thereby to raise awareness of the surroundings and its diverse ecologies. Karmen worked as an architect and interaction designer in Italy and Germany, and exhibited her work in venues such as Ircam/Centre Pompidou, UbiComp2005 Tokyo, DEAF2003, Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana and ACM Designing Interactive Systems.