TY - CHAP

T1 - Digital Media Facades for Lively Public Spaces

T2 - 8th Making Cities Liveable Conference - 2015

AU - Albrecht, Alexander

N1 - Conference code: 8

PY - 2015

Y1 - 2015

N2 - Digital façades represent a new medium making its way into urban environments. This medium can affect public life in ways that have yet to be fully understood. Most of these media façades broadcast adverts, but an increasing number of large-scale projects are now also used to screen a broad variety of non-commercial content. On many occasions, these alternative screenings include interactive applications and user-generated contributions (McQuire 2011). The emergence of such “community screens” and “urban social media” may be seen as a promising sign for contemporary city life, as they can address a wide audience and as they tend to be more accessible and less obtrusive than their commercial counterparts. They offer many possibilities for interaction and additional uses of public space, potentially fostering participation, dialog, social innovation, and community building. In this way, they can also enhance the well-being of all communities involved (Osberg, 2003), making urban space more lively, ludic, and experimental and cities more liveable. In this paper, the author explores the relationship among digital media facades, their content, urban space, and public life by looking at different projects and four media façade locations in Berlin, Madrid, São Paulo, and Melbourne. It is argued that non-commercially used digital media façades can have a positive impact on urban space and public life, but thatthey do not work well in all types of locations. Certain conditions also have to be met to tap into their full potential and to avoid negative side effects such as light pollution.

AB - Digital façades represent a new medium making its way into urban environments. This medium can affect public life in ways that have yet to be fully understood. Most of these media façades broadcast adverts, but an increasing number of large-scale projects are now also used to screen a broad variety of non-commercial content. On many occasions, these alternative screenings include interactive applications and user-generated contributions (McQuire 2011). The emergence of such “community screens” and “urban social media” may be seen as a promising sign for contemporary city life, as they can address a wide audience and as they tend to be more accessible and less obtrusive than their commercial counterparts. They offer many possibilities for interaction and additional uses of public space, potentially fostering participation, dialog, social innovation, and community building. In this way, they can also enhance the well-being of all communities involved (Osberg, 2003), making urban space more lively, ludic, and experimental and cities more liveable. In this paper, the author explores the relationship among digital media facades, their content, urban space, and public life by looking at different projects and four media façade locations in Berlin, Madrid, São Paulo, and Melbourne. It is argued that non-commercially used digital media façades can have a positive impact on urban space and public life, but thatthey do not work well in all types of locations. Certain conditions also have to be met to tap into their full potential and to avoid negative side effects such as light pollution.

KW - Cultural Distribution/Cultural Organization

UR - https://liveablecities.org.au/archives/lc_bop_pr15.pdf

M3 - Article in conference proceedings

SN - 978-1-922232-30-4

SP - 4

EP - 19

BT - Making Cities Liveable Conference 2015

PB - Association for Sustainability in Business Inc.

Y2 - 6 July 2015 through 7 July 2015

ER -