Monday, February 15. 2016
Édouard Glissant on Youtube | #creolization #archipelagic #thinking
Note: we are --like many others I guess-- very interested in the work of Carribean writer Édouard Glissant here at the studio (fabric | ch). Concepts like "archipelagic thinking", "rhizomic identity", "Tout-Monde" (could be imperfectly translated as "Whole-World") and of course "creolization" are powerful yet poetic and positive tools to understand our interleaved world and possibly envision ways of action.
I recently followed a link posted by Nicolas Nova which drived me to a channel on Youtube (managed by Laure Braeckman) that gather different sources/talks by E. Glissant and where he speaks about the different concets that structure his thinking.
Below is the link to this resource that might be useful when you'll like to discover or come back to these ideas.
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Related Links:
Wednesday, February 26. 2014
Shall we dance Tango? (for Google) | #monitoring #data
Seen everywhere online these days and now on | rblg too... Yet another "trojan horse" by Google to turn you into a mobile and indoor sensor for their own sake (data collection, if I said so). And soon will we be able to visit your flat or the ones of your friends through Google Maps/Earth, or through a constellation of other applications. After clicking at the door, of course.
But also, as it is often the case with such devices, an interesting tool as well... On top of which disruptive apps will be built that will further mix material and immaterial experiences and that will further locate parts of your "home" into "clouds".
As it consists in an open call for ideas, before they'll give away 200 dev. kits, don't hesitate to send them a line if you have an unpredictable one (this promiss to be very competing...)!
Link to the projetc and call HERE.
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*An Android unit with registration.
http://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/
(…)
“What is it?
“Our current prototype is a 5” phone containing customized hardware and software designed to track the full 3D motion of the device, while simultaneously creating a map of the environment. These sensors allow the phone to make over a quarter million 3D measurements every second, updating its position and orientation in real-time, combining that data into a single 3D model of the space around you.
“It runs Android and includes development APIs to provide position, orientation, and depth data to standard Android applications written in Java, C/C++, as well as the Unity Game Engine. These early prototypes, algorithms, and APIs are still in active development. So, these experimental devices are intended only for the adventurous and are not a final shipping product….”
Friday, January 17. 2014
Sync Your Files without Trusting the Cloud | #data #cloud
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The company behind the Bittorrent protocol is working on software that can replicate most features of file-syncing services without handing your data to cloud servers.
By Tom Simonite on January 17, 2014
Data dump: New software from Bittorrent can synchronize files between computers and mobile devices without ever storing them in a data center like this one.
The debate over how much we should trust cloud companies with our data (see “NSA Spying Is Making Us Less Safe”) was reawakened last year after revelations that the National Security Agency routinely harvests data from Internet companies including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Facebook.
Bittorrent, the company behind the sometimes controversial file-sharing protocol of the same name, is hoping that this debate will drive adoption of its new file-syncing technology this year. Called Bittorrent Sync, it synchronizes folders and files on different computers and mobile devices in a way that’s similar to what services like Dropbox offer, but without ever copying data to a central cloud server.
Cloud-based file-syncing services like Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive route all data via their own servers and keep a copy of it there. The Bittorrent software instead has devices contact one another directly over the Internet to update files as they are added or changed.
That difference in design means that people using Bittorrent Sync don’t have to worry about whether the cloud company hosting their data is properly securing it against rogue employees or other threats.
Forgoing the cloud also means that data shared using Bittorrent Sync could be harvested by the NSA or another agency only by going directly to the person or company controlling the synced devices. Synced data does travel over the public Internet, where it might be intercepted by a surveillance agency such as the NSA, which is known to collect data directly from the Internet backbone, but it travels in a strongly encrypted form. One drawback of Bittorrent Sync’s design is that two devices must both be online at the same time for them to synchronize, since there’s no intermediary server to act as an always-on source.
Bittorrent Sync is available now as a free download for PCs and mobile devices, but in a beta version that lacks the polish and ease of use of many consumer applications. Bittorrent CEO Eric Klinker says the next version, due this spring, will feature major upgrades to the interface that will make the software more user friendly and in line with its established cloud-based competitors.
Klinker says Bittorrent Sync shows how popular applications of the Internet can be designed in a way that gives people control of their own data, despite prevailing trends. “Pick any app on the Web today, it could be Twitter, e-mail, search, and it has been developed in a very centralized way—those businesses are built around centralizing information on their servers,” he says. “I’m trying to put more power in the hands of the end user and less in the hands of these companies and other centralizing authorities.”
Anonymous data sent back to Bittorrent by its software indicates that more than two million people are already using it each month. Some of those people have found uses that go beyond just managing files. For example, the company says one author in Beijing uses Bittorrent Sync to distribute blog posts on topics sensitive with Chinese authorities. And one U.S. programmer built a secure, decentralized messaging system on top of the software.
Klinker says that companies are also starting to use Bittorrent Sync to keep data inside their own systems or to avoid the costs of cloud-based solutions. He plans to eventually make Bittorrent Sync pay for itself by finding a way to sell extra services to corporate users of the software.
Given its emphasis on transparency and data ownership, Bittorrent has been criticized by some for not releasing the source code for its application. Some in the tech- and privacy-savvy crowd attracted by Bittorrent Sync’s decentralized design say this step is necessary if people are to be sure that no privacy-compromising bugs or backdoors are hiding in the software.
Klinker says he understands those concerns and may yet decide to release the source code for the software. “It’s a fair point, and we understand that transparency is good, but it opens up vulnerabilities, too,” he says. For now the company prefers to keep the code private and perform security audits behind closed doors, says Klinker.
Jacob Williams, a digital forensic scientist with CSR Group, says that stance is defensible, although he generally considers open-source programs to be more secure than those that aren’t. “Open source is a double-edged sword,” says Williams, because finding subtly placed vulnerabilities is very challenging, and because open-source projects can be split off into different versions, which dilutes the number of people looking at any one version.
Williams’s own research has shown how Dropbox and similar services could be used to slip malicious software through corporate firewalls because they are configured to use the same route as Web traffic, which usually gets a free pass (see “Dropbox Can Sync Malware”). Bittorrent Sync is configured slightly differently, he says, and so likely doesn’t automatically open up an open channel to the Internet. However, “Bittorrent Sync will likely require changes to the firewall in any moderately secure network,” he notes.
Thursday, December 12. 2013
Mobile Factory | #mobility #goods
Ce qui est certain c'est que ces nouvelles classes de porte-containers perturbent tout, nos grilles de lectures, mais aussi les infrastructures terrestres. Les ports ont, en effet, de plus en plus de mal à adapter leurs équipement, et notamment leurs grues, à ce gonflement incessant de plus en plus rapide du gabarits des nouvelles générations de navires.
L'évolution est tellement rapide que certains ports, et pas forcément les moins performants, sont obligés de faire appel à des méga bateaux grues pour décharger les porte containers qui font escale chez eux - voir par exemple Miami, là.
Monday, December 02. 2013
Distance | #technology #statement
Monday, October 21. 2013
Have We Passed “Peak Automobile”? | #mobility
Via NextNature
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You’ve heard about peak oil, but what about peak automobile? There is mounting evidence that society has already passed the years of maximum car use. Fewer young consumers are getting driver’s licenses than their parents, and they are also buying fewer cars. Numerous studies point to a significant change in consumption that is not explained away by the recent financial crisis.
Over the past century, the automobile has been a dominant force, changing the way we build and connect cities, the way we live, and even the way we perceive distance. So why are we driving less? Over the past 15 years, the ways we communicate with each other have changed drastically. A study by U.S. PIRG notes that while the use of the internet and so-called smart phones has expanded rapidly, the amount of automobile travel in the USA has not only peaked but is actually declining; Americans drive about as much today as they did in 1996.
This effect is more pronounced among younger generations. A likely explanation is that smart phones have done for the 21st century what cars did a hundred years ago. They make seemingly long distances much smaller, and they connect us to people and places we couldn’t reach before. Better communication technology has increased our ability to see and interact with our social networks without actually being there, which may be why we have not only reached, but long since passed peak automobile.
Personal comment:
I was a "precursor" ;) Sounds obvious but this gives me a good additional excuse not to pass my driving license!
An Inflatable Emergency Airborne Communications Network | #instantcity
Note: will the communication industry be the one to finally build the Instant City?
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A rapidly-deployable airborne communications network could transform communications during disasters, say researchers
Most people will have had the experience of being unable to get a mobile phone signal at a major sporting event, music festival or just in a crowded railway station. The problem becomes even more acute in emergency situations, such as in earthquake disasters zones, where the telecommunications infrastructure has been damaged.
So the ability to set up a new infrastructure quickly and easily is surely of great use.
Today, Alvaro Valcarce at TRiaGnoSys, a mobile communications R&D company in Germany, and a few pals unveil a system that could make this easier. These guys have developed a rapidly deployable wireless network system in the form of airborne base stations carried aloft by kite-shaped balloons called Helikites with a lifting capacity of 10 kg and that can remain airborne at an altitude of up to 4 km for several days, provided the weather conditions allow.
Valcarce and co say the system can be quickly deployed and provides large local mobile phone coverage thanks to a combination of multiple airborne nodes that link in to terrestrial and satellite telecommunications systems.
Their idea is that these systems could be deployed by network companies during temporary events such as the Olympic Games, or by first responders to an emergency event to set up the vital communications infrastructure necessary to coordinate emergency services.
One of the key challenges is to get the new equipment to work seamlessly with existing terrestrial networks. And to that end, Valcarce have been testing their airborne Helikite.
The team has a number of challenges to overcome in its ongoing work. For example the altitude of the Helikite determines its coverage but also influences the network capacity and delays. Evaluating these effects is one part of their future goals.
Having ironed out these kinds of operational problems, such a system will surely be valuable in a wide range of situations where reliable communication is not just a useful bonus but a life-saving necessity.
Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1307.3158 : Airborne Base Stations for Emergency and Temporary Events
Wednesday, October 16. 2013
arkOS: Building the anti-cloud (on a Raspberry Pi)
Via TechWorld
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By Rohan Pearce
arkOS is an open source project designed to let its users take control of their personal data and make running a home server as easy as using a PC
At the start of this year, analyst firm Gartner predicted that over the next four years a total of US$677 billion would be spent on cloud services. The growth of 'things-as-a-service' is upending enterprise IT and creating entirely new, innovative business models. At the same time, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have built massive user bases, and created databases that are home to enormous amounts of information about account holders.
Collectively, all of this means that people's data, and the services they use with it, are more likely than ever to be found outside of home PCs and other personal devices, housed in servers that they will probably never likely to see let alone touch. But, when everything is delivered as a service, people's control and even ownership of their data gets hazy to say the least.
Earlier this year NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden offered some insight – in revelations that probably surprised few but still outraged many – into the massive level of data collection and analysis carried out by state actors.
arkOS is not a solution to the surveillance state, but it does offer an alternative to those who would rather exercise some measure of control over their data and, at the very least, not lock away their information in online services where its retrieval and use is at the whim of a corporation, not the user.
arkOS is a Linux-based operating system currently in alpha created by Jacob Cook and the CitizenWeb Project. It's designed to run on a Raspberry Pi – a super-low-cost single board computer – and ultimately will let users, even of the non-technical variety, run from within their homes email, social networking, storage and other services that are increasingly getting shunted out into the cloud.
CitizenWeb Project
Cook is the founder of the CitizenWeb Project, whose goal is to promote a more decentralised and democratic Internet
"It does this by encouraging developers that work on tools to these ends, offering an 'umbrella' to aid with management and publicity for these projects," Cook says
"Decentralisation rarely gets any attention, even within the tech community, and it was even more obscure before the NSA scandal broke a few months ago," he adds.
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The best way to promote decentralisation "is to provide great platforms with great experiences that can compete with those larger providers," Cook says
"This may seem like an impossible task for the open source development community, especially without the head start that the platforms have, but I believe it is entirely doable.
"We produce the best tools in the world – far better than any proprietary solutions can give – but there is a huge gap with these tools that the majority of the population cannot cross.
"When we tell them, 'oh, using this tool is as easy as installing a Python module on your computer,' for us geeks that is incredibly easy, but for most people, you lost them at the word Python and you will never get them back.
"So the momentum toward using centralised platforms will not relent until developers start making tools for a wider audience. Experience and usability is every bit as important as features or functionality."
arkOS is the CitizenWeb Project's first major initiative but more are on the way. "There are quite a few planned that have nothing to do with arkOS," Cook says.
"I've been working on arkOS since about February of this year, which was a few months before the [NSA] revelations," Cook says.
The birth of arkOS
There were two things that spurred work on arkOS
"The first was my decision to set up my own home server to host all of my data a few years ago," Cook explains.
"I had a good deal of experience with Linux and system administration, but it still took a huge amount of time and research to get the services I wanted set up, and secured properly.
"This experience made me realise, if I have background in these things and it takes me so long to do it, it must be impossible for individuals who don't have the expertise and the time that I do to work things out."
The second was the push by corporations "to own every aspect of one's online life."
"Regardless of your personal feelings about Google, Facebook, etc., there have been countless examples of these services closing themselves off from each other, creating those 'walled gardens' that give them supreme control over your data," Cook says.
"This might not bother people, until we find out what we did from Snowden, that this data doesn't always rest with them and that as long as there is a single point of failure, you always have to rely on 'trusting' your provider.
"I don't know about you, but I wouldn't trust a company that is tasked to sell me things to act in my best interest."
"All that being said, the NSA revelations have really provided a great deal of interest to the project. In all of the networks and communities that I have been through since the scandal broke, people are clamouring for an easy way to self-host things at home. It shouldn't have to be rocket science. I hope that arkOS can represent part of the solution for them."
The aim of the project is an easy-to-use server operating system than can let people self-host their own services with the ease that someone might install a regular desktop application
"Hosting one's own websites, email, cloud data, etc. from home can be a very time-consuming and occasionally expensive endeavour," Cook says.
"Not to mention the fact that it takes a good amount of knowledge and practice to do properly and securely. arkOS lets you set up these systems just like you do on your home computer or your smartphone, when you install something from an app store. It 'just works' with minimal configuration.
"There is no good reason why server software shouldn't be able to have the same experience."
Making servers simple
The OS is "all about simplicity" straight out of the box, Cook says.
"For example, on the Raspberry Pi, hosting server software that routinely writes to log files can quickly wear out your SD card. So arkOS caches them in memory to make as few writes as possible, and it does this from its first boot."
The team is building a range of tools that make it easy to manage an arkOS server. These include Beacon, which lets users find other arkOS servers on a local network, and Genesis, a GUI management system for arkOS.
Genesis is the "most important part" of the OS, Cook says. "It's the tool that does all the heavy lifting for you – installing new apps and software with one click, automatically configuring security settings, giving wizards for navigating through lengthy setup [processes].
"The goal with Genesis is to allow you to do anything you want with your server in an easy and straightforward way, without even having to think about touching the command line. It runs locally on the arkOS server, accessible through the browser of your home computer."
There are more tools for arkOS on the way, Cook says.
"Any one of these tools can be made to work with other distros; the key is that they are available in the default working environment with no additional setup or bother on the user's part."
At the moment the system is still very much in alpha. "It is minimally stable and still getting most of its major features piled in," Cook says. Despite it being early days the reception so far has been "very positive".
"It's been downloaded several hundred times, ostensibly by intrepid people willing to try out the framework and see if they can produce bugs," he says.
At the moment, Cook is leading the arkOS project and also doing the bulk of the development work on Genesis.
"Aside from myself, there are other individuals who contribute features when they are able, like working on Deluge or putting together plugins to use with Genesis," he says.
He is interested in finding more people to help out with the components of arkOS, particularly with Python and Golang experience, which are being used extensively. He's also interested in sysadmins or Linux veterans to help manage repositories, with an to expanding the operating system to other architectures.
"Web design is also a big one, both for the Genesis front-end as well as our Web properties and outreach efforts. Even non-tech people can lend a hand with outreach, community support and the like. No offer of help will be refused so people can be in touch confidently," he adds.
Looking beyond alpha
arkOS is under active development but the OS is still at a "very experimental" stage. Most of Cook's time is spent working on frameworks for Genesis, with a goal of completing its major frameworks by the end of this year and releasing a beta of arkOS.
A major sub-project the team working on is called Deluge: A dynamic DNS service and port proxy for users who don't have access to their own domain name or static IPs.
"This would make putting your services online truly simple and hassle-free," Cook says.
"I am working on the security framework right now, allowing users to easily segment their services based on the zone that they should be available to. For example, you can set your ownCloud site that you run with arkOS to only be available on your home network, while your Jeykll blog should be available to everyone.
"Then comes the certificates system, easily making SSL certs available to your different applications."
"Beyond that, most of what I will be working on is plugins that do certain things. Email is a really big thing, something that nearly everyone who asks about arkOS is interested in self-hosting. With the NSA revelations it isn't hard to see why."
Other features to be included in arkOS include XMPP chat server hosting, Radicale (calendar/contacts hosting), automatic backups, internationalisation, Tor integration, "and much, much more."
Contact Rohan Pearce at rohan_pearce at idg.com.au or follow him on Twitter: @rohan_p
Related Links:
Tuesday, September 10. 2013
Open call by fabric | ch & TASML: Deterritorialized Living / Inhabiting the Computer Cabinet
By fabric | ch
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Following our residency in Beijing at the Tsinghua University that ended last July, fabric | ch transformed itself into the organizers of a call (!) that will run between next september and october, in partneship with TASML (Beijing). The call is closely related to the work and workshop we've done in Beijing.
The results of this CALL (1st price) will be presented during the next Lisbon Architecture Triennale, CLOSE, CLOSER (curator Beatrice Galilee), so as another list of EVENTS, as an Associated Program and during a talk together with fabric | ch.
An Award of Distinction is open to international submissions.
You can find below a copy of this open call dedicated to individuals or interdisciplinary groups of students and faculty members of Tsinghua University in the fields of Architecture, Design, Art and Sciences (1st prize), so as to the international community (students and professionals, Award of Distinction).
Call: http://call.deterritorialized.org/
Download the call in pdf: http://bit.ly/18LozDr
Download the poster: http://bit.ly/1amu7Gk
Events during Close, Closer: http://beijing.deterritorialized.org/
Please spread the message!
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Download the call in English (PDF)
Download the call in Chinese (PDF)
Call : radical designs and sustainable strategies for shared, open and livable personal data centers (& clouds)
In collaboration with fabric | ch, Tsinghua Art & Sciences Research Center Media Laboratory (TASML) is pleased to announce an open call to the Tsinghua community for individuals or interdisciplinary groups of students and faculty in the fields of Architecture, Design, Art and Sciences. Conceived by fabric | ch, the competition is inspired by Deterritorialized Living, a workshop, a project and series of online “tools / atmospherics” developed on the Tsinghua campus during a recent residency.
The purpose of the competition is to explore a radicalized experience of deterritorialisation / detemporalization through intensive use of network, transportation and sometimes biochemical devices as well as to investigate alternative strategies in lieu of corporate approaches to data, data centers and cloud computing. The competition aims to develop speculative and innovative artifacts (code, interfaces, programs, objects, devices, spaces, etc.) for this contemporary situation.
Inhabiting the Computer Cabinet competition (Deterritorialized Living, the Beijing sessions) will be an Associated Project during Close, Closer, the much anticipated Lisbon Architecture Triennale that will take place in late summer and fall of 2013, curated by Beatrice Galilee, Liam Young, Mariana Pestana and Jose Esparza Chong Cuy.
Brief
One of the first general purpose computer, the Eniac I, back in 1946.
Context: Since the public emergence of the Internet and the web in the mid ’90s and the ubiquitous presence of wireless communication, peer to peer exchanges, and social networks of all kinds in recent years, we have witnessed a growing tendency towards horizontally mediated decentralization. These conditions have not only deeply influenced the ways in which people and societies interact (social interactions, exchanges, mobilities, artifacts, economies, etc.), but have also affected how clusters of computers and hardware collaborate or exchange information. To some extent, networks have generated some sort of “geo-engineered” milieu that triggers an experience of delocalization: ambient deterritorialization that is always around, always on.
Recently the “network” concept has started to widen its influence: the energy industry is planning to adopt the horizontal model with its “smart grid” plans, in which everybody should be able to produce their own clean energy and store it or share it with the rest of the community. We can witness something similar in alternative, locally produced food: the idea of distributed food that is produced close to the place where it will be eaten, through the approach of highly decentralized and small scale “gardening” or through certain forms of urban “farming”. Rapid prototyping also helps to spur a similar movement in the product design community.
Yet, on the data side, we are witnessing the exact opposite: we have moved from a fundamentally decentralized model towards a highly “mainframed” (centralized) structure of corporately owned data, services and data centers, although these seemingly “immaterial” information architectures appear to be deceptively decentralized, accessible everywhere, anytime.
Should we then consider personal-urban-“data-farming” instead of corporate data centralization too? Or should we rather try urban-“data-gardening” instead? Could we build a highly decentralized, almost atomized open system of small interconnected data centers? Could we possibly inhabit these data centers, taking advantage of the heat they generate, the high-bandwidth network access they provide, the data they collect? Should we also consider their necessary relocation while taking into account their highly mediated nature?
… and a picture of several servers cabinets taken out of Clog: Data Space (2012).
Or should we simply consider the data center figure (and its services) for what it is: the furtive icon of our modernity and of the radically modified relation we maintain to global territory? Should we therefore think about it in even more radical or speculative terms?
Based on the context above, we are calling for proposals under the title of Deterritorialized Living (Beijing sessions) / Inhabiting the Computer Cabinet.
Objective: An abstract space of 9 square meters is proposed for the competition, to be designed into a large computer cabinet that is inhabitable. Its exact shape, height and volume are to be defined by the candidates.
The cabinet can be situated in any natural or artificial place on Earth. It can also be located in an ideal environment (which should be defined in detail). Cooling (natural or artificial) is the only necessary condition: fresh air (and/or other refreshing means) needs to enter the space and to cool down the machines. It is then transformed into hot air charged with positive ions by the processing units that could in turn be used for any other meaningful purposes or symbiotic uses, before eventually being extracted.
The computer cabinet functions as a small data center. A certain number of servers, NAS (networked attached storage), virtual machines, etc. are therefore also installed within this space. The inhabitant(s) have to share the space with the machines in some ways. The status and/or security of the data could also be addressed in some creative ways.
The cabinet is part of a network and can be combined or aggregated with others to form a larger, possibly mobile, mediated and/or networked structure.
Goal: by taking advantage of the physical, informational, computational, chemical, biological, environmental or climatological features of the facility (inside and outside), the project focuses on creating a livable environment within the computer data cabinet (or personal data center). The outcome of the project could be to engage with the overall design or to develop a very specific device, object, software, interface and/or installation within this given framework.
Ressources
http://www.deterritorialized.org is an artificial atmosphere conceived by fabric | ch that is delivered in the form of algorithmically constructed data feeds. It is composed by a set of web services and libraries that were developed in the context of a residency on the Tsinghua University campus in Beijing, between Spring and Summer of 2013 (at TASML). The open data feeds of this "geo-engineered" climate can be addressed and used by any custom designed program or device (the website will be open from the 6th of September).
These open-source, “ambient deterritorialization” data feeds and environments in the form of Deterritorialized Air (N2, O2, CO2, Ar), Deterritorialized Daylight (Lm, IR, UV) and Deterritorialized Time can be freely used in the context of this competition.
Eligibility / Rules
The call is open to all students and young faculty members of Tsinghua University. The application should include candidate’s name and school or department affiliation.
The Award of Distinction of US$ 1000 is open to international submissions.
Works submitted by individuals or teams are all welcome. However we highly encourage interdisciplinary, transdepartmental team participation. All submissions should be written in English.
Submissions shall not be published or made public in other venues until a final decision by the jury is made public.
Submission Deadline
The submission deadline is October 14, 2013, 10pm Beijing time.
Any uncompleted submission by the time of the deadline will be excluded from judgment by the Jury.
Schedule
Competition launch: August 30, 2013
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Final Submission: 10pm (Beijing time), October 14, 2013
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Announcement of winning entries and mentions: November 1, 2013
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Presentation by the winning team in Lisbon at the Lisbon International Architecture Biennial Close, Closer, Portugal: December 14, 2013
Submission Guidelines
Email submission, in one email with one pdf file attached, to call@deterritorialized.org, maximum size limit is 20mb, with the title of the message as the title of your project.
File to be attached to your mail:
One pdf document in A3 horizontal layout (labelled: name-of-my-project.pdf), to be screened (the jury will look at your proposition on screen), containing the following, not exceeding 8 pages:
A - Information
- Title of the project.
- Name / surname, Tsinghua school or department affiliation (or profile for Award of Distinction), email address and date of birth of the representing member for the team (one person only).
- Names / surnames, Tsinghua school or department affiliation (or profile for Award of Distinction), email addresses and dates of birth of all other members of the team.
- Short descriptive biography (not exceeding 150 English words of each individual).
- Links to additional visual materials, including video, website, etc., if needed.
B - Project
- Images and diagrams summary of the project (most important elements, in screen quality).
- Project concept: describe the conceptual reasoning of the project.
- Project description: describe what it does practically.
- Technical description: describe the technical components of the project.
Note:Proposal should be written in English. Project title should be listed in the lower right corner of each page on all documents.
Evaluation guidelines
Transformative potential, speculation, risk taking, and the originality yet feasibility of the proposal will be key factors for the jury.
Quality of presentation and documentation (including technical, scientific description and visual presentation).
Note:
The project shouldn’t be a “fantasy”. Its feasibility should be proven in some ways (demo, mockups, proofs of concept, technical schemes), even though the technologies proposed might still be in their research phase.
Jury members
An international jury will select the winning proposal. Jury members will be disclosed along with the announcement of the winning candidates.
Awards / Prizes
Two prizes will be awarded by the jury, along with two honorary mentions.
1st prize: A trip for the winner or one representative of the winning team to Lisbon (including airfare and hotel) to present the results of their proposal during a talk, along with fabric | ch and TASML. Free viewing of the Triennial Close, Closer.
2nd prize: 3000 RMB.
2 honorary mentions
Award of Distinction
Price: 1000 US Dollars
This award is open to international submissions from students and professionals.
About the organizers
fabric | ch is a Swiss based art and architecture studio that combines experimentation, exhibition and production. It formulates new architectural proposals and produces singular livable spaces that mingle territories, algorithms, “geo-engineered” atmospheres and technologies. Through their works, the architects and scientists of fabric | ch have investigated the field of contemporary spaces, from networked related environment to the interfacing of dimensions and locations such as their recent works about “spatial creolization”.
TASML (Tsinghua University Art and Science Research Center Media) is conceived as a research and production unit that aims to synergize the rich resources available among the University’s diverse research institutions and laboratories to create an incubator for crossbred, interdisciplinary experiments among artists, designers, scientists and technologists. TASML also functions as a center and a hub for worldwide exchange and collaboration both with academic and research institutions and the global media art and design community. Through information sharing and knowledge transfer, TASML can also be seen as a catalyst of innovations for other disciplines in the arts and for the creative industry in general.
COWORKLISBOA is a 750 m2 shared office for startups, nano companies and independent or mobile professionals such as designers, architects, illustrators, translators, among others. Getting fat and lazy @ home? Come, it is at LX Factory and Central Station in Lisbon.
Close, Closer, the third Lisbon Architecture Trienale will put forward an alternative reading of contemporary spatial practice from the 12th of September to the 15th of December in Lisbon, Portugal. For three months chief curator Beatrice Galilee and curators Liam Young, Mariana Pestana and José Esparza Chong Cuy will examine the multiple possibilities of architectural output through critical and experimental exhibitions, events, performances and debates across the city.
Related Links:
fabric | rblg
This blog is the survey website of fabric | ch - studio for architecture, interaction and research.
We curate and reblog articles, researches, writings, exhibitions and projects that we notice and find interesting during our everyday practice and readings.
Most articles concern the intertwined fields of architecture, territory, art, interaction design, thinking and science. From time to time, we also publish documentation about our own work and research, immersed among these related resources and inspirations.
This website is used by fabric | ch as archive, references and resources. It is shared with all those interested in the same topics as we are, in the hope that they will also find valuable references and content in it.
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