“Situation Room explores how the combination of hacktivists or artists medialabs, participatory cartography and emergent free software, data mining and visualization technologies, could empower social action."
****************** The project is not new and it might be well known already by the members of this list. However, I read an interview today with two of the members of Hackitectura and found it really interesting. I had heard of them but never really spent time looking into their work. The interview gives a very thorough insight of their work. I'm pasting some info here and some links. If you've seen it just ignore this mess. ****************** The project Situation Room is the distillation of the experiences of Hackitectura.net since 2003 in the design and implementation of various temporary media-labs: "Pure Data Beta Rave" at the abandoned Ave train station in Seville; "Okupa Futura: Ciudad Disidente" (Future Squat: Dissident City) at the Centro CÃvico Federica Montseny in Corvera de Asturias; "La Multitud conectada" (Connected Multitude), media-lab with satellite connection in La Rábida Huelva; or Fadaiat: freedom of movement, freedom of knowledge to both sides of the Estrecho de Gibraltar. Situation Room is the continuation of the temporary lab designed and implemented by Hackitectura called Emergent Geographies. Emergent Geographies mimics the control site of a nuclear power station and it hosted a week of conferences and workshops precisely on the surroundings of the abandoned Valdecaballeros nuclear power station. The project situation room simulates the procedures of a control room taking Asturias as a case study. Acting as a central hub for networked data the projects aims to explore the potential of the use of these media-labs as a motor for social movements. "Situation rooms are on the one hand, devices connected to complex contexts, where processes are non-linear. In order to take decisions and act in these situations, the different agencies (military staff, governments, business, police...) need to continuously monitor reality and establish a permanent feedback loop between it and their actions. The processing of sets of data extracted from complex systems needs new ways of processing and evaluation, which have to do with cartography and data visualization. On the other hand, situation rooms are only meaningful if we understand them as embedded in networks, which comprise at least two main areas, a sensors area (that captures data) and an actuators area, which allows for strategies and decisions to be performed. Our ideas where to use Situation Room as a space and time to discuss these issues, and particularly the possibility of turning them into a "multitudinar" device, that is the possibility to use them to empower the action of social networks, rather than central powers. How could situation rooms enhance distributed control. How could they be used to generate socially useful knowledge and to increase coordination between social movements."* * From an interview to the members of Hackitectura published in We Make Money Not Art, see http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/02/i-actually-discovered-your-wor.php Other links: http://www.hackitectura.net/ Here is a link to the section in the website of Hackitectura where to find texts related to the Situation Room. Some of them are in English and some are waiting for translation. http://mcs.hackitectura.net/tiki-index.php?page=[situation%20room]%20textos _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
