[iDC] A few words about Architecture and Situated Technologies

[Gere, Charlie]

Trebor has asked the participants for a few words about the Architecture
and Situated Technologies symposium at the Urban League and Eyebeam in
New York last weekend.

I found the event extremely interesting and stimulating and, unusually,
I enjoyed all the presentations. In such cases it is difficult and
perhaps a bit divisive to single out particular people, but Usman's work
remains in my mind, as does Karmen's, and I appreciated the theoretical
approaches of Anne and Richard.

The workshop at Eyebeam was very interesting, though I am not certain
that it achieved all that the organisers intended or that it might have.
For me, with my interest in communal, ritual and liturgical space and
process, what was possibly most useful and interesting was not the ideas
that the workshops developed and the presentations described, but the
interaction and relations between the participants. I am very now glad
that everything was being filmed, even if I found it a bit intimidating
at the time. I suspect that, when the material is put together, it will
present a fascinating and useful documentation of how groups interact
with each other, that I think will have some interesting ramifications
for thinking about our relationship with increasingly participatory
technologies.

Charlie Gere 
Reader in New Media Research
Director of Research
Institute for Cultural Research 
Lancaster University Lancaster LA1 4YL UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1524 594446
E-mail: c.gere at lancaster.ac.uk
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/cultres/staff/gere.php