[Air-l] Engaging the City - CHI2005 Workshop announcement

Irina Shklovski irinas+ at cs.cmu.edu
Sat Dec 11 07:35:21 PST 2004


Engaging the City: Public Interfaces as Civic Intermediary

As interest in the city grows as a viable site for HCI research, the 
organizers of this workshop aim to shift the research perspective from the 
architects plan view to the street level.  No longer reducing the city to a 
dense population of users, we challenge our participants to consider the 
city not just as a backdrop for interactions but as an inalienable part of 
interactions that happen within it.   By reorienting ourselves, we move 
beyond the city as a muse to the city as a resource for public exchange.

This workshop is designed to explore notions of exchange within an urban 
landscape. What relationships do we have with the city? What do we give and 
take from it and each other in its embrace? How is this exchange enacted in 
and upon the city in everyday life? And how can technological innovation 
capture or foster this exchange?

The challenge for the HCI community is to design public interfaces that 
provide citizens with more active access, authorship, and agency. The 
workshops field research component will involve visiting the city of 
Portland as a case study for processing and refining these theoretical 
considerations.  We would like to gather a representative group of social 
scientists, technologists, urban planners, architects, artists, and 
designers whose work addresses issues of shared public interfaces and 
interactions.



Application

Participants will be selected based on a demonstrated interest in the 
topic, as seen through position papers submitted prior to the workshop that 
consist of:

·    A discussion of background, interests, current work and relevance to 
workshop goals.
·   An object/image/idea which represents an active exchange with the city.

Participants should be prepared to demonstrate this item's context within 
the theoretical framework of access, agency, and authorship.

Acceptable submission formats include: Word or PDF. Send submissions and 
questions regarding format to Michele Chang at: 
<mailto:michele.f.chang at intel.com>michele.f.chang at intel.com.
Workshop 
URL: 
<http://hciresearch.hcii.cs.cmu.edu/engaging_cities/>http://hciresearch.hcii.cs.cmu.edu/engaging_cities/


ORGANIZERS
Michele Chang, Intel Corporation, People and Practices Research
Katrina Jungnickel, INCITE, University of Surrey
Chet Orloff, School of Urban Studies and Planning, Portland State University
Irina Shklovski, Human Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon 
University



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