Craft­ing ima­gin­ar­ies of
com­mon­ing-based urb­an infrastructures

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About

Com­mon­ing is a sus­tain­able and con­vivi­al way of pro­du­cing, using and man­aging resources, such as shared spaces, water, food or labour…

…which evid­ently works loc­ally and on a smal­ler scale, as illus­trated by the wide­spread cul­tiv­a­tion of com­munity gar­dens. But which tech­no­lo­gies and socio-tech­nics can enable com­mon­ing on a lar­ger-than-loc­al scale? Will city-scale oper­a­tions and respect­ive infra­struc­tures allow us to turn mater­i­al urb­an resources, such as res­cued food, into commons?

Scal­ing Mater­i­al Urb­an Com­mons (SMUC) crafts ima­gin­ar­ies of urb­an futures that recon­cile auto­ma­tion and pre­dict­ive tech­no­lo­gies with com­mon­ing- and care-based use of resources. SMUC uses spec­u­lat­ive city-mak­ing to scale up the com­mon­ing of res­cued food. It does so by pro­to­typ­ing a pre­dict­ive algorithm-based sys­tem, dubbed Smuc.kitchen, that orches­trates the col­lec­tion and drop-off of res­cued food in Basel and London.

Intro­du­cing pre­dict­ive tech­no­logy shifts the site of com­mon­ing closer to an algorithm-driv­en plat­form and raises ques­tions such as: What fric­tions emerge from chan­ging scale in com­mon­ing? How can we recon­cile auto­ma­tion with loc­al, idio­syn­crat­ic food cul­tures? How can we prac­tice com­mon­ing with algorithmic agents in par­ti­cip­at­ory set­tings? How is the prac­tice of com­mon­ing altered by scal­ing up? In address­ing these ques­tions, SMUC aims to cre­ate ima­gin­ar­ies of com­mon­ing-based smart city alternatives.

team of the project

Dr Vikt­or Bedö — Prin­cip­al Investigator

In the past four years, Dr Vikt­or Bedö has returned to aca­dem­ic research in exper­i­ment­al design. He is cur­rently Vis­it­ing Pro­fess­or at the FHNW Crit­ic­al Media Lab and Vis­it­ing Research Fel­low at the Centre for Urb­an and Com­munity Research at Gold­smiths, the Uni­ver­sity of Lon­don, craft­ing care-based and more-than-human ima­gin­ar­ies of urb­an tech futures. In the dec­ade pri­or, he cre­ated street games to situ­ate street-level exper­i­ence in city-scale urb­an infra­struc­ture. He has also accu­mu­lated pro­cess and ser­vice design expert­ise dur­ing ten years of cli­ent work and teaching. 

His research prac­tice is con­cerned with mak­ing- and fic­tion-based design meth­ods inves­ted in the ima­gin­ing of urb­an futures. More spe­cific­ally, expos­ing fric­tion between city-scale infra­struc­ture and idio­syn­crat­ic, situ­ated street-level exper­i­ence, prob­ing the shift from human-centred to more-than-human design meth­ods, and crit­ic­ally con­cep­tu­al­ising scale domains in scal­ing-up urb­an processes.

Ozan Güngör — Research Assistant

Ozan Güngör is a design­er based in Basel, where he cur­rently stud­ies at the Mas­ter­stu­dio Exper­i­ment­al Design of FHNW Academy of Art and Design. He pre­vi­ously stud­ied Interi­or Design and Archi­tec­tur­al Res­tor­a­tion in Istan­bul and Bologna. His per­son­al work focuses on the per­cep­tion of / inter­ac­tion with spaces both in phys­ic­al and digit­al realms.

Yann Patrick Mar­tins — Cre­at­ive Developer

Yann P. Mar­tins is a coder and artist cur­rently work­ing at the IXDM. He is devel­op­ing agent-based mod­els for the pro­ject Think­ing Toys for Com­mon­ing, Self Organ­iz­ing Maps for the Archi­tec­ton­ic Radio Explor­a­tions and also work­ing on his PhD dis­ser­ta­tion that looks at how cap­it­al­ist mode of pro­duc­tion and machine learn­ing are re-enact­ing forms of inequity and dis­crim­in­a­tion. He also has star­ted a teach­ing pro­gram at the Crit­ic­al Media Lab that links tech­no­lo­gic­al edu­ca­tion and cook­ing practices.

Advis­ory board

Prof. Dr. Claudia Mareis

Cul­tur­al His­tory and The­ory at the Hum­boldt Uni­ver­sity of Berlin 

Prof. Les Back

Dir­ect­or of Centre for Urb­an and Com­munity Research, Gold­smiths, Uni­ver­sity of London

Dr. Jaz Choi

Dir­ect­tor of Care-full Design Lab, RMIT

Dr. Mar­tijn de Waal

Dir­ect­or Civic Inter­ac­tion Design, Ams­ter­dam Uni­ver­sity of Applied Sciences

host insti­tu­tions

SMUC is loc­ated at the Crit­ic­al Media Lab, a labor­at­ory at the Insti­tute of Exper­i­ment­al Design and Media Cul­tures in the Uni­ver­sity of Applied Sci­ences and Arts North­west­ern Switzerland.

The Centre for Urb­an and Com­munity Research (CUCR) in Gold­smiths, Uni­ver­sity of Lon­don, hosts Lon­don-based activities.

cred­its

Art dir­ec­tion and design: Arianna Sma­ron
Cod­ing and anim­a­tion: Timo Rick

Con­tact

FHNW Uni­ver­sity of Applied Sci­ences and Arts North­west­ern Switzerland
Academy of Art and Design
Insti­tute Exper­i­ment­al Design and Media Cul­tures (IXDM)
Freil­ager-Platz 1
CH-4002 Basel

mail@smuc.kitchen

About SMUC

Scal­ing Mater­i­al Urb­an Com­mons (SMUC) crafts ima­gin­ar­ies of urb­an futures that recon­cile auto­ma­tion and pre­dict­ive tech­no­lo­gies with com­mon­ing- and care-based use of resources. SMUC uses spec­u­lat­ive city-mak­ing to scale up the com­mon­ing of res­cued food. It does so by pro­to­typ­ing a pre­dict­ive algorithm-based sys­tem, dubbed Smuc.kitchen, that orches­trates the col­lec­tion and drop-off of res­cued food in Basel and London.

Quick­links

Spot with eggs and water. Pic by SMUC 
COOKING RESCUED FOOD @ Recipes for the future class. Pic by gab­ri­ela Aquije 
sim­u­lat­ing data streams @ SMUc Design Fric­tion Work­shop Ams­ter­dam. Pic by Shruthi Venkat

Con­tact

FHNW Uni­ver­sity of Applied Sci­ences and Arts North­west­ern Switzerland
Academy of Art and Design
Insti­tute Exper­i­ment­al Design and Media Cul­tures (IXDM)
Freil­ager-Platz 1
CH-4002 Basel

mail@smuc.kitchen

About SMUC

Scal­ing Mater­i­al Urb­an Com­mons (SMUC) crafts ima­gin­ar­ies of urb­an futures that recon­cile auto­ma­tion and pre­dict­ive tech­no­lo­gies with com­mon­ing- and care-based use of resources. SMUC uses spec­u­lat­ive city-mak­ing to scale up the com­mon­ing of res­cued food. It does so by pro­to­typ­ing a pre­dict­ive algorithm-based sys­tem, dubbed Smuc.kitchen, that orches­trates the col­lec­tion and drop-off of res­cued food in Basel and London.

Quick­links