[spectre] Doors of Perception 7 on flow

[Press]

Press Release 15 October 2002

Doors of Perception 7
=46low: the design challenge of pervasive computing
14,15,16 November 2002,  Amsterdam, RAI
http://flow.doorsofperception.com

"brilliant, innovative and cool=8Atrends that will mark design in the future=
"
(Domus)

"bridges the establishment and the cultural avant-garde=8Aa catalyst for
radical cultural ideas that result in sustainable business innovations"
(Wall Street Journal)

What happens to society when there are hundreds of microchips for every
man, woman and child on the planet - most of them (the chips) talking to
each other? What are the implications of a world filled with sensors and
actuators? What does 'the world as spread sheet' look like? What will it
mean it to be 'always on' in a real-time economy?  Some of the world's most
insightful designers, thinkers and entrepreneurs will address these
questions at Doors of Perception 7 in Amsterdam 14, 15, 16 November 2002.
The theme of the celebrated international gathering is Flow: the design
challenge of pervasive computing.

Among the 30 Doors of Perception's speakers are DERRICK DE KERCKHOVE
(Canada) Director of the McLuhan Programme, JANINE BENYUS (USA) author of
Biomimicry: innovations inspired by nature; BEN VAN BERKEL and CAROLINE BOS
(Netherlands) of UN Studio; EZIO MANZINI (Italy) expert on sustainability
and the design of services, AXEL THALLEMER (Germany) head of Festo
Corporate Design, JAKUB WEJCHERT (Belgium) project managerThe Disappearing
Computer, STEFANO BOERI (Italy) architect, ADITYA DEV SOOD (India) Director
Centre for Knowledge Societies, Bangalore,  PATRICIA DE MARTELAERE
(Belgium) philosopher, author of What Remains,  LARS ERIK HOLMQUIST,
(Sweden) leader of the Future Applications Lab, JOSHUA DAVIS, (USA) web
artist.

A list of the speakers at Doors of Perception 7 is attached.

Open Doors - Design Grand Prix
Who has the most exciting, innovative and meaningful project for the future
use of pervasive computing? To find out, we are staging an exciting special
event at the end of Day 2: Open Doors Design Grand Prix. In quick-fire,
five-minute presentations, 20 finalists - selected by our advisors from
around the world - will present proposals for design scenario projects to a
jury of experts. We accept entries until 15 October 2002 in the form of a
500 word max email directing us to a url, sent to:
doors7editor@doorsofperception.com. No correspondence will be entered into:
you will only hear from us if selected.

Doors of Perception

Doors of Perception (Doors) is an international conference which helps set
the design agenda for information and communication technologies (ICTs).
Doors brings together innovators, entrepreneurs, educators, and designers,
who need to imagine alternative futures - sustainable ones - and take
design steps to realize them. Our products are a better understanding of
the design process; scenarios for services that meet emerging needs in new
ways; and new connections and capabilities among innovative people and
organisations. Seven conferences have been organised since 1993 with an
average attendance of more than one thousand people each edition; they come
from a total, so far, of 52 countries.
The proceedings of Doors are published on its website, which is visited by
300,000 people a year; the site has won a 'Peoples Voice Award' at the
Webbies, the so-called "Oscars of the Internet".

Note to Editors

Our press policy is simple:
A limited number of accreditations is available. Come to us with a
confirmed interest in running a piece, and we'll issue a press pass. After
that, you are of course free to publish anything you like - we do request
that you mention the conference as the source of the story, and include our
url: http://www.doorsofperception.com
=46or more detailed information, please contact Livia Ponzio
press@doorsofperception.com

Contact details
E: press@doorsofperception.com (Livia Ponzio)
T: 00 31 20 596 3220
=46: 00 31 20 596 3202
W: http://flow.doorsofperception.com

Subscribe to Doors' email newsletter at:
http://www.doorsofperception.com
 The conference is introduced by John Thackara. As first Perceptron of
Doors of Perception, it is his task to frame flows as a design issue for
the real-time or 'now economy'. What will it be like to be 'always on'?
How do we make the 'world as spreadsheet' a place we want to be?

Janine Benyus is the author of the widely-praised Biomimicry:innovations
inspired by nature. Originally a graduate in forestry and writing, she
investigates nature-based innovations that will change the way we grow
food, make materials, harness energy, heal ourselves, store information,
and conduct business.

Luis Fern=E1ndez-Galiano, an architect, and professor at the School of
Architecture in Madrid, is the author of a remarkable book: Fire and
Memory: On Architecture and Energy. Galiano borrows from anthropology,
ecology and thermodynamics as he explains the mythical origins of fire and
architecture, and explores the work of Vitruvius through to Le Corbusier.

=46elix Stalder co-moderates the influential nettime mailing list and is a
director of  Openflows, a project in participatory media and open source
intelligence, based, partially, in Toronto.  Stalder explores what happens
at the crossovers between physical and informational infrastructures.

Until 2002 Philip Tabor was director of Architectural Studies at the
Bartlett School of Architecture in London. Now based in Italy, Tabor will
explain how architects and designers, from the time of Vitruvius until
today, have employed varied strategies to design the spaces of flows.

 "Jules Verne would have understood; so would Edgar Rice Burroughs and E.
M. Forster" wrote Wired of Axel Thallemer, founder of Festo Corporate
Design in Germany.  "In their pre-modernist world, pneumatics epitomized
the promise of science. But the 21st-century visions that Professor
Thallemer is promoting aren't fiction. This technology works. Festo's
groundbreaking work with air pressure produces both the Fluidic Muscle MAS,
operationalized, for example, in the lamination of car door trims and the
Stingray, of which Bruce Sterling wrote: "The Stingray is something like a
rigid, tough, high-tech, flying, intelligent, air mattress."

Ton van Asseldonk, an expert on the concept of mass-individualization in
services and products, advises  Dutch companies on structural change. He
will introduce Ivo Janssen's recital of Simeon Ten Holt. In whose work he
has found principles of managing complexity.

At Doors 4, Ivo Janssen's virtuoso piano-playing of music by Christian
Lauber was the soul of speed - the theme of that year's conference. At
Doors 6 his piece, which embodied lightness, was  Soloduiveldans II (Solo
Devil's Dance II, 1986) by Dutch minimalist composer Simeon ten Holt. For
Doors 7 on Flow, Janssen has chosen another ten Holt piece (but he hasn't
told us what it is) - a sort of map, with the player choosing the eventual
destination. Janssen will pay the new Postpiano, a remarkable digital
instrument which uses five gigabytes of discrete samples to recreate the
sound of a Steinway D.

"What happens when you go into the garden to look at the flowers- and the
flowers look at you?"  So asks Bruce Sterling - author, journalist, editor,
critic, leader of the Viridians - and proof that good guys, too, come from
Texas. Bruce also tells us that we must "learn to enjoy loading mercury
with a pitchfork".

A research scientist at MIT, Felice Frankel directs the Envisioning Science
project. Her task is to enable scientists "to see things about their own
research they hadn't seen before". Frankel also organised the recent Image
and Meaning conference. Said the New York Times: "When Frankel...looks at
scientific data, she sees the art within".

In her book What remains, the rising star of European philosophy Patricia
de Martelaere asks what we can and should sustain in a world of processes
of perpetual change and becoming. De Martelaere teaches philosophy at the
universities of Brussels and Louvain.

The Bangalore-Hyderabad area is probably the only region in the world where
global-quality high-tech, and Bible-age lifestyles, co-exist. Aditya Dev
Sood, Director of the Centre for Knowledge Societies, documents
developmental ICT projects throughout South Asia. He uses Geographical
Information Systems (GIS) to identify opportunities for the design of
services by, and with, rural and urban poor people.

=46or Marco Susani, flows of communication are invisible and intangible "but
they are the real picture of collective intelligence". Susani, director of
the advanced concepts group at Motorola Consumer Experience Design, USA, is
developing diagrammes and maps of communication models supported by
networks and networks yet to be imagined.

=46or thousands of years, buildings were designed for a single purpose.
That's no longer true. Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, principals of UN
Architects in The Netherlands, design multi-modal, multi-functional,
multi-temporal transport interchanges that are epicentres of
extraordinarily complex spatial planning and building design processes. In
them, real-time  simulations and physical structures influence each other.

Praystation.com, the website of New York artist and technologist Joshua
Davis, won the 2001 Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica in the category "Net
Excellence", the highest honor in international net art and design.

Urban designer Stefano Boeri is involved in the transformation of port
areas in the Mediterranean - Genoa, Naples, Salerno, Trieste - where the
hubs of old trading routes are evolving as they interact with the new flows
of globalised trade and information. Boeri is also co-author of Uncertain
States of Europe, a survey of the so-called "nebular" urban landscapes
which now surround all major European cities.

=46or the Director of the McCluhan Programme at the University of Toronto,
Derrick de Kerckhove, flow has become an issue for design because of
wirelessness - the multiplication of networks criss-crossing and
interacting with built environments and objects.

"At the crossover between flows, places occur." says Malcom McCullough, the
author of Abstracting Craft and the forthcoming On Digital Ground. "Design
is about configuring situations", he explains, adding that "flows needs
contexts like a river needs riverbanks. When designing flows, look for the
crossovers between infrastructures, and expect to add design value right
there".

Computer games are already a bigger industry than Hollywood. But this is
just the start. For J C Herz "the real action will happen when online
gaming transforms the ways we learn". Herz is the CEO of Joystick Nation
Inc., a company that applies the principles of complex systems to the
design of products, services, and brands.

=46ranziska Nori is curator of Digital Craft at the Museum of Applied Art
(MAK)  in Frankfurt. Her hit exhibition, "I Love You", explored the worlds
of hackers  and viruses in a museum context. If the world is indeed to be
filled with ambient intelligence, pervasive computing, smart space and the
rest, will they be hacked?

A renowned expert on the design of services, Ezio Manzini is Professor of
Industrial Design  at Milan Polytechnic, and  author  of such classic
design books as The material of invention, and Artefacts, towards a new
ecology of the artificial environment. Manzini spent 2001 in China where he
set up a design for sustainability network (that includes Doors).

Architect and photographer Michael Awad, of the University of Toronto's
=46aculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, was architectural advisor
and creative director of Immersion Studio's first digital panoramic film.
Awad's landscape photography has recently been translated into a
300-metre-long public train station mural.

David Rokeby is a Toronto-based installation artist and a winner of
Canada's 2002 Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts. His work
reflects his interest in visual perception, language, surveillance and the
human body's relationship with technology. His Very Nervous System has
evolved into a system used by composers, video artists and medical
facilities in many parts of the world.

Michael Schmidt and Tole Nygaard  are a pair of award-winning Danish
designers and web developers. They are the founders of Kaliber 10000 TM,
one of the world's largest design portals, and their works have been
featured in magazines, books and periodicals from Hong Kong to Malmo.

As the leader of the Future Applications Lab at the Viktoria Institute
(G=F6teborg, Sweden), Lars Erik Holmquist is busy with innovative design
methods and open-ended user studies, which will investigate and develop
applications that could become part our daily life. He also chairs UbiComp
2002, the premier event in ubiquitous computing.

Jakub Wejchert is the coordinator of the Disappearing Computer project,
which explores how everyday life can be supported and enhanced through the
use of collections of interacting artefacts. Together, these artefacts will
form new, people-friendly environments in which the computer-as-we-know-it
has no role.

Design manager Ellie Runcie of the Design Council, UK, is developing the
Sharing Innovation Business Network, a network of the UK's most innovative
businesses. She is also responsible for pioneering and managing the Design
Council's work on e-business.  Her colleague, design manager Gill Wildman,
develops industry tools and methods to manage the design process. She works
to ensure that tools are fit for their purpose, easy to use, and relevant.

Neil Gershenfeld is Director of the Centre for Bits and Atoms, MIT, a
unique research group investigating the relationship between the content of
information and its physical representation, from molecular quantum
computers to virtuoso musical instruments. Technology from his laboratory
has been seen and used in settings from the Museum of Modern Art to rural
Indian villages. He is the author of  the best-selling books; "When Things
Start To Think," and "The Physics of Information Technology".


Roland Lahti, environmental manager at Telia, Sweden, is the initiator of
the CommIT project, which involves utilizing information-technology (IT)
aids and implementing practical communications measures. Underlying the
program is a joint commitment on the part of the largest companies in the
area: Nacka Strand F=F6rvaltning, Telia, Ericsson and Apoteksbolaget. Nacka
Strand, which was originally planned to accommodate 4,500 work places, has
already burst these limits and now has nearly 7,000.



 DOORS OF PERCEPTION 7 ON "FLOW"
SEVEN PREVIEW STORY IDEAS

EUROPE'S "NEBULAR CITIES": AN INTERVIEW WITH STEFANO BOERI
A new star of European architecture, Stefano Boeri is involved in the
transformation of  port areas in the Mediterranean: Genoa,Naples, Mytilene,
Salerno, Trieste. In these contexts, the hubs of old trading routes are
evolving as they interact with the new flows of globalised trade and
information. Together with the research group Multiplicity, Boeri is also
the author of Uncertain states of Europe, a survey of the so-called
"nebular" urban landscapes which now surround all major European cities.
Boeri is a keynote speaker at this November's Doors of Perception
conference, when the theme is "flow".
http://flow.doorsofperception.com/
http://www.useproject.net
http://www.multiplicity.it
http://www.stefanoboeri.it

LEARNING AS A GAME: AN INTERVIEW WITH J C HERZ
Computer games are already a bigger industry than Hollywood - and they are
growing faster than ever. According to J C Herz, one of the world's leading
commentators on this new industry, the real action will happen when online
gaming transforms the ways we learn."The networked ecosystem of online
gaming is vastly more dimensional than the nineteenth century paradigm of
classroom instruction" she says. J C  Herz is the CEO of Joystick Nation
Inc.,a company that applies the principles of complex systems to the design
of products, services, and brands. Herz is a keynote speaker at this
November's Doors of Perception conference, when the theme is "flow".
http://flow.doorsofperception.com/

WHERE THE BIBLE-AGE MEETS HIGH TECH: AN INTERVIEW WITH ADITYA DEV SOOD ON
GIS AND DEVELOPMENT
The Bangalore-Hyderabad area is probably the only region in the world where
global-quality high-tech and Bible-age lifestyles co-exist. Aditya Dev Sood
uses Geographical Infomation Systems (GIS) to identify opportunities for
the design of services by, and with,rural and urban poor people. This is
not about aid, but about a truly vast, un-met market that myopic TelCos,
all of whom seem to be mesmerised by high-cost, high-bandwidth business
networks, seem unable to focus on. At the Centre for Knowledge
Societies(CKS) in Bangalore, Aditya Dev Sood's team documents developmental
ICT projects throughout South Asia. Dev Sood is is a keynote speaker at
this November's Doors of Perception conference, when the theme is "flow".
http://flow.doorsofperception.com/

DESIGNING INSIDE DIAGRAMMES: BEN VAN BERKEL AND CAROLINE BOS
=46or thousands of years, buildings were designed for a single purpose.
That's no longer true. Transport interchanges, in particular, have become
epicentres of extraordinarily complex spatial planning and building design
processes where high-tech simuylations and physical structures influence
each other.The design of multi-modal, multi-functionaol, multi-temporal
transport intersections is particulalry advanced  in the Netherlands, where
Dutch duo Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos design inside diagrammes. Van
Berkel and Bos are keynote speakers at this November's Doors of Perception
conference, when the theme is "flow".
http://flow.doorsofperception.com/

WHEN THE FLOWERS LOOK AT YOU: AN INTERVIEW WITH BRUCE STERLING
"What happens when you go into the garden to look at the flowers- and the
flowers look at you?". So asks Bruce Sterling, a keynote speaker at this
November's Doors of Perception conferencer, when the theme is "flow". We
have filled the world with complex technical systems, on top of the natural
systems that were already here, and social/cultural ones that evolved over
thousands of years. In recent years, we were told these systems were "out
of control" - too complex to understand, let alone to shape or re-direct.
But there is something we can do: it's called design, the first signal of
human intention. How, therefore, should we design in a world of complex
systems and flows?
http://flow.doorsofperception.com/

WILL SMART PRODUCTS BE HACKED?
=46ranziska Nori is curator of Digital Craft, MAK Frankfurt. Her hit
exhibition in Frankfurt, "I Love You", explored the worlds of hackers and
viruses in a museum context. If the world is indeed to be filled with
"ambient intell;igebnce", "pervasive computing", "smart space" and the
rest, will they be hacked? Nori is is a keynote speaker at this November's
Doors of Perception conference, when the theme is "flow".
http://flow.doorsofperception.com/

THE WORLD AS SPREAD-SHEET AND THE 'NOW ECONOMY": AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN
THACKARA
What does the world as spreadsheet look like? How do you design a global
company's 'dashboard'? Do knowledge maps tell useful stories? Big companies
are investing millions trying to set digital nervous systems that connect
anything and everything involved in the company's business: IT systems,
factories and employees, as well as suppliers, customers and products. The
aim is to monitor everything in real-time, and big companies are busy
designing "company dashboards" on which  certain measurements, such as
response times or sales or margins perform against goals, will alerts
manager if a deviation becomes large enough for them to have to take
action. As firms wire themselves up and connect to their business partners,
they make the entire economy more and more real-time, slowly creating not a
new economy but a "now economy". John Thackare is the director of Doors of
Perception, whose upcoming conference - on the theme of "flow" - awill ask
hard questions about these scenarios.
http://www.thackara.com
http://flow.doorsofperception.com/

Note to editors:
We are happy to help you publishing a great story about (X), who is a
speaker at our next conference. Doors is a not-for-profit event so I I hope
you will help us, in turn, by including this information in, or at the end,
of the story:
"X will feature as a keynote speaker at Doors of Perception 7 in Amsterdam
on  14, 15, 16 November 2002. The cionference theme is "flow - the design
challenge of pervasive computing".
http://flow.doorsofperception.com/index.html "
--
-------------------------------
Doors of Perception
Livia Ponzio

Wibauthuis, Wibautstraat 3
1091 GH, Amsterdam
T +31 20 596 3220
=46 +31 20 596 3202
http://www.doorsofperception.com
http://flow.doorsofperception.com