Calculation space is the first workshop organised at TM by Dragana Antic and Matthew Fuller (who was unfortunately missing).
The first idea of this workshop was to study and measure virtual informational systems in the city and to discuss about their influence and their links with the different aspects of the city (historical, cultural, architectural,…).
We started by dividing the city in 5 parts where during an hour walk we could map different informational and security systems as: alarm systems, surveillance cameras (private and for traffic), cash machines, banks, supermarkets, police stations, city halls, libraries and museums. In order to make this collection of data, we selected specific districts as commercial, industrial, working or living areas.
While we made the compilation of the data’s, we added other observation categories like mobility (pedestrian, traffic), urban fabric (density, size of streets), social structure (tourists, workers, residents ), land use (offices, commercials, industrial, residential), and we tried to give a quantitative or qualitative appreciation for each of them.
In conclusion, we highlighted the fact that the quantity of informational systems is related to the affectation of the district. They are obviously more present in working and commercial places than residential. As Brussels have grown on basis of a medieval city, informational nodes are more developed in the core of the city. And they spread out by the way of new peripheral working or commercial districts (as the european district).
As graphical designer or visual artist, we where especially interested in the visual use of those data’s. We started to think about the graphical representation of those kind of information. How to map empirical data’s with the desire of make them readable and to keep the complex aspect of the city.
As a first proposal, we suggested by example to use a basic shape to represent the area we mapped. The size of each shape will depend of the length of the walk we made. On the basis of those shapes we could find a graphical representation for the quantitative or qualitative aspect of each category. If we develop a category by page and we superimpose each of them, we could show the complexity of the city by the overlapping of information. And we keep the readability of information by having them on each page.
We could also use this first appropriation of virtual and empirical data’s as a starting point for interventions in the city itself. How to represent or reveal the presence of virtual informational systems / nodes? How to underline the being of the city and in the city? How to connect the cut up parts of the city?…
In order to follow this ‘calculation space’ adventure have look at http://nathalik.wordpress.com/ and read Nathalie’s reports on the workshop. She is also going to pursue this project in LA and i’ll try to do the same in London end of december.