Soon you will have the chance to explore the artwork inside Science of the City, a clear invitation to look from a different perspective even the smallest details of urban everydayness, posing our own questions about science.
All these nine pieces are in fact the synthesis of a research process that began with the analysis of the contents of the 50 videos sent for two months by participants from around the world in the categories of Fiction, Question and Experiment. From this work we created a database of scientific issues in the city that, among other things, allowed us to visualize the existing differences between popular and the expert cultures regarding the concepts of science or city.
The exploration of semantic fields and etymologies also served as a basis for the artists of IMARTE group, a work which has revealed surprising connections between proposals of citizens, scientific principles and their own artistic projects.
We then describe the set of art pieces in the exhibition, along with the videos that inspired them:
.
A start is white, Eugènia Agustí
The piece refers to the blank page as the starting point of a work and considers what would happen after covering the roofs of entire blocks of houses with white geometric figures to act as attractors of sunlight.
Inspired by the video “White-topped buildings, who loves the Sun?”, of Anna Cabré
Urban Legends, Monste Carreño and Raquel Muñoz
Confronting the way how urban legends and false scientific stories arise and are established leads us to reflect on how we perceive images related to the context in which are introduced.
Inspired by the competition process
Urban Fossils from yesterday and today, Mercè Casanovas
Human constructions enclose large amounts of fossils. This artwork wants to show many of them inside a piece of land from Barcelona where you can see traces of the past, but also of the present, to be discovered years later.
Inspired by the first video of la Mandarina de Newton “Urban fossils”
Urban passage, Borja Leonardo Fermoselle and Sergi Selvas
The meta-city of the XXI Century is a paradigm of our society, a multifaceted look created from a series of images showing the nature of a regenerative system based on the fragmentation.
Inspired by of videos submitted
Text Local Alignement, Aleix Molet and Eloi Puig
Working in a similar manner as DNA sequences are compared to extract
functional links between genes, the transcripts of two videos about science and the city have been aligned.
This proposal works exploring the transcripts of the videos: “City Sounds- A New Source of Energy?” of Emily DeHority and “Why the planet Earth changes?” of Universidad de los Niños
Xanthoria parietina, scattering, Cristina Pastó
Lichens are the result of the symbiosis of a seaweed and a fungus that are used as bioindicators of air pollution levels in cities. Two species have returned now from the space totally unaffected by exposure to vacuum.
Inspired by the videos about environment
Full moon and message in a bottle, Anja Steidinger
Composition created from two frames taken from the same video and expanded a thousandfold. The new creation was generated by seeking common patterns
between the digital images of a full moon and a bottle.
Inspired by the video “Les figures dans le marbre”, of Scienceadacemie
Waves, Alicia Vela
Small dots projected on a wall symbolize waves of information generated by a video, a fiction that draws an echo of itself as if it was like quantum particles coming from a spectator that interacts with physical matter.
Inspired by the video:“La sorprenent composició de l’àtom”, of Núria Jar
The infinite net, Antònia Vilà
Videographic and temporal transcription of the night sky from the recording of engraved inscriptions inspired by distant mythological cosmologies.
The net becomes a metaphor of the infinite universe in transformation.
Inspired by the movies “Les lumières dans la ville”, of Mrcopperstein y “La Luna en Montjuïc”, of Ruben Permuy
As you can guess, the exposure is not, therefore, the end of this co-creative process. The results obtained encourage us to think in new editions that allow us to move forward in the investigation of new processes at the crossroads of design, participation, art, science, technology and city.
It has been a long process of co-creation, but finally Science of the City comes to Arts Santa Mònica to show a living exhibition that offers us very diverse artistic views and perspectives from the city, build from 50 videos submitted by all of you to Scienceofthecity.net
On Tuesday May 8, at 19h, this participatory exhibition will open, until May 19. We will be waiting for you!
There you will find the artistic pieces created by the IMARTE research group of the University of Barcelona (UB) starting from the questions, discoveries and experiments raised by participants of the video contest. Each work is related to the videos that have inspired it.
Behind this artwork hides a meticulous process performed by la Mandarina de Newton: transcription and analysis technologies to create a document repository of issues of scientific interest in the city. From there, artists have experimented creating compositions and new images by reinterpreting the content or making transpositions to other languages. Nine art pieces are the end result of this process. All of them are born from the same surprise and curiosity, speaking us of fossil lichens, DNA, the color of the walls, the constituents of matter, the scientific method, the lights or pattern recognition. Curiosity has been the main driver for everyone (artists, experts, citizens) in order to start asking questions, a metadesign process that initiates research processes advancing in parallel, offering unexpected results.
We want also to tell you that we have come so far thanks to the collaboration of FECYT, Obra Social “la Caixa”, the Tech Museum of San José in California and París-Montagne in France, and the engagement and strong support of many people and entities. To all, thank you very much!
Remember, you can watch all the videos collected by ScienceoftheCity.net The exhibition, inspired by these clips, will remain open to visitors from May 8 until May 19th, at Arts Santa Mònica ¡Do not miss it!
On Tuesday January 17th I attended the lecture “Dancing as an expression of choreographic thought of physical intelligence” by Scott Delahunta at CosmoCaixa. The presentation was part of the cycle “The brain invades the city”.
Schott Delahunta is trained as a dancer,but his research is not just focused on the artistic sphere but in the area of processes and experiences. His interest is about the mind (not the brain) of dancers and choreographers. He is interested in how they eventually create their pieces and other things.
Delahunta says that the relationship between dance and science goes beyond the motor system. Dance and science also are related through Cognitive Psychology.
For a long time, it was believed that knowledge was only created through words and language. However, Delahunta has discovered that there are other key factors in this process of knowledge creation. In order to reach his own conclusions he has worked with or studied choreographers and companies from different countries such as Malpelo, Wayne McGregor o Trisha Brown.
Ideas in movement change and evolve constantly. Dance is the expression of emotions and thoughts. Perhaps there is no clear-cut distinction between thinking and doing. Delahunta remarks that the doing also has thinking. He speaks of “choreographic thinking” and suggests that there is an emergence of a collective mind when a group of dances are performing a set piece or an improvised one. In a piece where several dances take part, the relationships between them are very important. This suggests the idea of a collective mind. It is in the connections between the dancers that the mind of the piece is located.
Delahunta commented that the questions that dancers ask themselves are very similar to the questions of the scientists ask. For that reason, he believes that both worlds are not so far apart.
He got interested in the different ways in which dancers annotated dance. He asked himself how dancers’ notebooks and each of their pages could become for a dancer an extension of his or her own body. The annotations that dancers create are related to a type of knowledge that is inside the body itself. In fact, dancers have to externalize and represent a great deal of knowledge that is in their inside.
Delahunta and his collaborators have carried out projects related to the previous topics and also published several scientific articles about these issues. For example:
Chroreographic Thinking Tools: The goal of this project was to augment the creative process. The idea was to study the stimuli for the minds of the dances in order to help them understand their own creative processes and increase their imagination.
Improvisation technologies: a tool for the analitycal dance eye 1994/1999. (William Forsythe: Improvisation Technologies. A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye. CD-ROM and booklet with a text by Roslyn Sulcas. Stuttgart, 1999 – ISBN 3-7757-0850-2)
Delahunta explained several creativity techniques used by different choreographers. He also remarked that in contemporary dance, choreographers no longer mark the steps for dancers but, instead, design processes of creation and it is the dancers themselves who actually compose the piece. In this way, everything is richer and dancers find the whole experience more fulfilling.
Some tasks to stimulate creativity:
Visualize images
Remember melodies
To try to translate acoustic images into visual images.
The 27 points of a cube (Trisha Brown Locus) –> 27 point –> 27 letters => words –> emotions –> movement. (It goes way beyond the aesthetic form. With this technique one creates new spaces)
Delahunta pointed to reference sources were a wealth of creative techniques can be found:
This new century has brought us the prefix co-. Co-working spaces, to work together, have popped up in every corner of the globe, co-creation initiatives abound in order to create products with users and co-owners share the ownership and use of an object when it is not needed. The 2.0 philosophy has popularized crowdsourcing initiatives, voluntary collective efforts to solve problems together.
This has also reached the world of scientific research. In 1999, the SETI@home project encouraged groups of volunteers to help in the search for signs of extraterrestrial life by sharing the computation time of their personal networked computers. In 2002, engineers at the University of California Berkeley Open Infrastructure created the software Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) that allows any researcher to perform his investigation tasks by using the distributed computing resources of citizens.
In a similar vein were born other projects such as Rosetta@home. The biochemist David Baker, its founder, with other colleagues, adapted BOINC to solve the difficult challenge of understanding how proteins fold. Thousands of volunteers saw on the screen of their computers how advanced calculations tried to find a linear curve in a three-dimensional structure of amino acids to minimize tensions. But people have superior spatial abilities to computers. Soon, volunteers began to write to the scientists proposing better solutions that they have found by their own. This inspired Baker, who with the help of programmers developed FoldIt!, a game where you earn points and compete with other volunteers in helping to devise strategies to fold proteins. FoldIt! remains a success. Not only has it resulted in publications. There are volunteers, like Scott Zaccanelli, who have begun to design new proteins. Some of these proteins have eventually been synthesized in the lab.
Michael Kearns, a computer scientist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, believes that we have entered a new era in which people and computers work together to solve great challenges.
Bringing science to the public by sharing the research process
Science is a way of describing the world we live in. It helps us satisfy our curiosity about our environment, and our basic needs. Unfortunately, the origin of the funds needed to do scientific research, the importance of scientific careers and the biased role that science publishing companies are playing, is darwing science, this rational this systematic and methodical knowledge-building enterprise that helps us understand and modify the environment, away from the public.
There are many skeptical scientists who believe that using strategies such as distributed computing they lose control of their research and that i diminishes their own relevance. I, however, think that any action that supports open science and creates closer ties between people and knowledge is positive. Initiatives such as co-research bring leading edge knowledge to the public. It also illustrates the collective wisdom and the value of individual contributions. Science is by all for all: Co-research. However, I think there are still details to polish in order to have a good working model for this type of collaborations.
Economic models of collaborative processes are a field of scientific research by themselve. The Nobel Prize in Economics Elinor Ostrom has been working on fidning ways to maintain a balanced self ofganinzing forms to manage a common resource, for example: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/284/5412/278.full. You can also find references to these topics in game theory or complex networks.
The difficulties that lie behind collective work
It is easy to be in favour of collective progress, of the joining efforts and of the sharing of distributed resources. Where do the problems lie? Today, almost two million people worldwide participate in some type of distributed research. They are motivated to belong to a network that advances science. Michael Kearns, a computer scientist of the University of Pennsylvania remarked, however, that the day may come when all these contributions are no longer a novelty and do not seem attractive. Zoran Popovic, a computer scientist behind computer FoldIt!, thinks that if the public is expected to keep contributing to solve protein folding problems, someone should offer to people exciting environments that give some entertainment in return. Therefore, the opposite can also happen, that everyone is so busy co-researching in some project or another that there is no more time left for new initiatives. If this were the case, the system would become saturated.
The problem of the amount of participation is not the only o ne. The balance between the payout of individual effort and the group benefit is also a point where many projects fail. In any collaborative process it is necessary to define very well what is offered to the different parties involved. In this case, scientists and volunteers. The volunteer Scott Zaccanelli, feels he is being paid well enough by being able to contribute to the solution of major problems such as AIDS or cancer. In conrast to these reasons, Michael Kearns, comments the need in the near future, to start paying volunteers. For me, however, what is more worrying is that the work of many individuals may be associate to a single name, that the economic benefits of many sleepless nights of many enthusiasts are accumulated in one single pocket or that an academic affiliation serves to create barriers between scientists and volunteers. Trebor Scholz, of The New School in New York, has spent time studying the perverse relationship between the Internet, games, and exploitation of labor. Could science fall into the abuses of crowdsourcing as it has happened in other environments?
Scientific co-research is an exciting way that is opening up right now and seems that it will continue a long way into the future. Now, if we want citizens and scientists to co-create the science of the XXIth century we will have to ensure that someone guarantees the right balance between effort and return.
Trebor Scholz, professor at The New School in New York, in his work “The Internet as Playground and Factory” has compiled cases where the use of crowdsourcing is close to the hardest forms of exploitation of unpaid work.
The second session of the “Amongst Intelligent Machines” workshop, from the TalentLab project, took place on March 21st. On arrival, we resumed the groups of the previous session and we started working. First we warmed up engines with an activity that sought to recover and share ideas from the first session. Thus, each group summarized the main lines that define the resources proposed in the brainwritting or fast rain of resources.
After being placed, we got straight to the matter and the groups were proposed to specify a single resource proposal. The proposals were constructed by combining knowledge (imagination, experience, talent, etc.) and available materials (clay, ribbons, sticks, balls, etc.).
The first group came up with a platform (or box) from wich emerged challenges to be solved by users based on his knowledge of constraints. The challenges could be to design an urban ecosystem management (dams, nuclear plants, etc..) and the users would be different educational centers proposing solutions based on collaborative work. The second group proposed a game that could be physical (boardgame) or virtual designed to exercise how to make decisions and work with values (money, culture, welfare, autonomy, etc.) in connection with the introduction of technology in society. The aim of this dynamic would be to show the influence of values when citizens of a given society make their own decisions. The third group conceived of a resource that would combine computers and robotics in order to work collaboratively. The idea is that two computers or users should design a common task to be performed by two robots like, for instance, two units transporting an object together. To accomplish the goal both robots should establish communication successfully, using Scratch programming to design and simulate the robotics tasks.
When the proposals were enough defined, we proceed with a series of iterations in order to improve them. The groups were divided so that one half stayed to defend the proposal in front of “potential users” posing doubts and exposing limitations. The other half went to see the proposal of another group putting on the skin of the “person” defined in the first session. After iterating a couple of times, each group shared the contributions made by other participants, identified certain deficiencies and incorporated new elements from the suggestions received. Thus, the first group saw the need to limit the approach of the platform to a single challenge with goals that should be defined. The second group incorporated the idea that the issues raised should be based on specific situations (such as a daughter that leaves her mother one afternoon with a robot companion). It was stated that the differences in values would emerge more clearly from this kind of situations. Also, he suggested the possibility that the users ponder by themselves the values associated with certain activities. Moreover, was made known the existence of similar resources as the Deliberatorium MIT or a card game. The third group saw the need to establish some kind of sensor-based communication between robots.
Later, participants were required to assess in more detail the main aspects of the resource to design (philosophy, theme, methodology, requirements, problems, budget) and these considerations were exposed to the other groups. Once done, there was a vote (I can’t remember the name of the voting system used). The most voted proposal was ArgumentaTIC, created by the second group, although all were well balanced and fairly valued. The possibility to incorporate aspects of the first and third proposals to the chosen proposal was also discussed.From now on we have to work on this proposal and see if it is possible to perform with the available resources, and other to come from other sources (sponsors) or if is more convinient to produce it at a later stage.
In the final reflection, some participants expressed their interest in seeing the work done in the workshop translated into an educational resource. A point shared by the organizing team, who reiterated the idea of producing educational resources arising from a process of co-creation, as one of the goals of this project. But at the same time, the team stressed the importance of the working process by itself, ie, the fact of involving teachers and researchers, the working dynamics, contacts established (worknetting) etc.
With this workshop we end the series of workshops planned for this year. Hopefully we will see soon the educational resources produced. We also hope that next year we can make the second edition, coming with with new topics (archeology, marine sciences, astronomy, etc.) and work together with more research centers that are asking for more activities. New workshops and new resources.
Finally, the opening of a project on which we had spent a long time in preparation, has arrived. Our vocation to cross-polinate disciplines met the creativity of Mikel Urmeneta, one of the founders of the company Kukuxumusu. We are already working closely with the company in Mikel’s latest project, Kukuxumusu Relocated. During two months, 22 Kukuxumusu workers will turn the Art Gallery Galería Moisés Pérez de Albéniz in Pamplona, north of Spain, into their workplace.
Mikel launched a project with a strictly artistic goal. However, it opens up a significant opportunity to explore the organizational aspects behind it. It is in this aspect where CoCreating Cultures is collaborating with Mikel and Kukuxumusu.
To transform a live company into a work of art to be exhibited in a gallery can be seen as a rather extreme extrapolation of the concept of ready made. Not to mention connections with interactivity, relational art, and other genealogies from the field of art. The exhibition is connected to the Internet. You can follow it around the clock. Simply go and watch camera 3 and you will learn about the details of negotiations between the management and staff in meetings with customers, suppliers and licensees, for example. The idea is has various artistic referents from Marina Abramovic to the Hikikomori Project: here (in Spanish) you find a few references. The interpretations of this experience are many and varied. To say nothing of this sort of moves in a time of widespread economic crisis, massive layoffs and job reductions.
Quadrant1is of interest to academic studies of the organization. For example, it tries to understand a company from an artistic metaphor such as using the idea of jazz improvisation to understand and contrast coordination in the organization. Similarily theatrical performances (focused on power, ambition or other topics) have been used to explore together processes of organizational transformation. Analogously the organization has been understood as a continues set of interconnected stories that each member of a company tells to the rest. These stories frame important ideas of the culture of the organization about what the company is, how it is where you go, what types of relationships are given, how to be a “typical employee”, etc.
Quadrant 2works on the aesthetic realities of the organization and can be an art form by itself. For example, several anthropologists have used tools to represent their visual anthropology research on the effect of colors on a day to day business.
Quadrant 3focuses on using art forms to work on specific problems of a company. For example, an artist’s residence can to try to improve the innovation capacity of a company, or to help it rethink how to create a new strategy.
Quadrant 4creates art forms to present and trigger group reflection on the realities of daily life in the company. These artworks are created either by an artist in residence or by researchers in sociology and anthropology or between them and in collaboration with staff. It is has been used, for example, in mergers where the creation of small individual and collective diaries allowed to understand the meaning and the actual experience of change as lived by employees and, so, to orchestrate better the transition from the two separate companies into a single one, according to the expectations and values of each one.
While this project seems to be focused on quadrant four, in fact, it is almost out of the whole square.
Mikel Urmeneta connects his artistic action to the concept of transparency in business (although there are some opinions that require even more transparency from this experience). That may be a line of research but perhaps because it is so evident it will remain just that, a possible line of inquiry. We are beginning a research plan with the business team to fully explore Kukuxumusu possibilities for company-wide joint reflection. This relocation is a dislocation and creates a hiatus to think and design new ways to view and manage space, time, work routines, processes, relationships with the environment, self-image and visibility. We will keep you informed!.
Last Wednesday we conducted the first session of the workshop “Among intelligent machines,” in the Research Institute in Artificial Intelligence IIIA (CSIC). This was part of the TalentLab project.
An intensive work program was scheduled for that day, starting with a site visit guided by David Sierra. His explanations helped to introduce ourselves to the different research lines undertaken at the institute, including a demonstration of dog-like robotic football players to explain how they manage machine learning.
After entering the work room, participants were divided into three groups and we began the session itself. In the inspiration stage, common ideas emerged within each group, although with different approaches. The first group suggested the idea that “everything is connected,” and proposed a kind vision about technology, based on thought and physical reality (people, nature), combined with the use of the network and the “cloud”. This framework of connections could collapse under pressure of cutbacks. The second group drew some “axes” to be positioned between the “information chaos” of the network and the abstract order, on the one hand, and the boundaries between utopia (thought) and reality, on the other. These axes guide the use of technologies by people in everyday life and decision making. The third group showed the role of people in the “choice of the future” desired, taking into consideration knowledge, people and their own needs. They placed the dichotomy between two realities according to the role of technology: one supporting autonomy, responsibility and sustainability and another that creates dependency, is unsustainable and wants to control.
Then, the three groups proceeded to imagine the newsworthy events of an 8th March 2025. The predominance of digital format and new ways of communication were highlighted, while the shortcomings of infrastructure to bring connectivity to schools and the problem of energy resources were evidenced, as well as the possibility to have cars autonomously driven or the incorporation of robots in real life. There were also some coincidences in imagining a return to the pesseta (old currency). Regarding user profiles, was deeply discussed the idea of curiosity among young people, despite their lack of perseverance in completing tasks. Music, sports and technology were highlighted as main interests of this target group deeply based on friendship and social relations. Other comments pointed to their ability of not being always faithful to the truth or trying to invent excuses somehow suspicious.
Considering the ideas, concepts and debates hold during the three previous exercises, participants in each group did a quick brainwriting about educational resources that could allow teachers to work with technology and artificial intelligence in the classroom. Among all the proposals, the first group showed a preference for generating a networked resource that would promote an individual game to work with ecology and/or musical issues. They envisioned the possibility of linking this resource with robots or virtual reality, make it fun and, if possible, multi-platform. The second group proposed an online resource intended to promote collaboration for solving a current problem or challenge. Finally, the third group proposed work in a cross-resource that include patience as an ability to be learned.
In coming days we will evolve ideas and we will continue with our work dynamics next session to help us define an unique educational resource.
Open announcement of the micro-stories competition ‘ICT Case 2012’
Announcement:
ICT Case 2012 is a competition of micro-stories of intrigue related to Information Technology and Communication (ICT), organized by L’Altra ràdio a radio program at Radio 4, the Educational Department of the Catalan Government and la Mandarina de Newton. Jordi de Manuel, a science professor and a writer of intrigue literacy, who has recently published The death of the runner (2012), is joining this initiative too.
The objectives of the ICT Case 2012 competition are: to promote writing and literary creation, to promote the use of Internet and ICTs amongst citizens and schools of Catalonia, to stimulate artistic creation together with critique of language and encourage radio creation with the production of short dramatizations based on the winning stories of this contest.
Participants
Groups of students from Upper Primary schools and Secondary Education in Catalonia and citizens over 16 years, individually or in groups are invited to participate.
Works
The works should be short stories of intrigue wtitten in Catalan with a plot involving some device or use related to Information Technology and Communication (ICT).
The micro-stories should have a maximum length of 800 words (a double-spaced, two pages text in Arial 12 font).
The main title, name and surname of the author (s), email address and telephone number must be included on the first page of each work.
Participants in the Upper Primary School and Secondary Education categories must state the names of the responsible teacher and school center, together with the school level.
Categories
There are three categories:
Upper Primary Education.
Secondary Education.
General. Open to High School students and anyone over 16 who wants to participate.
Awards
General Category
A radio receiver IP VANTAGE DIGITAL OXX DIGITAL
Upper Primary Education
Photo Camera (Hewlett Packard)
Secondary Education
Video Camera (Hewlett Packard)
Communication
A selection of submitted works will be published on L’Altra ràdio website and the Co-Creating Cultures blog of La Mandarina de Newton. Winning works in each category will be adapted to radio format and will be broadcasted during June 2012 by L’Altra ràdio. This program will also include a special radio version of the micro-story written by Jordi de Manuel.
Following the competition, the Co-Creating Cultures blog of La Mandarina de Newton will initiate several co-creation proposals with the winning works. Internet users will be invited, through social networks, to create nano-stories collaboratively.
Time and place of submission
The deadline for submitted works ends on Saturday May 12, 2012
Each work must be sent separately in a text file attached to an email, to the adress: castic2012@gmail.com
Selection Process
Various aspects will be evaluated to select finalists and winners:
Literary quality of the piece of work.
Artistic and aesthetic treatment
Creativity.
Correct use of language.
Plots related with some device or use about Information Technology and Communication (ICT).
Verdict
The winners of each category will be announced on Friday June 1th, in an edition of L’Altra ràdio at Radio 4.
The jury’s verdict is final.
All participants submitting their micro-story accept the rules of the ICT Case 2012 competition and its organizers state their compromise to make a non-profit use.
Jury
The jury is composed of:
Jordi de Manuel, writer (President).
Irene Lapuente, physicist and founder of La Mandarina de Newton
Pitu Martínez, teacher and specialist in ICT for education.
Cinto Niqui, journalist and director of L’Altra ràdio
Co-creation and Co-Creating Cultures!
After the competition, the website of La Mandarina de Newton will spark several proposals for co-creation, based on the winning works. During the month of June, the Internet users will be invited to co-create each week a new story starting from the first sentence of the three winning stories (one per category) and the special story written by Jordi de Manuel.
The initiative, called “To Be Continued …”, will propose participants to continue the story started from this first sentence, adding new ones. This co-creation process will take place in parallel in the Co-Creating Cultures blog, its Facebook page and its Twitter @cocreatingcult. Do not miss it!
The result will be new “nano-stories” (even shorter stories) inspired by the beginnings of the winning stories and constructed through the participation of several people. By evolving in parallel the plot across different platforms, we will get a variety of rich and interesting stories.
On February 15th we started the second session of the “Listening to the Earth” workshop, within the TalentLab project, with a visit to the centenary facilities of the Ebre Observatory (Observatori de l’Ebre de Roquetes). From the beginning the center was focused on the study of the relationships between the Sun and Earth, a pioneering research that, over time, has become increasingly important.
The visit focused on three main areas: the astronomical observatory, the meteorological station and the library. At the observatory we saw different telescopes used to observe the activity of the Sun and other less bright celestial bodies. At the weather station we saw different devices (traditional and modern) used to measure weather parameters. The Observatory owns a very homogeneous and stable data register (temperature, precipitation, humidity, etc.), which is highly relevant for climate studies. Finally, we accessed the library, specializing in Earth science, a pleasant place that over a century has accumulated more than one linear kilometer of publications. A centenary documentary essential for students of History of Science, where you can find technical books from the library of Narcís Monturiol.
After the visit, we went to a room to continue with the workshop in order to reach a specific proposal for an educational resource. We decided to join together in one group and to start working with our hands. But it took us a while: our engines were still cold!
Slowly, the first ideas arose: vegetation, facilities of the Observatory, videos, students, researchers, teachers, a wiki platform, a channel, weather stations, etc. From this point we began to mold the shape of the resource. It could be a wiki platform to work on the local climate combining the data collected with the observation of the vegetation. Students could try to find answers to the questions posed in a questionnaire and the results would be published on the platform with short videos easy to produce (MovieMaker). The idea is to offer an independent and interesting practice in itself, but could be complemented with a visit to the Ebro Observatory, thus adding value to the resource, comparing and discussing the data with professional researchers. The platform could also allow to compare data from different locations provided by different educational centers and, if done continuously, establish temporary records.
At this point, the proposal was contrasted with “future users”. They pointed the need for scheduled resources (files), that can be done in the classroom and in a cooperative way. Finally, the proposal was refined by introducing a wiki page for teachers and researchers where answer questions, include a protocol for making a rain gauge (if the school does not have one) and the possibility of comparing data between countries.
The group felt that the coordination between the Ebro Observatory and the CSIC Delegation is essential to go ahead with the project, both in preparing the contents and in managing the access to the wiki platform. The budget for this educational resource should not be too high. Finally, concluded that the title could be “My time and wether”. We could not ask for a more specific proposal.
We have been not talking too much lately about the project Science of the City. But not for lack of news. It is rather the opposite. During the last months we have been analyzing the video clips carefully closed and we started to talk with artists.
The research group imarte form the University of Barcelona (UB) has joined the project. Discussions on what a is city, what is not a city, what is science and what is not science have already began! We have also found many references to works produced by artists that may have some connections with the video clips submitted by the participants in the Video Contest. The first artistic proposals in response to all this are starting to take shape!
Finally, we are proud to announce that the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) has chosen it as an example of inspiring practices for scientific communication.
The science of cities has arrived from many very different towns: Barcelona, Seville, New York, San Jose, Bogota, Paris, Singapore… Many participants contributed with their videos, their comments and their votes. We tried to bring all this material to new places: universities, research centers, museums, schools, conferences… so that we could offer to all you a physical exhibition soon. We hope to meet you there!
Soon you will have the chance to explore the artwork inside Science of the City, a clear invitation to look from a different perspective even the smallest details of urban everydayness, posing our own questions about science.
Ideas in movement change and evolve constantly. Dance is the expression of emotions and thoughts. Perhaps there is no clear-cut distinction between thinking and doing. Delahunta remarks that the doing also has thinking. He speaks of “choreographic thinking” and suggests that there is an emergence of a collective mind when a group of dances are performing a set piece or an improvised one. In a piece where several dances take part, the relationships between them are very important. This suggests the idea of a collective mind. It is in the connections between the dancers that the mind of the piece is located.
Delahunta and his collaborators have carried out projects related to the previous topics and also published several scientific articles about these issues. For example:
The second session of the “Amongst Intelligent Machines” workshop, from the 
The first group came up with a platform (or box) from wich emerged challenges to be solved by users based on his knowledge of constraints. The challenges could be to design an urban ecosystem management (dams, nuclear plants, etc..) and the users would be different educational centers proposing solutions based on collaborative work. The second group proposed a game that could be physical (boardgame) or virtual designed to exercise how to make decisions and work with values (money, culture, welfare, autonomy, etc.) in connection with the introduction of technology in society. The aim of this dynamic would be to show the influence of values when citizens of a given society make their own decisions. The third group conceived of a resource that would combine computers and robotics in order to work collaboratively. The idea is that two computers or users should design a common task to be performed by two robots like, for instance, two units transporting an object together. To accomplish the goal both robots should establish communication successfully, using Scratch programming to design and simulate the robotics tasks.
When the proposals were enough defined, we proceed with a series of iterations in order to improve them. The groups were divided so that one half stayed to defend the proposal in front of “potential users” posing doubts and exposing limitations. The other half went to see the proposal of another group putting on the skin of the “person” defined in the first session. After iterating a couple of times, each group shared the contributions made by other participants, identified certain deficiencies and incorporated new elements from the suggestions received. Thus, the first group saw the need to limit the approach of the platform to a single challenge with goals that should be defined. The second group incorporated the idea that the issues raised should be based on specific situations (such as a daughter that leaves her mother one afternoon with a robot companion). It was stated that the differences in values would emerge more clearly from this kind of situations. Also, he suggested the possibility that the users ponder by themselves the values associated with certain activities. Moreover, was made known the existence of similar resources as the Deliberatorium MIT or a card game. The third group saw the need to establish some kind of sensor-based communication between robots.
Later, participants were required to assess in more detail the main aspects of the resource to design (philosophy, theme, methodology, requirements, problems, budget) and these considerations were exposed to the other groups. Once done, there was a vote (I can’t remember the name of the voting system used). The most voted proposal was ArgumentaTIC, created by the second group, although all were well balanced and fairly valued. The possibility to incorporate aspects of the first and third proposals to the chosen proposal was also discussed.From now on we have to work on this proposal and see if it is possible to perform with the available resources, and other to come from other sources (sponsors) or if is more convinient to produce it at a later stage.
After entering the work room, participants were divided into three groups and we began the session itself. In the inspiration stage, common ideas emerged within each group, although with different approaches. The first group suggested the idea that “everything is connected,” and proposed a kind vision about technology, based on thought and physical reality (people, nature), combined with the use of the network and the “cloud”. 
This framework of connections could collapse under pressure of cutbacks. The second group drew some “axes” to be positioned between the “information chaos” of the network and the abstract order, on the one hand, and the boundaries between utopia (thought) and reality, on the other. These axes guide the use of technologies by people in everyday life and decision making. The third group showed the role of people in the “choice of the future” desired, taking into consideration knowledge, people and their own needs. They placed the dichotomy between two realities according to the role of technology: one supporting autonomy, responsibility and sustainability and another that creates dependency, is unsustainable and wants to control.
Then, the three groups proceeded to imagine the newsworthy events of an 8th March 2025. The predominance of digital format and new ways of communication were highlighted, while the shortcomings of infrastructure to bring connectivity to schools and the problem of energy resources were evidenced, as well as the possibility to have cars autonomously driven or the incorporation of robots in real life. There were also some coincidences in imagining a return to the pesseta (old currency). Regarding user profiles, was deeply discussed the idea of curiosity among young people, despite their lack of perseverance in completing tasks. Music, sports and technology were highlighted as main interests of this target group deeply based on friendship and social relations. Other comments pointed to their ability of not being always faithful to the truth or trying to invent excuses somehow suspicious.
On February 15th we started the second session of the “Listening to the Earth” workshop, within the 
The Observatory owns a very homogeneous and stable data register (temperature, precipitation, humidity, etc.), which is highly relevant for climate studies. Finally, we accessed the library, specializing in Earth science, a pleasant place that over a century has accumulated more than one linear kilometer of publications. A centenary documentary essential for students of History of Science, where you can find technical books from the library of Narcís Monturiol.
At this point, the proposal was contrasted with “future users”. They pointed the need for scheduled resources (files), that can be done in the classroom and in a cooperative way. Finally, the proposal was refined by introducing a wiki page for teachers and researchers where answer questions, include a protocol for making a rain gauge (if the school does not have one) and the possibility of comparing data between countries.
