This second edition of Science of the City will have different phases. It will travel around different cities of the world where it will incorporate new videos, new ideas and new debates.
So far, the first phase of this second edition ended on December 15th. It got a high level participation. The members of the jury have been Irene Lapuente, Ramon Sangüesa, Albert Folk, Claire Ribrault and Livio Riboli-Sasco. They had a hard job choosing for the best videos. Finally, they decided to hand the prizes to these three following videos:
La basura en la ciudad (150€)
Avorriment a l’Institut (150€)
Biogas (150€)
We would like to congratulate the winners and all the rest of the participants for their effort and their learning experienced!
The following steps will lead us to connect the participants with science researchers in the following fields: waste, perception and energy. We will keep you informed!
The Dansacat 2012 Awards (Premis Dansacat), are organized by the Association of Dance Professionals of Catalonia (APdC). Their goal is to give recognition and promote the work of dance professionals in Catalonia.
La Mandarina de Newton provided scientific advice during the conceptualization and development of the piece L_ENTES by coreographers Iris Heitzinger and Natalia Jiménez. We are happy to know that it has been shortlisted and nominated for the third edition of the Dansacat Awards, in the “New Talents” category. It was selected because of the quality of the performance and for being a multidisciplinary creation. Also because it included science in the project as well as the fact that it used non-conventional spaces for performance.
Winners will be chosen by popular vote, that can be case at the association’s website, www.dansacat.org. The voting process started on November 28th and will end on December 16th. Prizes will be awarded on December 20th, in the opening of the piece ‘Little me” by Lali Ayguadé.
In this conference world renowned experts presented different approaches to innovation to an audience of researchers, enterpreneurs and business people. Irene, presented a colourful view of innovation and stressed the importance of personal attitude and the importance of arriving at your own methods of innovation by deep reflection and continuous exploration, both individually and with others. Also she stressed the need to be smart and integrate some of the methods that very creative people across very different projects in Art, Design, Technology and Science have develop. In doing so, she showed the idiosyncratic “Mix, Learn, Transform” approach to innovation that we follow at La Mandarina de Newton where each project is unique and requires a fine tuning of methods and synergies.
It was very conforting to see that in the middle of such a crisis as the one that we are going through universities and innovators dare to speak together and develop a better future.
We hope that our hybrid approach also helps in improving things through creativity and innnovation.
On November 17th took place the opening of the work by choreographer and dancer Anna Rubirola DIA ZERO(Day Zero), within the program in Situ Dance Festival, at Arts Santa Monica, Barcelona.
DIA ZERO is a piece that discusses destruction and the emptiness and silence it generates afterwards. It explores the trail of devastation and follows its consequences. It is a piece that approaches destruction from the physical body but it uses physical domestic resources and sound elements. Irene Lapuente, founder of La Mandarina de Newton, collaborated in this project as part of the scientific advisory group.
Science of the City takes places in Barcelona, Silicon Valley, Paris and other cities. La Mandarina de Newton appreciates the support of the Tech Museum of San Jose in Silicon Valley, California, of the entire membership of its virtual platform. Also the support of the Paris-Montagne NGO and the Municipality of Barcelona.
Science of the City promotes dialogue between city and science
Scientists and technologists do research and create solutions that affect us in our daily lives. How can we let them know what we know and what concerns us about the problems in our streets, squares and neighborhoods? How can we learn and work together to improve our daily life in our cities?
Through the Science of the City project we create a bridge for anyone to reach and meet with scientists and technologists, and to know the why of the thousand and one possibilities and realities that science and technology create for our cities.
If you want to participate in the process, start by entering the video contest and send a two-minute video that can be:
a question: make a video about a question that intrigues you and that involves some science or technology aspect.
For example, “How is traffic handled in a city?.” If you win the contest, we will help you spend time with a research group that can answer your question.
a proposal: Imagine and describe a solution that incorporates science and technology. We will look for a research group that can evaluate your proposal and you will be able to see how they work on it and how it evolves.
For example, in the first edition of Science of the City a participant suggested using the street noises to create power in cities: http://scienceofthecity.net/2011/?p=221. Can you think of a proposal to solve other problems in the city?
From now until December 7th you will be able to send us as many videos as you want and we will upload them at this platform. Chose an idea, make a 2 minutes video, upload it at your Youtube acount and send us (cocreatingcultures (@) gmail.com) a short description and the link. We will upload them at the platform of the project: http://scienceofthecity.net/2013.
During this time you can also watch the videos of other participants, comment on them, ask other people in the platform for advice on your own videos and, finally, vote on the proposals.
Remember, the deadline ends on December 7th, 2012.
The best videos submitted to the contests will be selected by a jury and by popular vote. All videos will be part of a research project open to scientists and technologists.
This year three prizes will be awarded:
Most original question
More surprising proposal
Most voted Video
If you look carefully around you, you will be surprised with the number of scientific phenomena that can be observed without leaving your city. If, however, you still have doubts about how they could be shown on your clips,you can have a look at the two samples we have prepared. We hope they you like them and they can inspire you!
We have already talked about the project L_ENTES, an artistic project based on contemporary dance. It has been directed by the dancers and coreographers Iris Heitzinger and Natalia Jimenez. La Mandarina de Newton has collaborated as a scientific advisor.
L_ENTES is a dance performance that plays with science and mathematics to talk about time, space, light, sound and perception. It premiered on May 11th during the NEO Festival in Barcelona. Now you can enjoy the official trailer!
Science of the City has left behind a huge virtual print, plenty of videos. We have to take in account not only the 50 videos sent by the participants of the SOTC global competition, but many pieces of art created specifically for the exhibition. Is not surprising, after all, that the exhibit seen last May in Arts Santa Mònica has been documented with a good amount of videos as, for instance the Opening of the exhibition.
Media has made its own interpretation of the project, as we see in the stories of La Malla Tendències and the Pla B of Barcelona Television or the live connection by Connexió Barcelona, also from BTV.
Daily newspaper
Agendas of ARA, La Vanguardia and El Periodico de Catalunya newspapers, included the Science of the City as one of the remarkable cultural offers of the week. El Periódico, meanwhile, also published an extensive news in the section Gran Barcelona. Also El Heraldo de Aragon, from Zaragoza, dedicated an article inside the Tercer Milenio supplement.
supplement.
At a broader level, the digital editions of those media have shown a special interest to discover scientific evidence in everyday life. The Catalan edition of El Pais.com they collected in their culture section while the blog “Art in the Age of Silicon“, also from this medium showed in the video Skup “The amazing makeup of the atom” to explain the co-creative process started months ago with the video contest. Something similar was seen in 3cat24.cat,, using the same resource to introduce the project.
Minutes before the opening of the exhibition, a mobile unit of COM Ràdio approached to Arts Santa Monica to explain in all detail the scope of this cultural program to the listeners of the Extraradi program. Two days earlier, in the same station, Irene Lapuente had already explained the project from the main studio of Eureka!. In a similar way, the Altra Ràdio radio program invited Irene Lapuente to speak about this initiative a week earlier. More recently, in June, the unique humor of Pa ciència la nostra offered his particular vision of the Science of the City project.
A catalog full of reflections about science, city, arts, communication and participation was born thanks to the exhibition process of the project Science of the City. The prologue was written by Roger Sansi, an anthropologist and a Ramón y Cajal researcher at the University of Barcelona. Artists such as Eugènia Augustí, Montse Carreño, Raquel Muñoz, Mercè Casanovas, Borja Leo Fermoselle, Sergi Selvas, Aleix Molet, Eloi Puig, Cristina Pastó, Anja Steidinger, Alicia Vela and Antònia Vilà explain their art pieces. Ramon Sangüesa and Irene Lapuente tell us about the reasons behind this project. All these texts are available in four languages: English, Spanish, French and Catalan at la Mandarina de NewtonIssuu:
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.
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.