We’re on our way back from Gothenburg, after four days of public city-prototyping workshops and urban planning conversations with the Ingrepp research group.

Dead dialogue

A few years ago when a major, central throughway was diverted through a new tunnel, a large slab of land on the southern riverbed area (Södra Älvstranden) in central Gothenburg was suddenly opened for redevelopment. In a (then) much applauded gesture the reponsible quango Älvstranden AB invited teams of citizens to come up with proposals for their future vision of the area. But, as the teams entered politically sensitive proposals that didn’t fit the wishlist of quango, the process was slowly quieted and bottled up.

Keeping up the conversation

The Ingrepp (Intervention) research group has been exploring artistic interventions in city planning in general, and the collapsed Södra Älvstranden process in particular. Ingrepp invited Unsworn Research to host panorama-making workshops at four different locations along the riverbed.

In our custom-made panorama studio passers-by as well as the participating researchers, artists and architects created new versions and visions of the location at hand. The panoramas were uploaded to a Parascope where the different scenarios could be explored and compared to the present milieu.

Learn more about the Ingrepp project through the Ingrepp Tabloid or their rhizomatic Politics of Magma publication.

Unsworn Research hotwires Helsinki’s street lights to visualise the city’s energy consumption.

Helsingin Energia is the main provider of power and district heating in the Helsinki area. Radically, they have decided to publicly publicise Helsinki’s energy consumption data in real time.

Together with a few other artists and designers we were invited to propose novel ways of using and visualising this data. The proposals are presented and discussed at the Pixelache festival right now.

Here’s ours:

Hot Lights

Hot Lights connects Helsinki’s use of district heating to its outdoor lighting system. When heat consumption is high, street lamps will pulsate slowly.

The city breathes slightly heavier when the heat is on.

“Our individual actions are increasingly closely connected to global issues”, says Erik Sandelin, at Malmö-based interaction design and innovation studio Unsworn Industries. “The personal is indeed political, not least regarding energy consumption. When I turn on my sauna at home I’m partaking in international geopolitical struggles, whether I like it or not. We envision Helsinki as an ecosystem, with several essential infrastructures that are so entangled in our everyday lives that they have become invisible to us. We take them for granted. When Hot Lights ‘hotwires’ two of them – district heating and outdoor lighting – we become aware of the underpinnings of our current way of life. The pulsating “hot lights” are less of a warning signal than a subtle and beautiful reminder that we’re all part of the same urban ecology.”

Helsinki has 79,000 light spots, administered by Helsingin Energia. In the first phase of Hot Lights a pilot area would be selected to try out and evaluate the concept. Through workshops with the local community the desired level of heat consumption would be established.

A positive side-effect of the project is that it can act as a catalyst for Helsingin Energia to continue experimenting with dimming technologies and exchanging old mercury lamps for newer, more effiecient lamps. Many European cities have saved energy and money by switching to dynamic lightling systems that reduce lamp power at certain times and places – without compromising safety in the streets.

We’re in Copenhagen enjoying bright sun and dark beers at the (not so Danish sounding) Zum Biergarten. We just finished playing with mighty THUTO in the nearby Axeltorv.

Fingerlicking Good Interactions

THUTO (The Human Touch Orchestra) is to equal parts an interactive sound sculpture and a science project. With THUTO visitors can create different kinds of sounds by connecting various hand-shaped terminals on the surface of the sculpture. Visitors connect the terminals by touching them and allowing a control current to flow through their own bodies.

The electric resistance of their bodies control the pitch of the resulting sounds. A single person or a long chain of people holding hands will thus generate different sounds. There are four pairs of terminals that are mapped to both melodic and percussive sounds, allowing crude music compositions to be performed.

And for those sweet synthesizer falsettos? Wet hands, it seems, create the most high-pitched squeals.

Much ado about THUTO?

THUTO is built to allow people to learn more about electric conductivity in a playful manner and spawn interest in Danfoss Universe Science Park. The project is produced by Studio Total with technical assistance from 1scale1. Unsworn Research helped Studio Total nail and clarify the concept in a rapid idea and concept workshop earlier this spring. Go THUTO!

Why can’t your average forest-walk be as exciting as the latest David Attenborough flick? Last week Unsworn Industries brought fuel to Region Skåne’s workshop to fire up new ideas on technology-augmented nature experiences.

Seminar in the sticks

Our poor human senses miss out on a lot of the exciting stuff that goes on in nature. Our hearing is weak and our vision is limited. We often lack the knowledge on where to direct our attention. New technologies could bring more natural phenomena within reach of our experience-organs.

Region Skåne (The regional council of Southern Sweden) sees a great potential for innovative products and services on this them, and decided to organise a full-day seminar, inviting ICT-companies, tourism representatives, park-attendants and many more from Southern Sweden.

Unsworn Industries was hired to host a concept development session in the field. For this, we developed and demonstrated a series of functional, inspiring prototypes, conducted a mind-boggling lunch lecture and facilitated an intense idea workshop on site in the woods of central Skåne.

Experiential prototypes

For the seminar Unsworn Research developed a series of tools for technology-augmented nature experiences. These were prepared on site by Snogeholmssjön. Erik and Magnus took the seminar-participants on a guided tour where they could try out, experience and discuss the various prototypes.

The concepts were chosen to be inspiring, provocative and to involve different senses, technologies, and situations. They were crafted to act as fruitful points of departure for the participants’ own reflections and idea-processes, regarding experience, technology and business models.

Discovery and BBC have spoilt us with nature action. We’re used to get close up and personal with the animals. The Burrow Surveillance kit offers a way to peek into shy badgers or foxes in their dens, even without the nature-filmer’s professional equipment and patience.

A number of battery-powered surveillance cameras are placed in and outside the den. The cameras wirelessly transmit video to a portable receiver screen which the visitor brings with her. The visitor can observe the activity in the den from a distance, without disturing the animals. With the flick of a switch the visitor can select a camera or choose to automatically jump between cameras.

The Anthill Radio system consists of a battery-powered radio station: contact microphones are buried in an anthill (after asking permission from the inhabitants) and connected to a short-range transmitter. Visitors can tune in to 100.0 FM to listen in on the curiously, milling life of busy ants. The visitors can use any radio receiver, for example an FM-equipped mobile phone with headphones.

The Robocop-o-scope is made up of a hand-held, electronic mini-microscope and a pair of video-goggles. When wearing the goggles you can explore your surroundings amplified a hundred times. Using the Robocop-o-scope is an immersive (possibly nauseating) experience. Tiny movements of the microscopic hand takes your eyes on a dramatic voyage through an otherwise invisible terrain.

We consider it a bonus feature that Robocop-o-scope users in action are quite spectacular to observe themselves.

Do we need more video goggles on our quiet walks through the woods?

While field-testing the prototypes in nearby forests we’ve encountered numerous, bird-watchers, botanists, strollers, and flower-pickers urging us: “Please don’t bring technology out here! We come here to escape all the stress and tech from the city.” Interestingly enough, these nature-lovers were themselves augmented with everything from glasses to loupes, binoculars, cell-phones-with-the-latest-bird-sighting-sms-system, digital cameras, and wheelchairs.

It seems new technology needs a few years of quiet ageing before it’s accepted and assimilated into the nature-user’s arsenal and becomes… natural.

Enjoy these visuals from the seminar and sweaty preparations:

Last week the Unsworn Research studio was bustling with activity, as we workshopped with the City of Malmö on how to envision less car-oriented futures.

Ridiculous car trips

Last year the Street and Parks Department of Malmö urged all Malmö citizens to think again before conducting an act of “ridiculous driving”, not referring to people travelling at insane and dangerous speeds but as a response to the fact that almost half of all car trips in Malmö are shorter than 5 kilometres. These trips could, in most cases, just as well have been done by foot or by bicycle. Changing peoples’ attitudes and providing viable alternatives to car-travel before the trip or transport happens is at the core of Malmö’s so called Mobility Management initiative.

Continuing the dialogue

Last September the City asked Malmö citizens for suggestions on how to reduce car traffic in Malmö. People posted more than a thousand proposals and comments to a dedicated web forum. Suggestions ranged from extravagant sky-trains, to €100 parking fees, better bicycle infrastructure and free public transport. The City approached Unsworn Industries to come up with ideas for a follow-up campaign to these suggestions, to conceptualise “an exhibition that’s not an exhibition” - to provide action spaces for a continued dialogue.

Looking at, listening to, trying out, and co-creating possible futures

So, last week we hosted a full-day concept development workshop with people from the City as well as external, invited designers and architects. After the post-it tornado had settled, three clear themes were still standing: The upcoming campaign will be about visualising the proposals from the Malmö citizens as well as actually trying out these possible futures in short interventions. New tools for co-creating the future traffic-landscape of Malmö will also be created.

Good stuff

Ideas from this workshop will be manifest in Malmö public spaces early 2009. We at Unsworn Research have to say that admire the courage of Malmö’s Street and Parks Department in actively encouraging unconventional and provocative ideas. Hopefully we’ll be able to continue collaborating throughout the project.

Unsworn Research develops deas for energy aware, metallic creatures and meets an old friend at the Wanås opening.

Electroszim & Sons joined us this Wednesday for a session of bicyclic bodystorming. What could be more pedagogic and enlighting than a besserwisserish robot in the front saddle of your tandem bike, regularly serving you pieces of power consumption knowledge?

Österlen reunion

Celebrating Erik’s name day we drove the red 240 to lush art-park Wanås and the opening of this year’s exhibition. Nicolas “Relational Aesthetics” Bourriaud was there to add international flair to the event but the French consonants of his opening speech scattered in the warm summer breeze. This year’s exhibition theme is loss but for us it was certainly a happy reunion to again see curator Elna Svenle, who we haven’t met since winter 2006 when she kindly invited Unsworn Sound for the Four Ophones New York Tour 2006.

Unsworn Industries is awarded funds for new Telecom division.

Unsworn Research’s division for Parafunctional Payphone production has received a generous grant from the Nordic Council of Ministers to produce the first Telemegaphone, a phoneable loudspeaker post on top of Mount Heileberget by the beautiful Dalsfjord in western Norway.

Beautiful Telecom

We look forward to climbing Norwegian fjells this summer and celebrate by announcing the launch of Unsworn Telecom - a new division of Unsworn Industries wholeheartedly dedicated to developing products and services for beautiful and suprising telecommunications.