Remediating Urban Space and The Invisible Pink Unicorn performance
June 7, 2012 3:17 pm
The Apparition of the Invisible and Pink Unicorn – Pre-event to Remediating Urban Space: Exploring Design Responses.
5-6th June 2012, Plymouth University.
Venue: Room 206-207, Roland Levinsky Building, Plymouth University, PL4 6AA
Organizers: School of Architecture and i-DAT Plymouth University, UK
Remediating Urban Space Symposium.
Communication technologies remediate everyday urban life, resulting in subtle shifts in the spatial, temporal, scalar and material processes which are ‘all too often overlooked in conventional and binary approaches opposing the “virtual” realm of new technologies to “real” urban places’ (Crang 2007). We need to move beyond an artificially created dichotomy of a real and a virtual world as if the two were opposed. Instead, we must develop a new understanding of our activities and behaviour in the spaces of the city; since online and mobile socially networked spaces and real-world places are connecting and converging in numerous and complex ways. The challenge before us is finding ways to engage with these changes as designers.
The aim of the workshop is to consider more fully the multiple, subtle, and interdependent spatio-temporalities which together work to constitute ICT-based urban change. How do we start to create meaningful spaces that merge digital and physical interactions?
The workshop will examine and propose design responses for how to remediate urban space through a range of ICTs, locative media and smart objects.
It will draw on an interdisciplinary field of architecture, human computer interaction, geography, media studies, art and sociology to explore questions of how urban space can be conceived and inhabited when it is mediated, and the nature of these mediated experiences at an everyday level.
More info here
The Invisible and Pink Unicorn pre-event.
An atheist rave will be evoking the mystic apparition of The Invisible and Pink Unicorn by Les Liens Invisibles, 5th June at 10 PM, Royal William Yard, Plymouth, UK. Hundreds of devoted ‘pink believers’ will be taking part in this artistic ‘hacking action’ by the artists Les Liens Invisibles.
‘Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can’t see them’ (Steve Eley).
Plymouth is the place where in 1620 a bunch of hopeful people came together to set off on the Mayflower, headed for a new world; it is also where Charles Darwin set off on the expedition that would inspired the book The Origin of Species and the theory of evolution. Today, while the world is shaken by another troublesome time in history, we’re headed for the same place where the Mayflower set sail, taking a leap into another dimension of Faith and Hope for the evolution of society — and where, one year after Her first apparition, the Invisible Pink Unicorn will be evoked by Her followers at the stroke of midnight on 5th June. They will of course be dressed in pink, aiming their smartphones in the direction of her coming.
After pilgrims and tourists joined to surprising effect for the apparition in St Peter’s Square in Rome in 2011, the goddess’ apparition has become a ritual that can be repeated every time Her faithful folk call upon her. Come and keep vigil for the Invisible Pink Unicorn with us! As the curators Simona Lodi and Gianni Corino say, ‘on the one hand, communication is about message transmission, but on the other it is a ritual performance that reinforces a sense of social and cultural affiliation.’
The performance is curated by Simona Lodi and Gianni Corino. It is part of the official conference programme Remediating Urban Space: Exploring Design Responses
bio:
Les Liens Invisibles is an imaginary Italy-based artist duo consisting of Clemente Pestelli and Gionatan Quintini. Their work is an eclectic recombination of pop net culture, reverse engineering techniques, social media subvertising, and any other kind of media manipulation. Since 2007 Les Liens Invisibles have been infiltrating global communication networks in order to join and expand the invisible connections between art, the mediascape and real life. Most of their artworks and online interventions have been internationally exhibited in galleries, museums (MAXXI Rome, New School of New York, KUMU Art Museum of Talinn) and at international art and media-art festivals (International Venice Biennale, Piemonte Share Festival, Transmediale). Les Liens Invisibles were recently awarded an honorary distinction at the Transmediale media art festival (2011).
Website of the Monument to the Invisible Unicorn
www.monumenttotheinvisiblepinkunicorn.com
Video & photo documentation of the apparition
http://invisibile.unicornorosa.org/gallery
Website of the apparition
www.unicornorosa.org
Watch the Pink Unicorn in the Augmented Space with Layar
http://m.layar.com/open/thepinkunicorn