Die digitale SMS-Schleuder von VR/urban ist auf Tour: “I would just briefly let You know that our project “SMSlingshot” for reclaiming urban screens and media facades is going on a little world tour. We are invited to show our interactive intervention / performance during the FILE electronic arts festival in Sao Paulo / Brazil next week. We are also very happy to have an opportunity to give a lecture at FILE symposium. The talk will mainly be about digital media in urban environments. In particular we discuss our understanding of “hybrid estates” and declare a manifesto on open access and restoration of these hybrids”, schreibt Christian Zoellner. “During the next week VR/Urban will drive along Avenida Paulista, a popular major road in Sao Paulo, with a projector equipped minibus and let people in the streets shoot messages on plain concrete facades. Trust me: Sao Paulo has a lot of them, since they forbid public advertising! We also give visitors of FILE the opportunity to shoot some messages on the outer facade of the SESI theatre during the opening night.

Because the festival is delightfully curated by very sympathetic persons, we will also blog the most impressive projects and impressions at the interface and interactions blog hosted by FORM+ZWECK design magazine. We already met so many of the artists, telling us about their projects that it will be hard to get everything covered, but we will try.

All this will be a good test for all the upcoming SMSlingshot events back in Europe: The Media Façade Festival 2010 starts at 27th of August. We will be part of it with a joint broadcasting event linking two cities through media facades. People from one city can shoot messages to the other cities facade. We will link up Berlin with Liverpool during the opening night and Berlin and the Ars electronica in Linz a few days later. We also go to Madrid for the Noche Bianco at the 11th of September to show our project at the MediaLab Prado. If all this wouldn’t be enough there are still a few other dates we inform you about as soon as everything is confirmed!

What is the SMSlingshot:

The SMSlingshot is wooden device that was designed to create situations of digital augmented urban drift (Dérive). It is equipped with an ultra-high frequency radio, hacked micro processor board, a laser-pointer and batteries. A text messages can be typed on a phone-sized wooden keypad which is integrated in the also wooden slingshot. After the message is finished, people can aim on a media facade and send/shoot the message straight to the targeted point. It will then appear as a colour splash with the message written within. The text message will also be real-time twittered to link up real and virtual worlds.

Who is VR/urban:

VR/Urban was founded in summer 2008 as an open collective for creating digital interventions in public spaces. Since then the team and its core members Patrick Tobias Fischer, Christian Zöllner, Thilo Hoffmann and Sebastian Piatza realized several interventive projects in urban space and published various scientific papers about their graspable interface studies. The collective strongly believes in the power of people’s participation that creates vital urban spaces and maintains the rights of free speech. Currently we feel that something is going seriously wrong when we notice the increasing number of digital advertisements each time we wander trough so called public urban space. RECLAIM THE SCREENS!

What are Hybrid Estates:

Currently we face an increasing number of digital advertising screens in public space world wide! These screens are extremely secured, highly evolved and as means only accessible for maximising corporate profits and spreading governmental propaganda. By this development, urban space is getting more and more digitalised and informed, but not by the dwellers who live in it. People remain passive in the position of consuming these fluid digital images by standing quiet and tense in front of the screens. This passiveness continues and pervades the whole interpersonal and social life. We question the use of digital displays on public walls, so called hybrid estates, and develop a clear vision of how we as citizens will act and feel like in urban space when the surrounding walls will be digital augmented and free to use for all.” Via: Mail