Arrived in Amsterdam yesterday morning and it's somewhat cold & damp here. The PICNIC venue is an old warehouse environment being transformed into a cool meeting space. I haven't really had time to explore it yet, but hope to do so later today. Friday will kick-off the Come Out & Play festival, so I'll get to explore Amsterdam over the weekend as well.
Yesterday was also my first session at PICNIC, a meeting of media labs from primarily throughtout Europe, but including ourselves and Lori Schwartz from the IPG Emerging Media Lab in LA. These folks are working on an incredibly diverse set of projects, covering everything from emerging internet tools to urban planning. I'll post a full list of the labs that were here, but it was an inspiring way to start my time at PICNIC.
We also had a great conversation (well, I thought so anyway!) on defining media. In my younger days, media was pretty simple -- TV, radio, print. Now, it's much more complicated, not only by what's available, but how the consumer defines media. Our definition is below, so I'd love to get your feedback if you have any definitions of media, pass them along.
Media are factors to create our social identity through communication tools, content space in a specific context.
Today, we're hearing from the various media labs, to learn about the work they're doing and their approach to their work. For example, the Interactive Institute, while working with an energy company, created a radiator using light bulbs. Light bulbs give off 90% heat, so they created a radiator using light bulbs. It gives off the same heat as a standard radiator, but also create a light source. They had a number of projects
The Waag Society here in Amsterdam also did a cool project called Story Tables, for senior citizens. It allowed senior citizens to view clips from the 1920's, through a very simple interface. The story table became a central meeting space, sparking the seniors to share their own stories based on the content they were viewing. It was extremely well received by its target audience and there are now 50+ Story Tables around Holland.
Lots of very cool mobile work as well and I'll be posting links to the presentations late this week. I'll also have a list of the labs that participated, so you can learn more about everything that happened here.
A great start to the program!
Comments