Connecting Cities

Connecting Cities Network is a European and worldwide expanding network aiming to build up a connected infrastructure of media facades, urban screens and projection sites to circulate artistic and social content. In opposition to the commercial use of these urban media, we establish them as platforms on which citizens can exchange – within the city as much as between cities.

Connecting Cities was initiated by Public Art Lab Berlin in 2012. The Connecting Cities Network reflects on the increasing worldwide presence of large-format digital media facades in the public space and examines their function as cultural and their unique communicative elements. In contrast to the commercial use of these urban media facades, we establish them as platforms on which citizens can exchange – within the city as much as between cities.

The European Commission selected Connecting Cities for a multi-annual funding 2012-16 supported by Culture Programme 2007-13.

 

In the framework of Connecting Cities 2013 : Networked City, iMAL organised an event on the metro esplanade Comte de Flandre / Graaf van Vlaanderen and its surroundings. For two days, Brussels was connected to Liverpool (UK), through a series of surprising, participatory and playful artworks accessible to all in the public space. With: Sander Veenhof, Jeremy Bailey, Varvara Guljajeva & Mar Canet Sola.

Last year's theme was Participatory City. How can we open the screens as digital stages for public interventions? What is the impact of participatory projects realised in the European space on audience and community development of the European neighbourhoods?

In June 2014, iMAL organised the Connecting Cities Urban Media Lab, a symposium and intense 6-days masterclass that explored new forms of urban participation. With: Katía Truijen, Niels Wouters, Tobias Revell, Nanna Verhoeff, Martijn de Waal, Mark Shepard, Michael Smyth, Ali Momeni & Sander Veenhof.

In the framework of Nuit Blanche 2014, iMAL, FACT Liverpool & Medialab Prado Madrid invited Ali Momeni for Telepuppet.tv.

 

 

 

More info on connectingcities.net

Activities

2016

An overview of the curatorial topics of the Networked City 2013, the Participatory City 2014 and the In/Visible City 2015 that have been explored by artists and curators during the Connecting Cities project, as well as reflexive panels on the past, present and future of media art environments in the public spaceThe symposium will be followed by Jeremy Bailey's Master/Slave Invigilator System.

2015

Discover sounds, images and other documents from the Brussels' past and the present through your mobile phone and the Hybrid Player application. Get all the information to build it yourself and use it in other contexts!

2015

FALSE POSITIVE deploys text messaging, stealth infrastructure, street intervention, and data visualization to enact a surveillance conspiracy engaging the public in an intimate, techno-political conversation with the mobile technologies on which they depend.

2015

A workshop and urban performance on smart garments and generative patterns.

2015

After Networked City in 2013 and Participatory City 2014, this year's curatorial theme of INVISIBLE and VISIBLE Cities 2015 aims to develop an awareness of the underlying data and technologies of modern cities, which are almost invisible to the eye.

2014

Join us during Nuit Blanche Brussels ! Telepuppet.tv is a crowd-sourced storytelling platform that combines augmented-puppetry with urban projection performance. Travelling through the streets of the city centre, artists Ali Momeni & Nima Dehghani (USA/Iran) will project videos filmed this summer, in Iran, by augmented puppets. A way to share experiences of migration across time and space on our planet. 

2014

In the framework of Connecting Cities: Participatory City 2014, iMAL organises a two days symposium on urban media & the smart city, with renowned international speakers. This will introduce an intensive six days workshop, where selected participants will develop artworks that explore new forms of urban participation. The results of the masterclass will be showed in iMAL's neighbourhood.

2013

With Connecting Cities 2013 - Networked City, experience the hybrid city: physical, digital and augmented. Get connected and take part in interactive urban media art and performances on mobile and urban screens. A creative, fun and festive event that will gather artists and citizens from Brussels, Liverpool and the global village.

News

Deadline: 31 October 2014

After Networked City in 2013 and Participatory City in 2014, the theme of Connecting Cities in 2015 will be Visible City.

Our modern cities are hybrid structures in which technology is invisibly interweaved in the perception layers of our everyday...

if you could not attend our Connecting Cities Symposium on Urban Media in June 2014, don't worry: all the lectures by our international panel of speakers are now on Youtube ! Or if you were there and just want to watch again one of the great conferences by Katia Truijen (...