City Interactive
'City Interactive' (2004) is an online project developed by Akuvido during their residency period at V2_Lab.
City Interactive: screenshot
City Interactive is an announcement of the city as an art object, investigated as an interactive media space. By using physical manipulation and navigation of real objects, language and intelligence, as well as historical, philosophical, social and political factors of a city, Akuvido have created an interactive multimedia view of a modern city on the Internet.
Using digital pictures and video, everyday interaction with the city was investigated, assembled and built into the interface and navigation tools of the project with the aid of graphical and video programs. The project's interface is interactive, with a map of the city on which links to real objects are situated and transformed, connected as a whole intellectual, visual, written and sound labyrinth of the city.
Information on different aspects of the city creates movement, interactivity and artistic imagery of the city. This information and our knowledge are building blocks of a complete picture of the city's representation, but these actually consist of millions of fragments that have millions of meanings and are impossible to take in at one time.
Akuvido sees the city as a program that controls information; the artists investigate the different fragments of the city, and unite these fragments into a whole. Creations in City Interactive correspond with situations in a real city; they demonstrate how physical space transfers or digitizes into virtual space and how virtual space starts to influence the real space of the city, with the help of new technology. Through cables, monitors, sensors, webcams, the Internet, technology grows into the city's space like a nervous system that controls reality, exchanges information and becomes alive, changing and giving new appearance in reality and becoming a program tool -- a truly interactive game.
Online at city.v2.nl (last checked december 2010)
