Workshop “Alternative Urban Interfaces for The (Ir)responsible Scancar”

The workshop is open to RMA students. They can get 2 EC (via RMeS) when they write a 1500 word workshop report (more details will be given by the instructors).

In this full-day workshop, we will use a critical making approach to develop alternative imaginaries for the smart scanning car. Many municipalities deploy sensor-equipped cars that scan license plates to check whether cars have paid for their parking. In addition, cities are working on other possible usage scenarios of these cars, from apparently benign spotting of litter and broken infrastructures to more sinister plans for crowd surveillance during Corona times (fortunately never realized). The rise of smart urban technologies like the scanning car raises thorny questions about what kind of future city we envision, what the role of media technologies might be in such scenarios, and what possible agency and roles ordinary people can have in such visions. Dominant ’smart city’ imaginaries tend to center on control, efficiency, and individual convenience by erasing frictions. By contrast, we are more interested in imagining smart city alternatives that are more critical, speculative, participatory, collective and responsible.