Via the Bartlett Architecture Listing…

Moving into the future?
The next step for mobility
Sunday 28 October, 4.00pm until 5.30pm, Lecture Theatre 2 Salon Debates

Given the opportunity, most people want to travel. Almost any measure of mobility, from car ownership to international flights, shows that we are covering more miles than our parents, and many more than our grandparents. In the past 20 years, the number of trips abroad by UK residents tripled to over 66 million. Whether it’s living further from where we work, spreading our social circle wider, or going on more adventurous holidays, we are embracing the benefits of faster, cheaper transport.But moving around uses energy, and saving energy is the new mantra. Can we, and should we, square the new freedom to move with the desire to reduce the human footprint? Experience shows that making transport more efficient doesn’t save energy, because people simply use that efficiency to make their time and money budget go further - literally.

What mobility should we demand in the future: energy-efficient public transport to tempt more people out of their cars? Smart technology that reduces unnecessary trips through videoconferencing and internet shopping? Or simply more, faster and cheaper ways of getting about that can open up the new freedom to move to everyone on the planet?

Cowardice or selfish practicality for the one making the move, many of us have experienced a technologically mediated breakup, the phone call being a boring classic, now it happens through text messaging. My friend N. witnessed worse: a tape sent via mail! No way to answer directly to that one… is there? Is breaking up on the move the way to go? Spying technologies also seem to facilitate the resolution of many divorce cases. Read: Your cheatin’ heart leaves tell-tale e- trail:

Most of these stories do not end amicably. Earlier this year, a technology consultant from the Philadelphia area, who did not want his name used because he has a teenage son, strongly suspected his wife was having an affair. Instead of confronting her, the husband installed a $49 program called PC Pandora on her computer. The program surreptitiously took snapshots of her screen every 15 seconds and e-mailed them to him. Soon he had a comprehensive overview of the sites she visited and the instant messages she was sending.

It is as if technologies amplify the worse of us. Un peu de courage, de panache et de romantisme que diable!

Back from Berlin! Thank you Sidi: you are a wonderful host.

Nomad thinking… I was very moved by the Garden of Exile, a space you find in Daniel Liebskind’s Jewish Museum… The architecture/sculpture of tall slanted columns with the sloped ground plan of rough cobblestone—le “plan oblique”—gives visitors a nauseous sense of… “non-place”… The dramatic weather (it did rain) added to the atmosphere. Even in the land of the olive tree—on top of the slanted columns olive trees have been planted [1]—exiled populations have unsettled emotion… about being away from HOME. This moving architecture does speak to every person who has seen his/her home taken away, has been expelled, to all refugees, hybrids, immigrants, nomads of some sort…

So a wall came down. Some see in it the triumph of capitalism. I see the fall of a boundary—an inflated one, a corridor—the meeting of differences.

Talking to my nomadic way of seeing, Mies Van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie… as boundaries collapse with the glass panels, the reflective materials and dark painted architectural parts. It is cloudy in there :)

[1] For more information on the symbol/history of the Olive tree (in French / article in progress), read: Trois arbres symboles: le sapin, le palmier, l’olivier.

Do and don’t… Monster’s advices when away from the office and traveling… and another article about air commuters…

Suite à la lecture de l’article: La carte postale est “immortelle” (Laura D’Arrigo  | Le Monde | 14.08.07) qui dit:

La carte postale reste incontournable : elle peut survivre longtemps, collée sur le réfrigérateur ou épinglée sur le mur de son bureau, quand les messages sur les portables sont souvent effacés en quelques secondes… D’ailleurs, les inconditionnels de ces bristols illustrés sont les collectionneurs, qui les achètent, les classent, les échangent et les vendent. Alors qu’on ne connaît pas de collectionneurs de SMS…

Enfin, moi je les collectionne les SMS… J’hypertexte aussi pour tomber sur une définition de la maximaphilie… Serais-je atteinte de nomadophilie, alors que je collectionne le rien, l’éphémère, le fonctionnel (avec une tendance spéciale à justifier l’ornement comme nécessaire à son bien-être)?

Yasmine Abbas is a French DPLG architect, holds a Master of Science in Architecture Studies (SMArchS 2001) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Doctor of Design (DDes 2006) from Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

In 1995, while pursuing an internship at the UNESCO, United Nations, Education, Science and Culture Organization, she realizes the importance of education and technology for a culture of peace. Since, the notions of cultural encounters and mobilities have driven her designs and critical inquiries. She aims to advance the social and cultural by integrating technology with design. At MIT, her interactions with the Design Inquiry and Intelligent Kinetic System groups lead her to research the figure of “supermodernity”, the neo-nomad. At Harvard she focused on how neo-nomads, digitally geared people on the move, reclaim a sense of belonging to places in the age of multiple mobilities and digital technologies. In 2005 she founds neo-nomad, a digital platform dedicated to design and mobility in the digital world.

At Wentworth Institute of technology, she taught the spring 2007 seminar: Digital + Mobilities which led to the investigation of the freedom trail through codes: DiMo project.

She is currently working as a senior consultant at ReD!

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Architecte DPLG française (Paris, 1997), Yasmine ABBAS est titulaire d’un Master of Science in Architecture Studies du Massachusetts Institute of Technology (SMArchS 2001) et d’un Doctorat, Doctor of Design d’Harvard University Graduate School of Design (DDes 2006).
En 1995, alors qu’elle effectue un stage d’études à l’UNESCO, elle conçoit l’importance de l’éducation et des nouvelles technologies pour une culture de paix. Depuis, les principes de rencontres culturelles et de mobilité ont guidé ses questionnements et ses recherches. Au MIT, ses interactions avec les groupes du Design Inquiry et Intelligent Kinetic Systems la conduisent à étudier le nomade des sociétés « surmodernes ». À l’Université d’Harvard, elle recherche les manières dont ces néo-nomades, populations mobiles équipées numériquement, recréent un sentiment d’appartenance aux lieux et espaces. En 2005 elle crée son blog de recherche, neo-nomad.

 
Via adsoftheworld

Osuna’s box trays are used to hold plants in customers’ cars. We saw them as a consumer touch point and provided a brief (albeit entertaining) message to encourage recycling.

While looking for information on data transport via skin, I came across this post: Microsoft patents the body electric… Maybe some application for Touch·Sensitive?? … Imagine exchanging data via a simple handshake?!

Thank you to Riem, I came across this article by Anthony D’Andrea in the Mobilities Journal: Neo-nomadism: A Theory of Post-Identitarian Mobility in the Global Age.

Simultaneous thinking or not, it is good and flattering to see that I have fostered a field of inquiry on its own, and that the neo-nomad wording/thinking spreads, though I mainly speak about psycho-socio-cultural aspects and spaces. I look forward to read this article.

As I wrote in a reply to Bill Thompson after discovering his BBC article, In Search of the Neo-nomad, I have been working on the neo-nomad since the time I was enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 1999. The title of my MIT thesis (MIT, 2001) is Embodiment: Mental and Physical Geographies of the Neo-nomad. Since, I wrote many articles about neo-nomads, some for Ubicomp conferences… I also graduated from Harvard with a Doctor of Design, which title is: Neo-nomads: Designing Environments for Living in the Age of Physical, Digital and Mental Mobilities (Harvard, 2006). I opened my research blog much later in 2005… Thanks to Jerôme Chevillat and Roger of Kaywa, my words have spread to the point of peaking to 722 visits a day for the month of June 2007!

My book, Neo-nomads, is coming soon… patience!
Anyway readers, for your information, here is a list of relevant publications, interviews and talks I gave around the world on neo-nomads:

Forthcoming publication “Environnements néo-nomades, système écologique ?” in Synergies Pays Riverains de la Baltique n° 4 (2007)

Wrote with Vaucelle, C. and Abbas, Y. 2007. Touch: sensitive apparel. In CHI ‘07 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (San Jose, CA, USA, April 28 - May 03, 2007). CHI ‘07. ACM Press, New York, NY, 2723-2728.

Video-conference discussion: City in Flux: Eco-Mobility? with Dr. Ben Croxford, Lecturer MSc Environmental Design and Engineering; intended to students enrolled in the Master of Science Adaptive Architecture and Computation program, Digital Space and Society module taught by Ava Fatah gen. Schieck, The Bartlett, London, UK, January 22, 2007 . Event hosted by Critical Digital at Harvard GSD

Presented my up to date research on neo-nomads to students enrolled in Digital, a class taught by Michael MacPhail at Wentworth Institute of Technology, Boston, USA, November 1, 2006

Interviewed by Rudy de Waele for m-trends.org, Women in Mobile # 16, September 23, 2006

Wrote TAXICITY-TOXICITY in JCDecaux, Mobilités: la Clé des Villes (St-Amand-Montrond, Clerc: 2006) p. 98-99 and Interviewed William J. Mitchell on the Paris Bus Line project in collaboration with the RATP; both contributing to a prospective reflection on cities initiated by the Chronos Group, Observatory of Chronomobility . JCDecaux presented the book of trends at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, June 2006

Gave a Lecture to students enrolled in the Master of Science Adaptive Architecture and Computation program, Digital Space and Society module taught by Ava Fatah gen. Schieck, The Bartlett, London, UK, November 14, 2005

Presented and debated with Nigel Thrift and Ranjit Makkuni at Ci’Num, the Digital Civilizations Forum: Conquests and Conflicts, forum “dedicated to the future of the digital revolution and designed to evaluate its social, cultural, and economic impacts”, Bordeaux, France, October 8, 2005

Interviewed by Pierre Tillinac for Sud-Ouest, the second daily French regional newspaper with a circulation of over 300.000 readers; interview entitled “Quand Les Mobilités Changent Nos Vies” = When Mobilities Change Our Lives, published October 3, 2005

Wrote “Parasites?” (Paper presented at the “Metapolis and Urban Life” workshop, UbiComp2005 Conference, Tokyo, Japan, September 10-11, 2005) and was selected to participate in the interactive 2 day workshop

Presented “Neo-nomads and the Making of Boundaries in the Age of Mobility” (Paper presented at the Mobile Geography, Presidential Choice Session, SASE2005 conference, Budapest, Hungary, July 1, 2005) . BTW, this is when and where I have met John Urry who is the mind behind the Mobilities Journal, where the article spotted above was published!

Wrote “Neo-nomads and the Nature of the Spaces of Flows” (Paper presented at the “UbiComp in the Urban Frontier” workshop, UbiComp2004 conference, Nottingham, UK, September 7, 2004) and was selected to participate in the one day workshop

Wrote “Expression of the Edge” (Paper accepted for publication, and presented at the ACSA Odysseys conference, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA, February 22, 2002). A post MIT Thesis reflection on neo-nomads…