User:Selena Savic/GroupCritique1

If ideas could be transmitted in a form of a multichannel stream I would just have to make sure that we all communicate with compatible hardware. But I find sharing of the for my graduation project very far from the hardware development (phase). For that reason I have tried to pin-point the words that describe my general interests, key ideas and questions in schemes and diagrams so that I can branch my story around them.

The story is about control, about the design of control, systems for production, distribution, broadcasting confronted with systems and channels for reception and consumption of the message/content/product. I will try to connect urban planning strategies with computer design, showing how programming and administration come from the same origins and similar mind sets. The aspect of urban planning I am particularly interested is the (possibility for) participation. It is already clear that the most recent hip for the inclusion of citizens in the planning processes and decision making has been limited to the predetermined participatory forms and fields designed by the ones who were once called the "experts". But the change is not of a qualitative but more of a quantitative character where we now have more minds included in the system, therefore less responsibility per mind but not necessarily more space for different ideas.

The other aspect of urban planning I would like to explore is the possibility to create viral structures in the city in the more or less same way programmers create software viruses. Where does this metaphor reside, how could I disseminate it and what would it need to DO in order to be understood as viral?

I would like to work on a "detournment" of the Sim City kind of game - Micropolis, with the intention to break-open this oversimplistic approach to urban planning and unveil the algorithms of control, scenario building and conditions control. This should be done by focusing on a very specific problem or phenomenon that I identify in the city. Food chains could be one of them, used to show who has the right and conditions to produce, distribute, sell and consume which kind of food.