Is complaining an act of civic participation? Urban Entropy by Dietmar Offenhuber (AT) is a public display of complaining and repair, a drama of maintenance and things that do not work. The façade of the Ars Electronica Center visualizes the work queue of the city of Linz public works department and reads the litany of citizen complaints to pedestrians passing by the building, which is conveniently located across the street from the City Hall.
Inside a filter bubble
By bringing complaints from the city’s website into the physical space of the city, Urban Entropy makes a point about an important difference between these two spaces. While civic participation increasingly takes place online, we stay inside a filter bubble and only find what we are looking for. IRL (“In Real Life”), the public space of the city, we cannot foresee or choose whom we might run into, for better or worse, just like the involuntary listeners to the chorus of Urban Entropy’s complaints.
Urban Entropy video
Camera: Benjamin Skalet (DE), Claudia Schnugg (AT), Veronika Pauser (AT)
Editing: Michael Mayr (AT), Veronika Pauser (AT)
The Connecting Cities Research Residencies have been realized at the Ars Electronica Futurelab with the support of the Ars Electronica Residency Network.
Ars Electronica Blog
““Urban Entropy” is an effort to visually portray common, everyday urban “griping”—i.e. complaints submitted by individual citizens to the powers that be.” Read more on the Ars Electronica Blog!
Connecting Cities is initiated by Public Art Lab in cooperation with Ars Electronica Futurelab Linz, Medialab-Prado Madrid, FACT Liverpool, Videospread Marseille, iMAL Brussels, Riga 2014, BIS Istanbul, m-cult Helsinki, Media Architecture Institute Vienna, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, in association with Aarhus University, Marseille-Provence 2013, MUTEK Montreal, Quartier des Spectacles Montreal, Foundation Bauhaus Dessau, Verve Cultural Sao Paulo, Federation Square Melbourne, xm:lab Saarbrücken, Sapporo Media Arts Lab, ETOPIA Zaragoza, The Concourse Sydney and 403 International Arts Center Wuhan.
With support of the Culture Programme 2007-2013 of the European Union.
Find more information on www.connectingcities.net