Media Architecture Biennale 2012

Theme: PARTICIPATION

Dates: 15-17 November 2012
Venue: Aarhus, Denmark
Godsbanen, www.godsbanen.dk/english (TBC)
Host: Aarhus University, Denmark, in collaboration with Media Architecture Institute.

Building on the successful event in Vienna 2010, The Media Architecture Biennale 2012 brings together artists, academia and industry in the continued exploration of the meeting between architecture and digital media. With public exhibitions, a conference and a series of workshops, the biennale offers many ways to participate and get involved.

The 2012 biennale will extend the existing format with an academic conference track, new exhibition, awards and industry sessions, as well as a full day of workshops.

The exhibition presents state-of-the-art media architecture in a collaboration between artists, practitioners and industry, both in-situ and in documented forms.

At the conference “participation” will be explored as a core value of media architecture (other topics are welcome as well!). The conference invites both academic and industry presentations. The orgnizers are currently seeking a publishing agreement with ACM for the academic proceedings.

The workshops offer an intimate forum to discuss or even work on a specific topic or technology with your peers.

The Biennale itself is also organized in the spirit of participation thus dialog and exchanges between artists, researchers and industry are invited and supported . The design of media architecture invites, shapes and creates encounters between people and the built environment, and digital media open up rich opportunities for dialog and engaging experiences. As an emerging field, many perspectives are still coming together, and the challenges are as abundant as the opportunities. Public space and urban environments are increasingly shaped by elements of media architecture.

The vision of the Media Architecture Biennale is to provide an excellent forum for awareness, discussion and solutions; to bring together the best minds and organizations; and to present to the each other and the world the state-of-the-art of media architecture.

CONFERENCE
Apart from invited speakers and industry talks, the Media Architecture Biennale 2012 will feature a peer-reviewed academic research paper track.

In the past few years, there has been a surge in the number of publications on media architecture, both in the interaction design/HCI community (e.g. at CHI, DIS and TEI, and the regional OzCHI and NordiCHI conferences) and in architecture and design journals and literature. Therefore, the Biennale organizers invite papers that present and discuss media architecture both on a practical and theoretical level to further develop our understanding of he field through studies of cases, design approaches, best practices from industry, and theoretical perspectives.

Expired: Deadline for papers: 20 June 2012

EXHIBITION
The main objective of the exhibition is to represent the state-of-the art in media architecture. The exhibited projects will be documented or produced in the form of prototypes, models and large-size pictures and videos.

The exhibited projects are related to the following categories:
Animated Architecture
Facades of buildings are increasingly animated by integrated light sources. Architecture and the perception of the building is in the focus of the
designers. The flexibility of content is rather limited due to resolution, colour and shape of the pixels. In most cases the pixels are highly customized
and form a creative challenge of the project.

Money Architecture
Buildings that are strongly related to Business, Banks, Shopping, Entertainment and Gambling. Light on the building surface is to attract people and make them spend money or, as in the case of banks, represents the power of the building owner.

Participatory Architecture
Projects mostly developed by media designers that allow passers-by to interact with and take control of the content on the surface. Many projects are non-permanent and built on a pre-existing architectural structure. New media formats taking advantage of mobile apps and social media are being developed.

Spatial Media Art
Projects produced in an artistic context at the intersection of architecture and media art. Mostly non-permanent movable installations with an innovative form of spatial interaction and/or perception of space.

Future Trends and Prototypes
This sections covers special solutions like three dimensional displays, kinetic facades, OLEDs or even robotic elements that shed a light on how future media architectures might look like.

If you want to present your work at the exhibition, or to sponsor an installation, get in touch with the exhibition chairs, Gernot Tscherteu and Morten Lervig, at exhibition@mediaarchitecture.org .

WORKSHOPS
Workshops at the Media Architecture Biennale will comprise a wide spectrum of disciplines and topics of interest: They will provide an opportunity to discuss and explore various areas of media architecture design and research within a group of designers, researchers, artists and practitioners from industry and academia.

Participants will spend one day or half a day with experts from the field and express their experiences through structured and unstructured interactions. There will be the opportunity for research students to present their work and to receive feedback from experts in the field as part of the workshops.

If you are interested to host a workshop as part of the Media Architecture Biennale please contact the workshop chairs via workshops@mediaarchitecture.org  at your earliest convenience, but no later than 20 May 2012. We welcome workshops on academic research and industry themes.

Workshops will take place in various places in Aarhus on 15 November 2012.

INDUSTRY SESSIONS
Industry involvement is a pivotal part of the Media Architecture Biennale 2012. There are several ways for industry to get involved

First of all, the biennale is an exceptional place to show your products, services and competences for a specialized and attentive audience. The dedicated industry session of the conference is a forum for talks. As part of the exhibition, there is a demo space and showroom for prototypes and posters. We have reserved several workshop slots for industry topics.

Sponsorship is another way to put your mark on the biennale. With Gold, Silver and Bronze packages, there is one for every level of engagement. We can also tailor a special package for your company.

Get in touch with the industry chairs, Hank Haeusler and Martin Brynskov, at industry@mediaarchitecture.org , for more information on industry opportunities.

Organizing Committee
• General chair: Martin Brynskov (Aarhus University), MABiennale@mediaarchitecture.org
• Conference program chairs: Peter Dalsgaard (Aarhus University) & Ava Fatah (The Bartlett, UCL), conference@mediaarchitecture.org
• Workshop chairs: Martin Tomitsch (University of Sydney) & Alexander Wiethoff (Ludwig-Maximillians Universität München), workshops@mediaarchitecture.org
• Exhibition chairs/curators: Gernot Tscherteu (realitylab.at) & Morten Lervig (CAVI, Aarhus University), exhibition@mediaarchitecture.org
• Industry chairs: Hank Haeusler (University of New South Wales) & Martin Brynskov (Aarhus University), industry@mediaarchitecture.org
• Advisors: Kim Halskov (Aarhus University), senior advisor, & Tobias Ebsen (Aarhus University), junior advisor

Further Information:
Web: www.mediaarchitecture.org/biennale12
Twitter: @MABiennale
Facebook: www.facebook.com/MABiennale 
eMail: MABiennale@mediaarchitecture.org