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A recent post on a blog concerning New Rochelle has sparked some conversation about areas of the city that could be better utilized through tools like ours.  We welcome anyone interested in improving their own city to get involved and get in touch!

Part of the program for this month for our BxmC delegation in Bremen is the first meeting of the ThinkBETA consortium, a (very) international group, brought together under the aegis of the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (German Federal Ministry of Education and Research). Below, a first version of the scope of activities and participation:

Think BETA – Evolution of Smart Cities
The designated partners improve the networking with each other in the Think BETA Think
Tank to facilitate the exchange of scientists and knowledge and promote a common strategy
for research development in ICT infrastructures for Smart Cities from which applications for
R & D projects are to be produced. For this there will be regular meetings and workshops in
the Think Tank.

1 Overview
The partners are invited to link their existing research activities to each other I an way that
extended cooperations into different disciplines in the respective universities get possible,
as well as into regional R & D initiatives in related fields. Over here, we want to establish in
phase I an integrated think-tank, with regular meetings, workshops and virtual meetings,
whose work is perpetuated in the phase II, in an international virtual research lab.
Concretely from the researcher exchange and joint research strategy in phase I, in
particular, joint innovative approaches,

01.11.2010
research projects and proposals are brought forth. The ultimate goal in phase II is to
develop a cross-border Think BETA virtual institute in ICT for Smart Cities. This is done
through the intensification of interdisciplinary knowledge exchange, the enhanced crosslinking
of research activities, the exchange of researchers and all other measures from
phase I.

The aim is to link advanced research and development of innovative technologies,
methodologies and innovative services and to move them forward through cooperative R&D
projects. The technical objective is, to research and to develop a mobile-stationary, multimedia
environment for smart cities as infrastructure for their development. It is about the
requirements for future technical and cultural (mass player) infrastructure for the urban
development of Smart Cities and the optimization of municipal services and digital
infrastructures. Existing technical approaches from eGovernance, e-services, e-mobility,
LBS, to the user-affected eCulture and eCreativity are included to develop and to provide
improved mobile-stationary digital systems for urban development, planning and
participation. Previous software approaches did not took into account existing expertise eg
in the field of civic participation, integration of decentralized power management or the
social-economic balance in architectures sufficiently, were not adequately developed usercentered,
or set a single discipline perspectives unbalanced in the foreground. Which is be
counteracted through the interdisciplinary configuration of the Think Tank. Similarly,
technical and organizational issues of participatory urban planning with different approaches
for different user groups are considered. In this case, alternative planning processes are
integrated and perceived in particular for the relationship between life and work. Advanced
environmental and socially sustainable design is to be of particular interest and will get
exposed. Digital infrastructure will be directed to their local potential for participatory
design, development, for local knowledge processes and the aspect of cross-generational,
social and economic networking.

2 Activities
A. Relation between partners
B. Scientific exchange between partners
C. Development of a joint R&D strategy for ICT in Smart Cities
D. Joint project planning and preparation
E. Identification and development of opportunities for joint submission of applications and
the implementation of these R&D projects
F. Third Party Integration
G. Development of actions to build a virtual living lab for ICT for Smart Cities

3 Medium and long-term effectiveness of the measures
A. Establishment of the Think Tank
B. Start with a temporary Virtual Research Lab with the integration of the international
partners
C. Development of cooperative research projects and proposals to be submitted
D. Establishment of an international Virtual Research Institute for ICT for Smart Cities

4 Partners
Project Coodinator:
M2C Institute for Applied Media Technology and Culture
Partners from Germany
University of Applied Sciences Bremen:
- Faculty of Computer Science
- Faculty of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Environmental Technology
- IIA Institut for Computer Science and Automation
- M2C Institute for Applied Media Technology and Culture
The Ministry (Senator) of Environment, Construction, Transport and European Affairs of the
State (Free Hanseatic City) of Bremen
Bremer Zentrum für Baukultur
Partners from the USA:
Polytechnic Institute of the New York University:
- BxmC Brooklyn Experimental Media Center
Partners from the People’s Republic of China :
East China Normal University:
- Learning Sciences Center
- UNESCO APEID Associated Center
Partners from Europe:
Kristianstad University College
The National Museum of Denmark
Riga Technical University
Gdańsk City Gallery
Centre for Contemporary Art Gdansk
Gdansk University of Technology
Associated – Partners:
Koopstadt, Federal Government Project for Participative Urban Planning
Leipzig Charta on Sustainable European Cities network
REMemberti Bremen, Sustainable City, History and Arts Symposium
Funding:
BMBF Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung
(German Federal Ministry of Education and Research

The College Art Association will be holding its annual conference in New York City Feb. 9-12, 2011. We’ll be there Saturday, February 12, 2:30 PM–5:00 PM (Beekman Parlor, 2nd Floor, Hilton New York), with an Open Froms Panel… Carl Skelton and McKenzie Wark (New York), Stephen Wright (Paris), Christoph Kluetsch (Savannah), and Martin Koplin (Bremen).

The extensibility of concepts and practices of “participatory culture” to fully peer-to-peercollaboration with citizens beyond the art world is a practical matter, and a challenge to artists. The session chairs work together on Betaville, a massively multiplayer online environment for pre-visualization, development, and public participation in new proposals for public art and urban design & development; we’d like to know more about who else is out there working beyond the current “city limits” of participation by artists in public culture, and we’d like to get together at the CAA conference to share ideas and strategies in progress, and for the future(s). This Open Forms session will be developed collaboratively in advance of the conference with other artists working on network-based projects beyond current norms of participatory or relational practice.

http://mas.org/summitnyc/2010/08/new-tools-for-civic-engagement-betaville/

My apologies for letting the website get so far behind… I’m in Bremen now, with a bit of free time before evetybody gets here to start the intersession seminars…

On October 21 and 22, the Municipal Art Society put on a Summit for the Future of New York City in the Hotel Pennsylvania. The Betaville project was feature in two modes: I gave a formal presentation on the afternoon of the 21st (the link above will take you to a video of that), and a set of six demo stations that awesome BxmC team members operated for the duration of the summit. Special shout-out to the crew, who did a great job of presenting the web client to hundreds of current and potential partners~ planners, architects, advocates, politicians, academics, and folks from just about every city agency.

For achievement above and beyond the call getting technical issues handled: Skye Book, John Mahlman (BxmC); Peter Schultz, Joschka Zimdars (from M2C Bremen, with us as exchange students).

For the same in preparation of base model and sample proposal content: Mark Skwarek, Arun Kalaiselvan, Suresh Shrestha, Ashwin Ramesh, Levis Reyes, Edgar Martinez, and the project studio teams in the Integrated Digital Media programs.

For a great job on the associated web and UI development: Cemre Gungor, Diane Ludin, Joschka Zimdars.

For getting the Android mobile client up and running in time (phew!): Peter Schultz.

This was our first real opportunity to field-test the web client. We got some great feedback, and a tremendous response from various quarters… Expect announcements from time to time. The experience confirmed what I had hoped: we are now really ready to move beyond the research prototype that proves the platform will actually do what we have been promising, and now get down to the very serious process of working with early adopters on three key issues: usability, scalabity, and deployment effectiveness.

Thanks to the team for working so hard, and to the wonderful teams at MAS and Dalzell productions. For a complete overview of the summit, go to http://mas.org/summitnyc/

We were recently mentioned by Gregory Arkin on his blog, you can check it out here

Today Betaville looks to begin peering out from behind the secure walls of BxmC and across the Atlantic to some European collaborators located in Sweden and Germany.  With a broad experience of not only using jME but also programming for mobile devices and interactivity, the ability to realize the project in its most complete form is becoming more apparent.  The addition of more 3D Modelers has enabled development to move at a significantly faster pace when compared to the past spring and summer.  Things are looking peachy for mid-summer beta release!

And now, some eye-candy.. details after the break.

"Liberty Piers", A proposed design acting as an extension to Battery Park in lower Manhattan, NYC. Design by Levis Reyes

This is exactly the type of work that Betaville was designed for: People changing the community that they live in.  By allowing proposals like “Liberty Piers” to come into the public forum, the idea of cities as ‘concrete jungles’ begins to be a thing of the past with so much new life injected.

It’s been a while since the last update, so let’s play some catch-up!

• Locale: Lower Manhattan has been decided on as the official launch day location for Betaville.  How long it takes for other locations to pop up is dependent on an intrigued user base, so be sure to make an account when it’s released
• Terrain: Unfortunately, the terrain is still a sore spot.  A number of different tangents have brought us to NASA’s joint mission with Japan to develop the ASTER data set, which looks to be extremely promising provided we can get our hands on it.
• Models: Folks are diligently chugging away at getting some nice models developed for Betaville, as well as making some cool concepts!
• UI: The Swing and AWT components are beginning to come together.

That all said, the programming team is happy to welcome back Caroline after spending her summer home in France (taking a well deserved rest), as well as a new comrade, Cemre.  Another happy fact is that jMonkeyEngine’s current path is certainly going in the right direction and we’re thrilled to see both Mad Skills Motocross and Grappling Hook making their recent commercial releases!

Until next time: Ha det.

In an effort like Betaville where we’re trying to re-create an accurate representation of the world, it’s not only buildings and textures that are important. Having accurate terrains contributes greatly to the feeling of “being there” as well as being a necessary feature of what we’re trying to accomplish. Putting a moat around your house to catch rain water because you live at the bottom of a hill is a hard thing to illustrate without seeing the hill

And so we come to the Digital Elevation Model (DEM). Organizations and government agencies are continuously observing our world, as well as far off lands such as Mars, in an effort to map out the terrain and get an idea of the environment. NASA, USGS, and a host of others from around the world publish this information free of charge for all to see. With the pertinent information in hand, all that’s left is to parse through the heaps and heaps of it in order to make some sense of the whole thing.

When it comes down to it, Betaville is essentially an online 3D scene editor.. While “scene editor” invokes thoughts of controls and buttons and all that, 3D still means that there has to be graphics and they have to look like something at least somewhat appealing.

To this end, some good progress was made this week on making Betaville look like something appetizing. Add this to a few features that we’ve been able to commit back to the jMonkeyEngine trunk and it would seem that August is off to a great start!