Paseo Project 2013 rewards the citizen interaction of 'United Colors of Dissent' on the LED façade of the Etiopia Center in Zaragoza

The second edition of the 'Paseo Project' contest: new creative models of experiencing the city’ have recognized the creativity and interaction of the United Colors of Dissent project.

This contest, convened by the Zaragoza City of Knowledge Foundation and the Austrian company Ars Electronica, in collaboration with the city council, rewards creative and technological projects that improve the citizen experience with their environment and that can be materialized in the city of Zaragoza.

Turkish artists Mahir M. Yavuz and Orkan Telhan have achieved the award Paseo project 2013 with his project 'United Colors of Dissent', that appeals to citizen interaction through different mobile platforms and public screens.

In this interaction, Participants collectively respond to a series of questions of different kinds, and in the language of your choice, using a voting web interface that runs on their mobile phones and whose responses are displayed, among other supports, on the double LED screen of the Etopia Center for Art and Technology building in Zaragoza.

In every question, The underlying system builds graphs in real time based on responses and features, from both users' mobile phones and display screens. According to those responsible, “this project aims to capture the linguistic and socio-cultural profile of the different communities in urban environments., by creating real-time visualizations that can map the assumptions and prejudices we may have about others.”.

The jury has evaluated the technological development of the project, as well as its intellectual and cultural implications due to its way of appealing to citizen interactivity in a unique and participatory way..

Creativity and participation

A total of six projects on art and technology were selected by the jury in this second edition of the competition, formed by Araceli Corbo (Moussac); Roberta Bosco (comisaria); Alberto Castan (University of Zaragoza); Gustavo Valera (Ultra-Lab); Hösrt Horner (Ars Electronica), and Mariano Salvador (Paseo Project) until we get the three finalists.

Under the title 'Design your city', made by Julián García Ruiz (Mexico), Nitsan Hoorgin (Israel) of Imbal Cohen (Israel), This project has received the Paseo Project special award 2013.

The objective of this project is to encourage citizen participation in improving, completely change or redesign urban infrastructure or places in your city, which is carried out by combining an interactive audiovisual installation and pre-technology material (colored markers, papers, scissors, glue, pencils,…).

Another of the finalist projects is 'CTC 2.0, by Lorenzo Sanjuan, is a review of 'Conceptual Tree Creator' (CTC) brought to public space, with the interaction of citizens through short text messages (SMS) who draw a tree of texts on the facade of the Etopia building.

Finally, 'From the showcase', by Juanjo Palacios and Edu Comellas, is an installation that presents a sound visualization system based on a spectrographic analysis of the sound environment in the city of Zaragoza.. The system generates a real-time graphic visualization of the soundscape of various public spaces, creating a constant flow that is represented spectrographically on the façade of the Etopia building..

For the development of the city

The Paseo Project awards are intended to recognize projects (locales, national and international) that address the connection between art, technology and new digital media, and provide new ways to improve urban space and the development of new citizen experiences with their environment..

The possibilities of new technological and digital creation tools to develop and materialize new links between the city and its inhabitants are the primary requirements, with special emphasis on proposals designed for implementation in the city of Zaragoza, which is where the winning project will be put into practice.

Among the thematic lines to participate in Paseo Project, new forms of urban data visualization stand out; urban representation in interactive models; video mapping in public spaces; augmented reality applied to the city; new urban digital media and creative content for large format urban screens.

To carry it out, The Zaragoza city council has made different spaces for creative intervention available to creators, located especially in the area known as the city's Digital Mile, among which the Etopia Art and Technology Center building stands out and its double digital façade of more than 600 square meters with LED technology.

Other spaces are the Water Theater (also in Etopia Center of Art and Technology); the Digital Water Pavilion, designed by Carlo Ratti; the Bridge Pavilion, designed by Zaha Hadid for the Expo 2008; the Paseo del Agua and the Delicias station square.

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