Workshop Hyper-Now

People today are increasingly becoming used to a «culture of now», expecting instantaneous reactions to shifts in our everyday requests and demands. We accommodate ourselves to the city we live in, and we identify with a city using services like MyPlace and Foursquare. But, in communicating more and more information about ourselves and increasing our bases of online contacts and our numbers of «friends», we are not becoming genuinely closer to one another.

The Hyper-Now workshop will focus on how architects and designers can adapt existing urban spaces to the demands of contemporary society. Students will have to link a physical area and its integrated digital services, creating a «hyper-social» space. At the same time, the space must be alive, not motionless; it must take part in the process and react to what is going on with the participants of the events. For instance, during the workshop devoted to the development of Gorky Park, there will be installations that will encourage park visitors to interact and exchange opinions: digital boards where people can leave comments, or applications for downloading books or magazines that a user can then recommend to other people, and so on.