Remapping LA was a long-term research effort that engaged urban communities in the design of technological systems that express their cultures and identities, and is the predecessor of the Interpretive Media Laboratory (IMLab), an ongoing collaboration between UCLA REMAP and California State Parks.
Remapping LA featured a decentralized approach to technological development, centered on three key principles: 1) participation of the general populace, with an emphasis on the involvement of Los Angeles teenagers, families, and educators; 2) awareness of the context in which the systems are designed; 3) encouragement of tangible and meaningful interfaces between project members and media.
The REMAP team conducted a series of discussions, workshops, and training sessions with community organizations throughout Los Angeles. These processes facilitate citizens’ mapping of their own urban networks with personal digital technologies, such as mobile phones, GPS devices, digital cameras, and geographic information systems. Their discoveries—expressed in maps, photography, audio and video recordings, and written documentation—continually added to a historical database already in progress, and served as the source materials for collaboratively created indoor and outdoor media installations, performances, and other cultural works at the Los Angeles State Historic Park, the adjacent Chiparaki Cultural Civic Computing Center, and nearby sections of the Los Angeles River.
The methodology of the research consisted of repeating cycles of three steps: 1) exploring the city; 2) designing and developing new technological systems that express what is discovered; and 3) inviting the rest of the city to experience and comment on what is created.
Ultimately, REMAP created prototypes for decentralized urban computing—civic cultural computing systems formed by pooling interpretive databases, imaging tools, sensing instruments, and wireless mobile devices. These networks presented several developments for comprehensive investigation of the cityscape and enhanced interpretive media tools, crucial for IMLab‘s work. And the project itself generated a fluid and inclusive expression of the identity of Los Angeles. By enabling communities to explore their environments and retell their histories using technology they help develop, Remapping La yielded a deeper understanding of how emerging platforms for collective memory, communal self-representation, and community involvement may augment the quality of life in Los Angeles and other technologically advanced modern urban centers.
Team: Fabian Wagmister (Principal Investigator), Jeff Burke (Co-PI), Chase Laurelle Knowles (Project Coordinator), James Dellemonic, Taylor Fitz-Gibbon, Diana Ford, Ryan Dorn, Vanessa Holtgrewe, Eitan Mendelowitz, Vids Samanta, Jonathan Snipes, Javier Rivero-Diaz, Diego Robles, Alejandro Wagmister. Associated Faculty: Deborah Estrin, William Kaiser, Bruce Vaughn
UCLA Partners: School of Theater, Film and Television, Samueli School of Engineering, Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, Center for Community Partnerships.
Community Partners: William C. Velasquez Institute, The City Project/Center for Law in the Public Interest, Resources Law Group/Packard Foundation, Haynes Foundation, Anahuak Soccer Federation.
Industry Support: Cisco Systems, Nokia, Walt Disney Imagineering Research and Development.
2006-2011.
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