Gray Area Foundation for the Arts
55 Taylor Street

SENSEable Cities: Exploring Urban Futures will open on June 11, 2010 as part of the City Centered Festival and will remain at Gray Area through August 11, 2010.



Project Description:

Since 2003, MIT’s SENSEable City Laboratory has been investigating how emerging digital technologies can be employed to make cities more livable, sustainable and efficient. We recognize that the digital revolution has lent our cities a new layer of functionality and that now is the time to explore how sensors, cellphones, micro-controllers and networks of other handheld devices can be used to more effectively manage city infrastructure, optimize transportation, analyze our environmental impact and foster new communities.

In this, the first retrospective of the lab’s work, we have chosen 15 past projects that represent the potentials of this new world of pervasive computing. The work ranges from urban furniture to new modes of transportation, methods for data fusion to pervasive data mining and real time visualizations.

We have organized the projects by assigning 5 keywords to each work and then using graph analysis to create a network that shows how each project relates to the next.

Through this method, and as can be seen in the image of the network opposite, certain projects tend to cluster together. These are co-located in the gallery and you may wish to explore each cluster one after the other. Alternatively, we invite you to pick one of the 17 keywords listed below and follow its path around the gallery to uncover some of the less obvious connections between different works.

SELECT PROJECTS ON DISPLAY:

New York Talk Exchange



Exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, New York Talk Exchange asks the question: How does the city of New York connect to the global conversation? Using phone and IT data, the images reveal the real time connections between various boroughs and the countries they connect to.

iSpots



The iSpots project maps the dynamics of MIT’s wireless networks across campus, revealing the ebb and flow of daily life.

Obama One People



For President Obama’s 100th day in office, MIT SENSEable City Lab created visualizations of mobile phone call activity that characterize the inaugural crowd and answer the questions: Who was in Washington, D.C. for President Obama’s inauguration day? When did they arrive, where did they go, and how long did they stay?

As one can see, the images show that the inauguration was a global phenomenon.


Amsterdam



Through partnership with mobile operators, Current Cities reveals the inner workings of a city through text messages, articulating the life of Amsterdam. Here, the images depict the volume and intensity of text messages on New Year’s Eve and Day.

Trash Track



Have you ever wondered where your trash goes? MIT researchers attached tags to trash to track it. Some trash is provincial, expiring not far from home, while other objects travel great distances to be disposed of.

Trash Track has received wide attention in the national and international press. It has been deployed in several U.S. cities, including Seattle and New York.

Copenhagen Wheel



Cars have GPS and traffic awareness; now bicycles can, too. But the Copenhagen Wheel has a new feature no ordinary auto navigation awareness has: it can track pollution awareness as well - in real time.

The state of the art hybrid bike also saves power when you pedal and lets you use it when you need a bit of a boost.
Copenhagen Wheel is an example of the city data dialog taken to the next level - beyond dialog to interactive decision making.

TEAM MEMBERS

Carlo Ratti / Director
Assaf Biderman / Associate Director

Current Researchers:
Clio Andris
German W Aparicio Jr.
Rex Britter
Francesco Calabrese
Filippo Dal Fiore
Giusy Di Lorenzo
Jennifer Dunnam
Xiaoji Chen
Carnaven Chiu
Luigi Farrauto
Cesar Harada
Lindsey Hoshaw
E Roon Kang
Kristian Kloeckl
Aaron Koblin
David Lee
Eugene Lee
Mauro Martino
Vincenzo Mazoni
Stephen Miles
Mahsan Mohsenin
Sey Min
Nashid Nabian
Walter Nicolino
Dietmar Offenhuber
Christine Outram
Francisco Pereira
Santi Phithakkitnukoon
Adam Pruden
Francisca Rojas
Christian Somner
Bettina Urcuioli
Malima Wolf
Caitlin Zacharias

Past Researchers:
Alan Anderson
Alan Anderson
Burak Arikan
Dima Ayyash
Euro Beinat
Luis Berríos-Negrón
Daniel Berry
Andrea Cassi
Natalia Duque Ciceri
Enrico Costanza
Pedro Correia
Talia Dorsey
Sarah Dunbar
Samantha Earl
Paula Echeverri
Chris Fematt
Lucie Boyce Flather
Saba Ghole
Fabien Girardin
Lewis Girod
Gabriel Grise
Daniel Gutierrez
Tim Gutowski
Margaret Ellen Haller
Alex Haw
Bartosz Hawelka
Guy Hoffman
Teerayut Horanont
Sonya Huang
Myshkin Ingawale
Sarabjit Kaur
Jan Kokol
Sriram Krishnan
Xiongjiu Liao
Alyson Liss
Liang Liu
Jia Lou
David Lu
Andrea Mattiello
Justin Moe
Eugenio Morello
Kenneth Namkung
Kevin Nattinger
Sarah Neilson
Giovanni de Niederhausern
Yaniv Ophir
James Patten
Jill Passano
Fabio Pinelli
Riccardo Pulselli
Pietro Pusceddu
François Proulx
Daniele Quercia
Martin Ramos
Rahul Rajagopalan
Jon Reades
Bernd Resch
Renato Rinaldi
Susannes Seitinger
Andres Sevtsuk
Louis Sirota
Najeeb Marc Tarazi
Bo Stjerne Thomsen
Musstanser Tinauli
Andrea Vaccari
Kenny Verbeeck
Yao Wang
Sarah Williams
Shaocong Zhou

Advisory Board:
Eran Ben-Joseph
Rex Britter
Gillian Crampton Smith
Joseph Ferreira
Dennis Frenchman
Hiroshi Ishii
Michael Joroff
Bruno Latour
Frank Levy
William J. Mitchell
Antoine Picon
Adele Santos
Saskia Sassen
Lawrence Vale
Mirko Zardini