HACK THE CITY PROGRAMME ANNOUNCED

Featuring a spectacular range of exhibits, hacklabs, events and interventions, from a flock of robot drones to billboards hijacked in augmented reality and stealth underwear, HACK THE CITY will invite citizens of Dublin to take control and adopt a hacker mindset to bend, tweak and mash-up Dublin’s existing urban systems – rethinking the city from the ground up.

Presented in unique collaboration with the Department of the Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht, Dublin City Council, IBM, Dublin City of Science and EC Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), HACK THE CITY will feature the ingenuity of over 70 leading artists, scientists, engineers, designers and start-ups who are hacking, modding and rewiring the urban environment.

Highlights include:

• A summer-long HACK THE CITY EXHIBITION at Science Gallery, which will see an expected 60,000 visitors deep-dive into the world of city-hacking; exploring the idea of cloaking their movements with stealth underwear, creating their own DIY cola, considering new uses for Dublin’s ghost estates and getting equipped to view an augmented reality art exhibition on hijacked billboards by artist Julian Oliver (winner, Prix Ars Electronica ‘Golden Nica’ award 2011).
• Provocative CITY WORKS that will include a band of robotic buskers and ‘City is a Playground’, a series of citywide interventions transforming everyday urban objects into opportunistic games by artist Florian Rivière.
• The HACKLAB - a living space at Science Gallery with an extensive workshop programme that amongst other will teach visitors to hack into wireless surveillance cameras, set up their own mobile networks and transform their spare bedrooms into artist residences.
• IDEALAB, a previously vacant retail space on Dublin’s Capel Street that will nurture five enterprising ideas focusing on open-source transport, crowdsourcing of public services and solutions to dereliction. Presented in collaboration with Dublin City Council and IBM, the IDEALAB will invite the public to meet the teams working at IDEALAB daily.
• An extensive events programme that includes Dublin’s first ever Mini Maker Faire, the biggest and best TEDxDublin to date, the next installment in the rapid-fire IGNITE Dublin talk series, and Science Gallery’s return to the Electric Picnic at Stradbally to HACK THE PICNIC through a distinct line-up of events, workshops and performances.

Hope to see you at the members launch party on June 21st - full details here.

HACK THE CITY LAUNCH PARTY

Hundreds of MEMBERS+ turned up last night (despite the weather!) to celebrate the opening of our 2012 flagship exhibition HACK THE CITY. 

The evening featured a spectacular range of exhibits, hacklabs, interventions and an exciting live perfomance by a flock of flying robot drones. 

Check out some photographs from the launch below.

The doors open

Curators (from left to right) Michael John Gorman, Josh Klein and Teresa Dillon

Kimchi and Chip's piece A Journey

Demonstrating The Artvertiser

Playing with robotic sound installation Chimerès Orchestra

David Benque's piece, Fabulous Fabbers

Street Feast's chalkboard gets hacked

Making Cube Cola

Electronic Countermeasures, a flying robotic drone

Hacky snacks

Models wearing Mark Shepard's signal jamming underwear survey the gallery

Evan Roth's Graffiti Analysis

Badge hacking station

Hacking the hairdo in front of pictures of Florian Rivière's City is a Playground installations

(No comment!)

CITY IS A PLAYGROUND INSTALLATION VIDEO

In the run up to HACK THE CITY, some of us here in Science Gallery were lucky enough to spend a few days helping Florian Rivière, a French urban hacktivist, install his piece City is a Playground in various locations across Dublin city. 

Florian works with raw and found materials to create games, furnishings, traps, maps and instructions which allow citizens to reclaim their urban environments.

You can check out the video of the installation below.

For more information on Florian or his work visit HACK THE CITY's City is a Playground page or Florian's personal website.

EVAN ROTH'S PROPULSION PAINTINGS WORKSHOP

American-born graffiti artist and researcher Evan Roth has long been exploring spray paint's potential as a propulsion device.

During his two-day Propulsion Paintings Workshop in Science Gallery's HACKLAB, Roth helped the public to conceive, build, deploy and document their very own propulsion paintings - a series of messy, kinetic sculptures based on modified cans of spray paint. 

Set against the iconic backdrop of Dublin's Windmill Lane, check out the results of the workshop below!

To learn more about Evan or his work, please visit evan-roth.com 

TURN THE CITY GREEN - FREE WORKSHOP TOMORROW

Calling all growers, cooks and radical gardeners: help us turn the city green!

We have a free gardening, cooking and food making event suitable for the whole family taking place as part of HACK THE CITY and Interactivos?'12 Dublin this Saturday from 1pm to 4:30pm at Whitefriars Community Centre, 56 Aungier St, Dublin 2. The event brings together four unique projects: CoCook, Seedbombah, Radical Gardens, and Janice Steadman's Mobile Garden.

 
Time
13.00-15.30 Seedbombah, Mobile Garden & CoCook Workshops
14.30-15.30 Talks by Robert Moss, Grace Maguire & Radical Growth
15.30-16.30 Seedbombah & Mobile Garden City Walks

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CoCook
CoCook is a collaborative global movement that involves cooking and eating in urban public spaces. Having created a portable kitchen from reclaimed and repurposed materials CoCook invite you to come and cook on it. Simply bring your favourite ingredient and together we will make something delicious. 

 ATTENDANCE IS FREE JUST DROP IN!

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Seedbombah (Guerrila Huerta)
Seedbombah uses seed bombing to unite communities old and new to transform their city into an urban orchard. Learn how to make seed bombs and how to make your city greener with guerilla gardening.

 ATTENDANCE IS FREE JUST DROP IN!

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Radical Growth
Radical Growth explores garden and land share in the city and how we can co-grow food together. 

Gain further insight into the ideas behind the projects and how you can turn our city spaces in urban gardens, with short talks from Robert Moss on Dublin Community Growers; Grace Maguire on Dublin City Council Allotments, Radical Growth on urban land share and many more....

 TALKS ARE FREE JUST DROP IN!

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Mobile Garden

All you need to do is bring an object that can be pushed, pulled or carried, and can, in some way, house or attach to a plant - think old rucksacks, handbags, boots, shoes, pull along toys, tea pots, prams and bikes. We will show you how to turn these objects into mobile gardens, and then we will take to the streets to turn the city green!

BOOKING REQUIRED

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INTERACTIVOS '12 - BEHIND THE SCENES

Ahead of the INTERACTIVOS '12 exhibition tomorrow evening (details here), we've giving you a sneak peek at some of the goings on behind the scenes here in Science Gallery. 

INTERACTIVOS '12, an initiave of StudioLab, is a collaborative work by more than thirty architects, artists, scientists, hackers and engineers from across Europe. Over the past two weeks, the participants have taken a creative approach to solving real world problems, and have collaborated on developing ideas ranging from planting guerilla gardens with 'seed bombs', to turning recycling bins into public art, to creating a mobile app to crowdsource information about dangerous areas for cycling, to building a mobile kitchen prototype. 

Join us in Science Gallery tomorrow evening (Wednesday 25th July) from 6pm to see the results of the workshop, and to meet the scientists, artists and hackers behind them. In the meantime, feast your eyes on these exclusive snaps...

The participants meet each other on the first day

Jane Chadwick (right) of Science Gallery, leader of the Studiolab project

The participants get planning

The Cocook Kids' Workshop in Carmelite Community Centre

Seed bomb ingredients 

Guerilla Huerta's seed bombing workshop in Whitefriar's Comunity Centre

Our seed bombers take a break

Cocook's 'home made' kitchen

Cocook's implements

The Cocooking gets underway

Seed bombing station in our HACKLAB

Preparations underway

Hard at work ahead of tomorrow's exhibition

For more information on any of the projects seen here, INTERACTIVOS '12 or StudioLab, please visit sciencegallery.com/interactivos.

RESULTS OF SUBMAP WORKSHOP

SubMap is a new visualisation methodology for cities that draws on subjective data, and can be used to express factual, location and time-based data in a dynamic way. 

The workshop took place in our HACKLAB and was led by Kitchen Budapest, a new media lab based in Budapest for young researchers who are interested in the convergence of mobile communication, online communities and urban space.

During the two day long SubMap workshop the participants created their own private map of Dublin, which Kitchen Budapest then animated. Each video contains a story of its creator and sound recordings from around the city of Dublin.

The method the videos were made is a true mixture of high and low tech. The contributors were asked to create key frames by marking points on a see-through film with a red marker that was on top of a map of Dublin. The size of the dots determined the magnification of those areas, while blue markers were used for text and additional graphics. After the films were scanned and processed using open source software the participants went around the city to collect sounds for their story.

The end result is six videos that tell six unique stories that shape the map of Dublin accordingly.

You can view those videos here. 

Below are some pictures from the workshop, and some of the the resulting 'submaps'.