The Centre for Digital Urban Living at Aarhus University in Denmark is a multidisciplinary centre acting as an umbrella for researchers from the Depts of Media and InformationStudies and Aesthetic Studies, The Alexandra Institute, and the Schools of Journalism and Business Studies. The Centre’s research is divided into four principle areas of focus and four principle theoretical perspectives. The four areas of research are; Communication in Open Spaces, Cultural Heritage, Digital Art in Urban Space, New Urban Areas. The four theoretical perspective are listed as; Experience Communication, Innovation Management, Interface Aesthetics and Interaction Design. The ’Experience Communication’ perspective is most throughly connected to the Civic Communication projects.The Civic Communication have largely focussed on the communication of Climate Change information, discussion and the need and encourage the discussion of Climate and Environmental issues; Projects include a Climate Change iphone app built around an interface that saw ice floes representing the state of public climate debate around the Copenhagen Summit, an advanced billboard project aimed at giving a public and personal face to the struggle for environmental improvement, and large scale projection of comments public comments about climate change. The Aarhus by light project – a multidisciplinary project – used various sensor and capture technologies to create a massive partially transparent LED display covering the facade of the Aahus concert hall. Visitors engaged sensors and cameras built in light posts in the large courtyard of concert encouraging users to play within the space and explore the response of the system to their movements and interactions from different perspectives as they played out in various degrees of abstraction and reflection across the massive expanse of the Concert Hall building.
Under the Cutural Heritage focus of the centre the DUL has worked with Moesgård Museum to produce an interactive display allowing visitors to create and record their own rune stone designs. Under the Digital Art focus the centre has curated an exhibition of work exploring Surveillance in contemporary networked and pervasive media cultures. Under the Digital Art fous the centre has also employed the ‘Talkaoke’ format developed by the British Artist collective ‘The People Speak’ to explore the potential for digital/networked art to open spaces of public dialogue and exchange and as a commercial and cultural ‘facilitation’ engine. The Talkaoke format involves a donut shaped ‘news desk’ in which a central interviewer host a ‘talk show’ with the participants seated around the table discuss a particular user -led issue. The format of the table encourages and open and intimates engagement which is then recorded and presented on screen on site and online. In the same vein and in collaboration with ‘The People Speak’ once again the DUL directed a game show ’The Pledge Pyramid’ that encouraged people to discuss options and to vote for an idea for combatting the effects of climate change – participants were required to donate ‘hard cash’ and the collected funds were awarded to the ‘winning’ option. The project Atmosphere Co2 involved the translation of Co2 levels to sound and light in the form of 3 sculptures positioned in public spaces- exploring the effects of making the non-sensuous qualities of the environment sensible. The data from the sculptures’ sensors was captured to pachube.com. Pachube.com is a site that acts a an open repository/collection point for environmental and other forms of realtime sensor creating a real time source of CO2 information beyond the immediate and the sensible.
The centre also publishes extensively on management training, management and business communication, and participatory design, and the analysis of public and management discourse.