Bottom-up Infrastructures: Aligning Politics and Technology in building a Wireless Community Network

Contemporary innovation in infrastructures is increasingly characterized by a close relationship between experts and lay people. This phenomenon has attracted the attention from a wide range of disciplines, including computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), science and technology studies (S&TS), organization studies and participatory design (PD). Connecting to this broad area of research, the article presents a qualitative case study concerning the building and maintenance of a grassroots, bottom-up information infrastructure in Italy, defined as wireless community network (WCN). Methodologically, the research is based on qualitative interviews with participants to the WCN, ethnographic observations and document analysis. The aim of the article is to understand the alignment between the technical work implied in building this bottom-up infrastructure and the political and cultural frameworks that move people to participate to this project. Relying on the field of science & technology studies, and in particular on the notions of ‘inverse infrastructure’ and ‘research in the wild’, we disclose the WCN’s peculiar innovation trajectory, localized outside conventional spaces of research and development. Overall, the presentation of the qualitative and ethnographic data allows to point out a more general reflection on bottom-up infrastructures and to enrich the academic debate concerning bottom-up infrastructuring work and other similar typologies of collaborative design projects in the domain of infrastructures

Design and Deploying Tools to ‘Actively Engaging Nature’: The My Naturewatch Project as an Agent for Engagement

‘Shifting Baseline Syndrome’ is highly apparent in the context of generational shifts in work and life patterns that reduce interaction with and knowledge of the natural world, and therefore expectations of it. This is exacerbated by changes in the natural world itself due to climate change, biodiversity decline and a range of anthropogenic factors. Distributed and accessible technologies, and grass roots approaches provide fresh opportunities for interactions, which enable active engagement in ecological scenarios. The My NatureWatch project uses digital devices to collect visual content about UK wildlife, promoting ‘active engagements with nature’. The project embodies Inclusive Design in the Digital Age, as the activity; engages a wide demographic community, can be used by all, provided user led agency and produced methodological design lessons. The article frames My Naturewatch as an agent for active designed engagements with nature. The research objective is to comprehend ‘how to design tools for positive nature engagement’ holding value for; (1) academic communities as validated methodologies (2) the public through access to enabling technologies, content and knowledge (3) industry in the form of new; experiences, engagements and commerce. The approach is specifically designed to yield insights from a multitude of engagements, through the deployment of accessible, lowcost products. Project reporting documents the benefits, pitfalls and opportunities in the aforementioned engagement uncovered through design-led approaches. Insights are gathered from public/community facing workshops, wildlife experts, ecologists, economists, educators and wildlife NGO’s. The engagement methodologies are compared highlighting which initiative yielded ‘Active Engagement with Nature’

Partitioning Vulnerabilities : On the Paradoxes of Participatory Design in the City of Malmö

In this chapter, Björgvinsson and Keshavarz challenge the claims of Scandinavian participatory design in initiating bottom-up change, democratic engagement and overcoming the vulnerabilities of marginal groups. By following its trajectory from its engagement with trade unions in the 1970s to local communities in the 2000s and beyond, the chapter problematizes participatory design’s presuppositions in relation to vulnerabilities associated with different groups. Through analysing a participatory design project where Björgvinsson was involved, the authors show how the call to and the process of participation always happen in an already partitioned world. As such, they argue participation does not necessarily give equal voices to participating parts, as frequently claimed but, rather, produce new parts, ignore certain other parts and lift up particular parts depending on the power relations involved. The chapter concludes that participatory methods not only generate less recognized vulnerabilities, but also ignore the resistance made by vulnerable groups against uneven participation

How the lion learned to moonwalk and other stories on how to design for classical music experiences

Live classical music is facing considerable challenges. How can philharmonic orchestras, organizations that are heavily rooted in the past, become more democratic and better connected to the societies they are situated in? Through collaboration across institutional borders and knowledge domains, the Designing Classical Music Experiences project had the ambition to develop new spatial and mediated audience experiences, and to reach new audiences in the Øresund Region. The vision was nothing less than to democratize classical music. One of the premises of the project was to involve musicians, designers, researchers, students, audience members – and many others – in the design- and development processes. Another premise was to enhance and extend the concert experience through visualizations and other types of visual arts. A number of conclusions related to ‘organizational challenges’, ‘audience engagement’, and ‘media and technologies’ are presented and further developed in this book. The first section of the book accounts for two perspectives on how to work with live classical music and audiences from a designer’s point of view. The second section of the book give detailed accounts of the most high-profiled case studies the project has worked with

How the lion learned to moonwalk and other stories on how to design for classical music experiences

Live classical music is facing considerable challenges. How can philharmonic orchestras, organizations that are heavily rooted in the past, become more democratic and better connected to the societies they are situated in? Through collaboration across institutional borders and knowledge domains, the Designing Classical Music Experiences project had the ambition to develop new spatial and mediated audience experiences, and to reach new audiences in the Øresund Region. The vision was nothing less than to democratize classical music. One of the premises of the project was to involve musicians, designers, researchers, students, audience members – and many others – in the design- and development processes. Another premise was to enhance and extend the concert experience through visualizations and other types of visual arts. A number of conclusions related to ‘organizational challenges’, ‘audience engagement’, and ‘media and technologies’ are presented and further developed in this book. The first section of the book accounts for two perspectives on how to work with live classical music and audiences from a designer’s point of view. The second section of the book give detailed accounts of the most high-profiled case studies the project has worked with.A companion guide to this publication is available at http://cmec.mah.se/</p