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Narrative Puzzle in a post-industrial city

AUGMENTING PERFORMANCE

CINETic BUCHAREST

15th of November 2019

Maria Mandea | National University of Arts Bucharest

Teodora Ungureanu | `Ion Mincu` University of Architecture and Urbanism, Bucharest

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Urban studies

+

Playful Media

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Using gamified experiences

to better understand

the cities we inhabit

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Todays

presentation

  1. The context
  2. On territorial image
  3. On the narrative
  4. The Puzzle
  5. A further development
  6. Future possibilities

The first prototype of the puzzle

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Case study: Victoria city

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Case study

Victoria, Romania

June 2019 - part of:

Utopian Cities, Programmed Societies: Victoria Summer Camp

organised by

Tincuta Heinzel and Dana Diminescu

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  • situated in the western part of BraΘ™ov county in central Romania
  • developed as a mono-industrial city for the workers of the nearby Ucea chemical plant in the 1940s
  • functionalist urban development scheme, visible nowadays due to its orthogonal street frames and the standardization of the architecture

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Is there a right way to understand a city?

?

?

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?

?

?

?

?

?

?

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Territorial

image

Representational

concept

Constructivist

concept

Theoretical background

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Cache, B. 1995, Earth Moves. The Furnishing of Territories, MIT Press

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Gathered

materials

  • Photographs
  • Videos
  • Sounds
  • Interviews
  • Cognitive maps
  • Drawings
  • Stories

Our data .

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*During the Utopian Cities, Programmed Societies: Victoria Summer Camp organised by Tincuta Heinzel and Dana Diminescu in June 2019

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Narrating the territory

The cultural background of each `player`

The way

the actual city

was explored

Our experience .

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Cache, B. 1995, Earth Moves. The Furnishing of Territories, MIT Press

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Borrowing

from

Cinema:

The Kuleshov Effect

Theoretical aspect

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Fabe, M. (2014). Closely watched films: An introduction to the art of narrative film technique. University of California Press, Berkeley, Calif.

πŸ˜‹

😭

😍

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How to put it all together?

Victoria Narrative Puzzle

The city is embodied through the game

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digital

physical

AR

as a medium for accessing the gathered materials

the puzzle

as a tangible object for playing with the narrative of the city

Victoria Narrative Puzzle

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Victoria Narrative Puzzle

Digital medium

Physical medium

the flow of information

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gathered materials

videos

AR

app

the city

phisycal 3D model

play

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Each piece of puzzle is a neighbourhood

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Each piece can be scanned using an AR app on the player’s own smartphone

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  • the player discovers concrete elements about the city

  • a β€œwalk” through the city is being performed by the players

  • the city becomes present for both the players and the audience

Narrative Puzzle in a post-industrial city

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The players

explore the city without direct contact through a gamified experience.

the result

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They gather pieces of informations about different parts of the city.

For each player, the narrative of the city is different depending on that she chose to play first.

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The city is embodied through the game

Narrative Puzzle in a post-industrial city

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Case study: Matera, Italy

Further developments

Rethinking the way we gather materials from the city.

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materaplay.art

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materaplay.art

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Future plans

Developing different methods of gathering urban data and developing games that explore the narratives of different cities.

Why?

People can become aware of how cities `work`. The can understand the different narratives that create the urban environment.

  • an app with an online platform

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Future possibilities

_urban games_

as accessible tools used by scientist and citizens

scientific data becomes accesible to non-academia

new methods of analizing the urban developments

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Thank you!

Narrative Puzzle in a post-industrial city

Teodora Ungureanu

`Ion Mincu` University of Architecture and Urbanism, Bucharest

NIRD URBAN-INCERC, Bucharest

Maria Mandea

National University of Arts Bucharest

AUGMENTING PERFORMANCE | CINETic BUCHAREST | 15th of November 2019

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