Conference, workshops, exhibition and parallel events

23-25 May 2013

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Hybrid City is an international biennial event dedicated to exploring the emergent character of the city and the potential transformative shift of the urban condition, as a result of ongoing developments in information and communication technologies (ICTs) and of their integration in the urban physical context. After the successful homonymous symposium in 2011, the second edition of Hybrid City has grown into a peer reviewed conference, aiming to promote dialogue and knowledge exchange among experts drawn from academia, as well as artists, designers, researchers, advocates, stakeholders and decision makers, actively involved in addressing questions on the nature of the technologically mediated urban activity and experience.

Hybrid City Conference 2013, in Athens, Greece, will consist of three days of paper presentations, discussions, workshops and satellite events, under the theme “Subtle rEvolutions”. The events will be hosted by the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies, of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and are in particular organized by the University Research Institute of Applied Communication (URIAC), in collaboration with the New Technologies Laboratory of the faculty. The main venue of the conference is the central, historic building of the University of Athens, while workshops, projects’ presentations and parallel events will take place in collaborating centers and institutions in the center of Athens.

Theme – Subtle rEvolutions

ICTs, whether mobile, wireless or embedded in persistent architectural forms, facilitate the collection and dissemination of data, infusing the physical expression of the city with digital layers of content, contributing thus to the emergence of new hybridized spatial logics and novel forms of social interaction. These systems and the hybrid spatial experience they afford, encourage encounters among users; both embodied and mediated, and influence community dynamics, giving rise to networks around common interests and collectives of affect. Sometimes, such groups, irrespective of how ephemeral, unstable and dispersed they may be, negotiate a new kind of engagement with the urban environment and civic life, suggesting thus an organizational paradigm that manages to surpass traditional vertical hierarchies of space and consequently of power and control. Such configurations among communities, locations, contexts and intentions were manifested intensely in the interlinking of protest events around the world since 2011, the Arab Spring uprisings, the Occupy movement and anti-austerity demonstrations in Southern Europe, but they also gradually permeate everyday life in the contemporary metropolis.

As sharing and collaborative tactics migrate from online culture to the urban realm and ICTs become increasingly open and personalized, rich opportunities for new forms of participation in civic life arise. Citizens are enabled to access information about the city but also to become involved in the production, collection and distribution of data related to urban matters. The Hybrid City Conference considers a further investigation of such processes of crucial importance, so as to gain a deeper understanding of the effect they have on the urban experience and to explore their contribution in shaping the future cities. In this respect, Hybrid City cordially invites papers both of a theoretical and practical approach that present concepts, case studies, projects, works of art and best practices that promote the discussion on the theme. Emphasizing the inherently interdisciplinary nature of technologically mediated urban activity, we welcome proposals which critically examine, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Open cities, open urban data.
• Environmental sensing and the Internet of things.
• Urban data visualization.
• Environmental perception, cognition, immersion and presence in the context of hybrid urban spaces.
• Citizen science and peer production of knowledge.