DMY Berlin MakerLab
1 - 5 June 2011, Helsinki
I was invited to curate a selection of projects from Helsinki for the MakerLab of DMY Berlin design festival 2011. A short summary of below, more information at DMY MakerLab pages.
Open Helsinki @ DMY Maker Lab
The Open Helsinki section of DMY Maker Lab features some prominent examples of the open and participatory design scene in Helsinki: YKON world simulation game, Low2No Camp of urban social innovations, data hacking with We Love Open Data and co-design of open processes with Open P2P Design.
YKON Game
The YKON Game is a world simulation game for up to 30 -50 players. It's based on a simple thought experiment: imagine that the world is brought to a complete halt. Everything stops. No more business as usual. With the world frozen, you and your fellow players can tinker with it as you please. What will you change? How do you convince others to go along with your changes? And what about the consequences?
Through the 1960's, Buckminster Fuller was developing the "World Game". It was to be his masterplan for the planet Earth: a tool that would formulate a comprehensive, design science approach to all the problems of the world. Inspired by the ideas of Fuller, we have developed the YKON Game, a more poetic perspective on the future of our world.
Instead solving the problems that we know, The YKON Game seeks to uncover the ideas that we're still missing -- sometimes wonderful, sometimes terrifying thoughts that could forever alter the world, and the way we live in it. For its players, the game poses an existential challenge: they will have to think about the design of the world and what kind of world they truly want.
YKON Game is one of the nominees for DMY 2011 Award.
More information: www.ykon.org
WE *LOVE* OPEN DATA
We *Love* Open Data team consists of Aalto University researchers, designers and other open data enthusiasts. The team will be hosting workshops on gathering, processing and visualising open data.
More information: www.weloveopendata.com
Low2No Camp
Low2No Camp is a design process curated by think tank Demos Helsinki (www.demos.fi) where thirty key players of Helsinki´s people-driven urban culture come together to take our thinking on good life in cities to the next level. Low2No is an initiative of Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund (www.sitra.fi).
Half of the world´s population lives in cities. Majority of the world´s resources are used in cities. Cities need to become better places for us to live. They need to become more democratic, more satisfying, more beautiful, more flexible and more sustainable. To start with. Life in cities needs to make people happier while consuming less natural resources. Urban culture – doing things together, trying out and evaluating later, joining in – is key to building those better places to live. The Low2No initiative is Finland´s flagship project on low-carbon happiness. Through designing differently and doing things together we show how the future can be brighter and smarter.
Follow the camp at: www.low2no.fi/camp
Open P2P Design
While Open Source software has already developed a viable business model and design process, other Open projects (like Hardware, Design, Public Services, Open Business, ... ) are still trying to define their best practices. The Open P2P Design community is exploring the possibilities of co-designing Open projects with the active participation of communities.
Massimo Menichinelli (a doctoral candidate in the Media Lab of the Aalto University) will give two lectures on Open P2P Design and related business models. In addition he is available to give advice to designers, makers, companies and whoever is interested in developing an Open and collaborative project, starting from a community or from an existing activity.
More information: http://www.openp2pdesign.org
DMY 2011 Maker Lab
The DMY MakerLab serves as a public experimentation space for accessing new technologies, communicating and exchanging concepts. Inaugurated in the 2010 DMY design festival, the lab is the first large maker platform in Germany and was enthusiastically received by the press, public and professionals alike.
The lab unites inventors, designers and visitors in a workshop area fitted with some of the finest technologies and materials available, side by side with low-tech instruments and applications. Visitors may learn how to grow medicinal mushrooms, experience seasonal influences while working with fabrics, access and visualise open data and collectively map ideas. Moreover, they can engage in full day workshops on open hardware, benchmarking of environmental case studies or Cradle to Cradle principles.
More information: http://dmy-berlin.com/en/festival/2011-2/makerlab/
The Open Helsinki @ DMY Maker Lab programme is concieved by Juha Huuskonen in collaboration with DMY Maker Lab and is a part of Helsinki World Design Capital 2012 programme.
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Photos from Open Helsinki section of DMY MakerLab:
