Constant

OpenCoil

Donatella — 2023-03-02T14:08:12Z

In recent years the pavements of many cities around the world have been flooded by so-called "dockless sharing vehicles". With promises of eco-friendly mobility, venture capitalist companies have occupied both the legal and physical grey zones between private and public space on the streets of our cities, raising important questions about ownership, agency, ecology and economy in contemporary urban space.

The OPENCOIL project, carried out by Anton Jehle and Dennis De Bel, explored the impact of such micro-mobility services on (public) urban space by reappropriating their decentralised infrastructure as a space for experimentation, while also addressing the conditions and effects of this infrastructure.

The OPENCOIL project is supported by the City of Brussels - Department of Culture, Youth, Leisure and Sports.

Serial Experiments Opencoil

dickreckard — 2022-09-02T14:45:31Z

Electric scooters are a new stable presence in the city that brings new social and economic patterns of profit-extraction and resource usage, but also brings a lot of people to move differently through the city.

Out of curiosity about this platformized city infrastructure, the Opencoil workshop tried to familiarize with the black-box of micro-mobility, by opening it up and trying out weird things with it.

This evening will share the outcomes of two days dedicated to finding out what else can be done with e-scooters, other than renting and riding them. This might include parasitical micro-websites, nomadic noise installations, meshed communications on wheels, mapping of canal-lost devices...

You are welcome to come hear more about all this on the evening of Sunday the 11th of September, at Nadine, a friendly art association located right in the city center, where the scooters roam. The participants of the workshop will share their prototypes and experiments, showcasing them on live trottinettes.

The OPENCOIL project is supported by the City of Brussels - Department of Culture, Youth, Leisure and Sports.

OPENCOIL: Call for Participation

dickreckard — 2022-06-23T07:55:20Z

The OPENCOIL Workshop explores the impact of such micro-mobility services on (public) urban space by reappropriating their decentralised infrastructure as a space for experimentation, while also addressing the conditions and effects of this infrastructure.

In the workshop, participants will create a parasitical network of offline hotspots through the city using a non destructive and non-invasive modification on the colorful vehicles throughout the city. These nodes together form OPENCOIL, a collective exhibition in public space that can be looked-for by insiders via a live "treasure" map, but can also be encountered serendipitously by passerbys.

The sum of all these encounters wants to provoke new discussions and explore modes of critical engagement with micro-mobility services, their economical, spatial and social impact on the urban space.

The workshop runs for two full days, the 10th and 11th of September, and the location for it will be Constant's new shared space on the Chaussée de Jette. A basic understanding of HTML/Javascript and of the Arduino programming language is adviced, but curiosity and openness to learn things with others are the only requirements to join. The workshop participation is free of charge and Constant will provide lunch and refreshments for the two days.

If you would like to join, please send an email to service@opencoil.show, with a few lines motivating your interest before the 21st of August. You will receive an answer shortly after.

The OPENCOIL project is supported by the City of Brussels - Department of Culture, Youth, Leisure and Sports.