The goal of Act Otherwise is to share key challenges and concerns together in a relaxed setting and engage in conversation which might be practical or theoretical and which may be concerned with the practicalities of now or the possibilities of the future.
As part of the EU funded project PARN (Physical and Alternate Reality Narratives) we partnered with Time’s Up, Lighthouse and FoAM to host a two-day forum to discuss key issues such as:
- What are the unique design challenges of working in public space?
- How can we push the language of interaction design?
- What are the ethics and politics of engaging the public in these ways?
- How can we reach the multiple audiences for this work: the gamers, the ramblers, the surfers etc.?
- What are the new ways of working that we are discovering?
From there the forum led onto presentations by Professor Steve Benford, Time’s Up’s Tina Auer & Tim Boykett, Andy Field, José Luis de Vicente and Matt Locke as well as a discussion led by Dan Dixon in which he presented the group with some provocations around the issues open for discussion.
The second day followed a structure of 4 sessions, areas of exploration being ‘The Field’, ‘Audience’, ‘Create’ and ‘Distribution’. Each of these began with an opening array of thoughts by a delegate and were moderated by a Chair with the sessions being very open in their accessibility for people to dip in and out with ideas and points of reference.
A full report on this event can be found here.
