Urban interventions

the perception of time

Time is one of the most important resources our days. Everybody tries to organize himself as good as possible to increase spare time or get as much as possible out of one day. The main problem about time is, that in the urban context there are a lot of situations, we can't affect. We have to wait for something or somebody.
The class “urban interventions” tries to deal with different issues of the urban environment. At the beginning we were separated in different groups, which had to deal with different issues. Some had to try to get a work permission, some had to try to get work for a foreigner.

Cultural Probes Cultural Probes & Cultural quest


During our “cultural quest” we had to spend a lot of time waiting at public agencies or processing organization work flows. This was the starting point to create something, that illustrates time and creates new situations through the visualization.
We start to illustrate different scenarios and try to find simple solutions to increase the handling of time or just to make the problem visible. The created ideas dealing with the issues of stealing time, waiting time and time shifting.

Stealing time Stealing Time: Simple paper roll with time pieces. If the roll is empty, the all time has been used.

time shift Time Shift: The Train station will be captured by a camera. The video will be displayed with a 10 minutes delay.

time recycling Time Recycling: Wasted life time, will be recycled to grow plants.

Final concepts

"Zeitschleife" - Time shift

Zeitschleife from Tobias Friese on Vimeo
The first concept that we finalized as a video-prototype dealt - as well as the second one - with the perception and use of waiting-time in public spaces.

A public trainstation is transformed into an interactive time-display. The whole station is supervised by cameras in the center area between the two tracks. Screens below the cameras enable the user to review scenes that have been recorded earlier. When a new person steps on the station a time-frame openes right in front of him and follows him during his waiting-session. He now can manipulate the time of the displayed recording with moving nearer to or further away from the screen. So he is able to take a sneak peek into the past.

That way people who are waiting for the train are confronted with the waiting-time and scenarios of other passengers of even with their own past.

"Wartezeit-Recycling" - Waiting time recycling

Wartezeit-Recycling from Tobias Friese on Vimeo.
With this concept we want to suggest, that the waiting-time of passengers is reused/recycled for a different purpose instead of being wasted or lost.

So the waiting-time is transferred into lifetime of floral ornaments. Every available surface (glass panels, billboards, etc.) is turned into a sensitive display. Whereever a person is staying and spending time a floral is growing as long as he holds the position. After he is leaving the plant will stay some more time and then degenerate to where it came from.

Besides the play and the feeling of giving ones precious time to the creation of something new, the florals are as well a publc indicator of the waiting-time that has been spent in those public areas. Clean stations are very effective or rarely used, overgrown ones are uneffective and taking the time of their passengers.