Moods and other messy human challenges for datafication of future cities through “digital twins”— by Annette Markham

Join us on December 2nd for an engaging Friends of the Future seminar with Annette Markham, Chair Professor of Media Literacy and Public Engagement, creator and director of the Future Making Research Consortium, a collaboratory to bring together scholars, artists, and activists, particularly early career researchers, to study the intersection of digital technology, ways of being in the world, and future possible meanings, practices, and social structures. This session begins with a review of a series of workshops focused on the challenge of incorporating sensory and affective lived experience into smart city data ecosystems. “Mapping the moods of the future city” workshops, held in Barcelona, Ho Chi Minh City, and Melbourne in 2022, invited residents, neighborhood leaders, and city planners to creatively build moodboards of affective and emotional aspects of their cities and discuss how this information translates into data for future digital twins. Annette will discuss key features and methods, as well as the value of provoking failure in creative interventions to push past speculative imaginaries to more concrete discussions of granular, practical aspects of future making. Register for this talk by emailing Blake Robinson: p.b.robinson@uu.nl

About Annette Markham

Dr. Annette Markham is Chair Professor of Media Literacies and Public Engagement at Utrecht University. With expertise on digital ethics and research design, Markham is well known for developing frameworks for mindful, ethical, and creative approaches to studying digital tech futures. Her work is grounded in nearly 30 years of ethnographic research around how digital transformations impact self-identity formation and socio-cultural practices. Markham also specializes in arts-based public engagement, using critical pedagogy and citizen social science methods to facilitate community-centered knowledges about how algorithmic and data-driven logics impact everyday practices and future imaginaries, particularly among young adults in urban contexts. Prior to joining Utrecht University, Markham previously founded and directed the international Future Making Research Consortium, and is former director of the Digital Ethnography Research Centre at RMIT. She holds honorary adjunct professorships at Aarhus University, Denmark, and RMIT University, Melbourne.

About 'Friends of the Future'

The Friends of the Future seminars are the Urban Futures Studio’s take on public seminars: warm, interactive, and focused on hope. Each month, we invite an academic, activist, artist, or practitioner to chat with us on the sofa in front of a circle of colleagues and guests. All are welcome.