URBAN ENTROPY

DIETMAR OFFENHUBER (based in Boston)
Urban Entropy, 2015

Urban Entropy is a project for the Ars Electronica media façade, which was created during a residency for the Connecting Cities Conference and the Soundframe festival.

Urban Entropy is a public display of complaining and repair. The city never stops moving and is never stable or under control. The façade of the ars electronica centre reflects the daily routine of maintenance using live data from the city’s feedback system. Infrastructure is a process: things + organized practices. A random binary pattern on the façade is continuously sorted into regular shapes, until the next incoming complaint frustrates the effort and the story begins again.

Artist biography

Dietmar Offenhuber is Assistant Professor at Northeastern University in the departments of Art + Design and Public Policy. He holds a PhD in Urban Planning from MIT, studied at the MIT Media Lab and TU Vienna. Dietmar investigates urban infrastructure such as formal and informal waste systems and has published books on the subjects of Urban Data, Accountability Technologies and Urban Informatics.