Spatial Interaction FS2025

Lecturers

Roman Kirschner
(RK), Vinzenz Leutenegger (VL)

Collaboration

Labör

Timeframe

The module takes place over 5 weeks, from 22. April to 22. May 2025. See the timetable below for detailed hours and classrooms. Class sessions include lectures, discussions, mentoring sessions, in-class exercises, assignments and independent study blocks. Projects are conducted in a team of four students at most.

Room

During the seminar, a limited number of workbenches are available in Werkstatt Modellbau ZT 2.E20-UU.

Overview and Objectives

The module 'Spatial Interaction' challenges students to deepen their practical and conceptual knowledge of human interactions in their immediate surroundings with a focus on public space. Starting from a location in Zurich, students will develop spatial-technical frameworks for situated interactions. The student projects will connect people and societal processes.

Topic 2025: ??? and Public Space

As artificial intelligence begins to infiltrate various aspects of public life, from surveillance systems to algorithmic decision-making, it brings opportunities and challenges for democratic societies. Amongst privacy, surveillance, bias, and authorship concerns, it becomes easy to imagine an expanse of dystopian futures. AI features prominently in speculation of Existential Risk (Bostrum, 2002), and the numerous dystopian depictions of societal collapse driven by AI in science fiction provides plenty of material for anxiety. Many of these speculative horror scenarios are entering the everyday parlance of technology: the Alignment Problem (Gabriel, 2020), AI arms race (Moore, 2016), Superintelligence (Bostrom, 1998) and The Singularity (Chalmers. 2016). Such concerns will always outnumber the list of positives: there are inherently more ways for any system to go wrong than to go right. But how do we increase the chance of our future with AI going in the right direction for the planet and for humanity instead of the infinite ways to go wrong? Many of the utopian scenarios being provided to us, however, come from people and organisations that stand the most to profit from the rapid and uncontrolled uptake of AI technology. For this reason, we must have an alternative source of visions beyond the solutionism (Morozov, 2013) of Silicon Valley.

Unfortunately, we are already experiencing some of the dangerous eventualities of AI: the shift of political discourse to social media has left our internal and interpersonal realm vulnerable to AI-based political manipulation through deep fakes and out-of-control algorithms driving radicalization (Ledwich et al., 2019). Yet, AI is now inseparable from all possible future trajectories: finding a non-zero-sum relationship with AI is a societal and ecological imperative. But the current spring of AI development has certainly sparked our imagination: projects like Polis leverage AI to find out what large numbers of people think about issues in their own words to better shape public policy. Augmented Democracy tries to use AI for radical new forms of direct democracy through a virtual twin.

But what about the historically central sphere of political and democratic discourse: the public space? Could this be our great chance to re-design a relationship with AI that is symbiotic and aligned with the needs of humans and non-human ecologies? Can AI support new forms of civic engagement? Can it help to give us better access to knowledge embedded in our environment? Can it help us to understand the manifold perspectives and life situations that clash and try to find compromises in a city?

In this module, we will build experimental futures for democracy in a spatial context. The course will work in collaboration with researchers from the SNF project “Stories of the Future”, a scientific communication project which aims to sensitize young people in Switzerland to the political and ethical nature of AI.

Deliverables and Documentation

1. Final Prototype or Intervention

2. Final Presentation

3. Standard IAD Documentation (see handbook on wiki): 

   • Text file including the project title, names of students and mentors, a short description (250 - 400 characters ), and a long description (>1000 characters ), in a file to be labelled “Texts”

   • At least 10 representative images of the project (to be stored in a file labelled “Images”)

   • One longer video (< 5 minutes) of the project (to be stored in a file labelled “Video”). Mp4 full HD, see wiki for more details on format.  

   • One to two short social media teaser videos (20-30 seconds) in portrait format. 

   • A PDF documentation (to be stored in a file labelled “Documentation”)

   • Additional raw data, e.g., presentation, prototypes, or codes (to be stored in the respective file).

Upload your documentation files to: smb://fileredu.ad.zhdk.ch/DDE/BDE_VIAD/01_ABGABEN/25_FS/Sem4_Spatial_Interaction

Main Project Brief

Ultimately, the outcomes of the module will envision ways of living with AI that empower rather than diminish the agency of individuals and communities. We approach the topic with prototypes and design interventions that leverage our technical skills and designerly perspective, while avoiding the tendencies of technological solutionism. The actual format of the end results will be developed through in-class discussions and steering meetings.

Objectives:

1. Reflect on AI's Impact: Investigate the current and potential implications of AI on democratic and political processes, considering issues such as privacy, bias, polarisation and social and behavioural manipulation.

2. Explore Spatial Dynamics: Explore how physical public spaces are being reshaped by AI and how the future might be reimagined using AI to foster inclusivity, civic engagement, greater awareness or critical thinking on the topic.

3. Prototype Experimental Futures: Create tangible prototypes and/or interventions that embody new ways of ‍‍‍living with AI in public spaces and in democratic processes. Record your results extensively with photos, video and audio.

Schedule

Literature

1. Georges Perec: Träume von Räumen (Auszug dt.), Espèces d'espace (extrait fr.). (via email)

2. Bourdieu, Pierre (1989) Sozialer Raum, symbolischer Raum. In: Dünne J., Raumtheorie - Grundlagentexte aus Philosophie und Kulturwissenschaften, Suhrkamp 2006, 354-368. (via email)

3. Asenbaum, Hans (2020) Spatial Theory of Democracy. Talk given at Participatory and Deliberative Democracy Webinar 5: “Democracy & Space” [min 06:10-18:08].

4. Voss, Jan Peter (2020) The McDonaldization of Democracy: Translocal Space-making by innovating “deliberative mini-publics”. Talk given at Participatory and Deliberative Democracy Webinar 5: “Democracy & Space” [min 18:45-35:33].

5. Mendel, Maria (2019) The spatial ways democracy works: On the pedagogy of common places. Why, why now? https://doi.org/10.1177/0034523719839

6. Sprenger, Ramona (2023) Do not feed the google.

7. Morozov, Evgeny (2014) PUBLIC SPACE // Shared Spaces with Evgeny Morozov.

8. Morozov, Evgeny (2014) The rise of data and the death of politics.

Further Reading

1. O'Kelly, Morton E. (2014) Spatial Interaction.

2. Weaver, Duncan (2020) Spatiality and World Politics. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.562

3. Baccini, et. al.(2012) Metabolism of the Anthroposphere: Analysis, Evaluation, Design, MIT Press

4. González de Molina, Manuel, et al. (2014) The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change, Springer

5. Massey, Doreen (2009) Concepts of space and power in theory and in political practice, Documents d'anàlisi geogràfica 55, 15-26

6. Mol, Arthur P. J., et al. (2018) Zur Umweltsoziologie der Netzwerke und Flows. In: Groß M. (ed) Handbuch Umweltsoziologie. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 140–153

Mentoring

We will prepare doodles for mentoring with time slots of different lengths depending on the progress of the overall project. Reserve your slot and try to be on time. Questions can be asked anytime – also via email.