Street Forum



A physical-digital platform to encourage local discussions and amplify public sentiment in the city (while at the Royal College of Art, 2014).

Growing out of initial analog experiments, a family of urban "parasites" were developed to give community activists the tools to catalyse change in their communities. In the final stages of the project, my main responsibility was parasite 3, for which I developed a gimbal style mechanism and Processing interface to create a quasi-3D aware projector that could reveal hidden digital messages on the surrounding urban environment.



Parasite 3: the projector allows passersby to ‘shoot’ messages onto walls, roofs, street-signs, etc. It works using a simple gimbal-style mechanism (two rotary potentiometers = yaw and pitch) to give the impression of digital comments physically stuck to the surrounding urban landscape [2] Active at night, the projector enables dynamic discussions directly in the public spaces where they are most relevant. 



Early (analog) experiments with a black-board collecting suggestions on what should happen to a derelict Pub in Brixton.Parasites 1,2: the broadcaster and petitioner. The broadcaster gives activists a tool to publicly broadcast their message in public spaces; the petitioner allows passersby to add their names to an online petition via text message. 

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Exhibited at the Show RCA 2014, RCA W.I.P. Show 2014, Imperial Show 2014.
Collaboration with Charles Doomany, Yoo-Jin Jung and Matthew Lydiatt-Elton.



(c) Niklas Hagemann  2024