zhuoyinl-looking outward09

I found Simmon’s Looking Outwards of the 21 Balancoires really inspiring. It is an urban scale collective instrument which located in a kind of abandoned piece of land. The instrument produced music by the movements of swings. It requires participants’ cooperation to produce the melodies; therefore, it brings people to this area and transforms the abandoned streets into an active urban public space.

I think this idea of renew urban area is really helpful for the US cities today. Most of the urban areas in this country are almost developed and some cities have experience several polulation migration. This, rehabilitating cities would be the most sustainable way for urban planning in this century. By integrating the computational technique and human interactive devices, the decaying urban area could gain a second life with very low financial investments. Simmon also saw the underlying meaning of this instrument within the urban planning context. I think we would both agree that this could be a solution to the current urban planning problems in some recessing cities in developed countries.

http://awards.ixda.org/entry/2013/21-balancoires/