Information in Action
As our environment is increasingly pervaded by digital networks, sensors, and connected mobile and embedded devices, enormous amounts of data are being generated, capable of revealing new insights into people’s interactions with and within such digitally augmented spaces. Information derived from this data is tightly connected to its social, physical and spatiotemporal context and increasingly, information is becoming material, and matter informational in this perspective.
“It is becoming increasingly obvious that information is, in important ways, material, and matter is informational.”
–Mark Taylor
The ‘Information in action’ initiative investigates this changing condition and experiments with new approaches for the conceptualization and the design of tools for interaction with and within networked cities.
Kristian Kloeckl
Kristian Kloeckl is Associate Professor at Northeastern University with a joint appointment at the Department of Art+Design and the School of Architecture. Prior to this, he was a Research Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Real-Time City Group lead at the MIT Senseable City Lab in Boston. As part of this position he built up the lab’s research group in Singapore and led an interdisciplinary team including computer scientists, engineers, urban planners, architects, and interaction designers. Kristian and his team pioneered the “LIVE Singapore” initiative, a data platform and data visualization research project that brought together real time data from several of Singapore’s key public and private urban systems operators in fields such as telecommunication, transportation, energy, environment.
“What we mean by information — the elementary unit of information — is a difference which makes a difference.”
–Gregory Bateson
Kristian has extensive industry experience as design consultant, working on projects for companies such as Viacom, JCDecaux, Skidata, Migros, Rewe; and in collaboration with design agencies Antonio Citterio and Total Tool in Milan, and Projektgruppe 7.5 in Berlin.
After studies at the Technische Universität Graz in Austria and Brunel University in London, Kristian graduated from the Politecnico di Milano, and earned his PhD in Design Sciences from the IUAV University of Venice.
He has co-authored numerous international publications on industrial and interaction design, data visualization, and the work with digital technologies and data in cities. Kristian is a member of the Program Board of the HCI International Conference on Distributed, Ambient and Pervasive Interactions; member of the Work Group on Smart Cities/Critical Infrastructure of the MassInsight Innovation Partnerships Network; member of the Think Tank at the Center for Workplace Innovation of the Design Museum Foundation; founding member of the Boston Civic Media initiative by Emerson Engagement Lab and Teagle Foundation.
His work has been exhibited worldwide at venues such as the Venice Biennale, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Vienna MAK, the Singapore Art Museum, as well as the China Millennium Monument Museum of Digital Arts.
Kristian is a frequent speaker at international conferences and has amongst others presented at Platform Strategy Executive Symposium at MIT Media Lab, World Bank SDN Forum, Red Dot Design Museum Singapore, Austrian Innovation Forum in Vienna, ICA Conference in Taipei, and eGov Global Exchange in Singapore.