Addicted to Location
Organised by: Board of European Students of Technology, Budapest
University: Budapest University of Technology and Economics
17 July 2008 to 31 July 2008


The main goal of the course is to present new technologies that connect physical space and digital content. Lectures will cover locative media in general, the creative uses to which Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, architectural theory and participation based exercises. During the course students will prototype electronic devices using these positioning technologies.

The worshop will be presented in English.


Lecture 1. Presentation of Locative Media projects, Augmented Reality and various location technologies.

Lecture 2. Semiotics; the study of signs and how they function in society. How does the user interact with your device? How does the interface communicate your ideas? The lecture will cover Ferdiand de Sasseure's Signifier - signified relationship, Charles Sanders Pierce's Icon, Index, Symbol, (he developed early computer logic) and finally Roland Barthe's Denotative Connotative meanings.

Lecture 3. Space, it is not simply a series of structures and things or emptiness, but as Kas Oosterhuis would say, a series of running processes, transactions and ifrastructure.

Exercise: Students will be placed in urban space and required to physically negotiate space, then both observe and explaine the negotiations that took place.

Lecture 4. Eversion, the turning out of the virtual into the real world. Locative media or location based services are not simply a matter of connecting a location in the real world to some information, but a much larger trend in which information or the virtual comes to occupy the real world.

Exercise: Create 3 user profiles and role play use scenarios with each profile.

Exercise: BrainStorming, the students will utilize a variety of techniques to generate ideas and then quickly prototype them.

Final projects: The workshop participants will be broken up into groups of 5. Each group will produce a device, service, software or a combination.