Ronald Lenz of 7scenes is giving a lecture and a masterclass at Parsons in NYC this week. After a meetup at Parsons in june '09 (during the Picnic NYC Salon) with David Carroll, Colleen Macklin and Mike Edwards we all knew there was a strong connection in the way we approach the city using mobile technology. So this week we will also be exploring how Parsons and 7scenes can collaborate in the future.

Here's more on the program:

PRESENTATION: Wednesday October 21, 6:30, 10fl Lab

"Locative Media, Games and Learning: Research and Recent Projects" Presented by Ronald Lenz, Creative Director, 7scenes and Head of Locative Media at the Waag Society  

The Waag Society develops creative technology for cultural and social innovation. The focus of Waag Society as a medialab is divided in five domains: healthcare, culture, society, sustainability and education. In the Locative Atelier, the enriched relation between humans and location is researched and this can create new forms of interaction. The activities of the Locative section have knowd a considerable growth in recent years. Waag Society has an (inter)national reputation in this field and is initiator of many new projects.   7scenes is a web-based application created by the Waag Society to quickly design and deploy location based games to mobile devices featuring text, image, sound, video and easy to design game mechanics. The map is the design and play interface, no programming is required! This is an excellent resource for game, interaction and urban designers interested in experimenting with big urban games and locative media.   

WORKSHOP: Thursday October 22, 3:00, room 1100

Master Class and Workshop: open to all interested  

A hands-on opportunity to experience the design and play process in 7scenes.  

http://locativegames.wordpress.com/
http://7scenes.com/
http://waag.org/

Waag Society, 7scenes and Layar hosted the Augmented City Lab at this year's Picnic festival. A full day event with presentations, panel discussions and prototyping sessions exploring the design aspects of the new city that is emerging. Speakers include Ben Cerveny (Stamen, Vurb), Kevin Slavin (Area/Code) and Raimo vd Klein (Layar) and prototyping technologies included 7scenes, layar, irfid and laser tagging.

For a full report please visit www.augmentedcity.org.

Global Gincana has entered its second phase in september '09. The project that connects Brazilian and Dutch students by exchanging cultural mobile games was a great success both in Sao Paulo and at Picnic Young. Global Gincana is a collaboration between Waag Society and Mobilefest and more details about the project can be found at www.globalgincana.org, www.waag.org and www.mobilefest.org.

The workshops that took place in Sao Paulo and Amsterdam collected the national and personal highlights of Brazilian and Dutch culture that were assembled into mobile games located at the Ibirapuera park and the Westergas Fabriek area.

The Island - an urban trading game connecting Amsterdam and NYC - was played onde more on september 12th as part of the closing activities of the Hudson 400 celebrations. Players in Amsterdam and NYC traded with players on the other side of the ocean using their mobile phones and tried to make the largest profit on the local market. Both Job Cohen, mayor of Amsterdam, and Carolien Gehrels, deputy-mayor of Amsterdam, were part of the game and competed against each other. 

Special 7scenes features especially developed for The Island include a puppetmaster, that can send messages to all or a selection of players at any moment during the game and a 'trade place', that connects two different locations in realtime for trading actions.

View the video for a full report!

The Diamond museum in Antwerp is working together with youth organisation Piazza del'Arte and 7scenes to create both an educational game about the world of the diamant industry and history as well as a cultural city tour for tourists. Striking about this project is that a group of creative young people around the age of 16 are in charge of making all the content and - guided by Piazza del'Arte - this is working out beautifully.