Living in a Digital Built Environment (Annotated Bibliography Number Eight)

“Living in a Digital Built Environment.” Digital_Built_Environment. ARUP, n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2016.

This article published by the company ARUP gives a brief description of how technology is being used to shape the built environment to provide a more comfortable and healthy space. The author of the article describes sensors that can detect pollution or monitor temperature, among other variables, which would trigger other technology that would appropriately respond. For instance, the article describes rooms or entire buildings that would automatically react to the presence of people, adjusting light and temperature when necessary. The article also describes stadiums with moving seating and dynamic sound, automatically adjusting itself to provide the spectators with the optimal experience. The author also mentions sensors that can monitor traffic flow, disseminating the information to motorists so they can plan and act accordingly. Finally, the article discusses a technology that can represent 3D models of cities, recording and predicting the patterns of people and providing an analysis of how a particular built environment may affect them, in terms of travel and where they are spending their money.

Downtown Connector 75/85 Digital Records

 

Under The Overpass (video download)

Here is a 19-second AVI video of the underside of the Downtown Connector (75/85). Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of concrete and the overpass is wide. I saw a lot of trash on the sidewalk. And there were a few homeless people living in the upper corners of the underpass.

Next to The Downtown Connector (video download)

Here is a 34-second AVI video of the side of the Downtown Connector (75/85). It was noisy with the bustling of cars, and I would sometimes get a whiff of gasoline. The video also contains some graffiti, more trash, and a broken chain link fence that I  passed through. Don’t mind my babbling in the video. I thought my phone would be able to pick up my voice but I was wrong.

 

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To get this picture of graffiti I had to climb up the slope of the overpass. It was taken at around 5:30 PM, so the sun was beginning to set, and its light accentuated the art. I’m not sure what it says but I think it looks neat. It serves as a nice contrast against the concrete.

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This is another piece of graffiti I found near the overpass. It’s not as welcoming as the first piece, but I thought it was interesting that it was done on a fence. The person who drew it may have been making a statement against order, establishment, etc.

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This is a picture of some foot prints and writing in the cement of a sidewalk near the Downtown Connector. I found this scene interesting for some same reason I found the aforementioned picture interesting. It can be seen as a statement against urban expansion, authority. Or it could have just been the mixture of  clumsy people not watching where they’re going and those who wanted a few of their words (or names) immortalized.

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I took this picture to contrast all of the pictures I took of so-called insubordinate scenes. I found this sign near the footprints and as you can see it warns people that it is against the law to resell tickets (i.e. baseball) within 2,700 feet of Turner Field.

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Here is a picture of some more graffiti on a street lamp near the Downtown Connector. There are also some stickers here that I don’t understand the meaning of. One of which is the head of man smoking a pipe, wearing a camo hat. Unlike the graffiti in my other pictures, I can actually read this one. It reads “mega”.