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good morning to those on the west coast and good local time to whoever else

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you’re joining us from um my name is Jesse McKee and I’m the head of strategy at 221a

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um I lead the fellowships and digital strategy at the organization um today we’re here to talk with Maxime

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rookmanaco from the center for spatial Technologies about the past two years as a 221a fellow and to celebrate the

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launch of the Vancouver housing affordability heat map that was produced as a result of our shared research I’d

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like to acknowledge with gratitude and respect that the city of Vancouver is built upon the unseated unsurrendered

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and traditional territories of the musqueam Squamish and swallow tooth peoples the Squamish and hunger meet him

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speaking peoples have stewarded these lands and Waters since time immemorial Maxine rockmanaco is an architect

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designer and director of the center for spatial Technologies which was founded in Kiev Ukraine the CST focuses on

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architecture and research hacking economic technological and political infrastructures to shape the future city

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they are always more than 3D and they are currently focused on the analysis of Civilian damage caused by the Russian

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invasion of Ukraine when we started working together Maxime told me there’s no one project or client of the center

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for spatial Technologies so we’ll get a glimpse of the breadth of their incredible work today you can learn more

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about their current work focused on the analysis of war crimes and the damaged civilian infrastructure at the following

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links which I will put in the chat for you to browse while we speak

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I’d like to also acknowledge and deeply thank those who contributed to this project over the past two years

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including Hermann mittish and odessia covalenko at the center for spatial Technologies as well as Charles pan who

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was a graduate student at the University of British Columbia’s School of community and Regional planning who

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joined the team for a year as a UBC sustainability scholar in 2021 as well thank you to our funders who

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made this fellowship and project possible the Canada Council for the Arts digital strategy fund as well as the

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province of British Columbia’s International presence program the fellowship began with cst’s Doma

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project which was looking for ways to design Collective property systems that can alleviate the pressure of living in

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a contemporary City enmeshed in a cost of living crisis Vancouver’s at the spears edge of such cities since we have

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the comparable income of a city like Columbus Ohio but the property values of the San Francisco Bay Area

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needless to say to a Vancouver right but the cost of access to property here has well overshot the affordability

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threshold for local incomes now thanks to the CST and their work we

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have a context uh Rich visual tool that can illustrate how the city’s property values have re-territorialized this

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region since 2006 which is where we started with the data as a predominantly unaffordable territory the dashboard

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draws from several data sources such as the city of Vancouver’s tax assessments data the Canadian mortgage and housing

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corporations owner and Rental data as well as statistics Canada and census data and private Market websites such as

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Willow and padmepper you can try the dashboard for yourself at Doma dot City

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Vancouver and I’ll put that link in the chat for everyone as well

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the project took nearly a 10-month pause this year due firstly to my covet infection and then a severe case of long

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covid which is still persisting and then because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine the CST team and their families

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have since relocated to other parts of Europe and have courageously continued their work mostly focused on collecting

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and Advising and Publishing context-rich studies around specific incidences of war crimes on civilians and civilian

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infrastructure through collaborations with groups such as forensic architecture Maxine will share more about this work

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during the second part of his presentation today so Maxime on behalf of 221a in our community I’d like to

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extend our utmost gratitude and thanks for completing this project with us despite all of the challenges on the

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road it means a great deal to me and everyone at 221a that we’ve been able to maintain our connections and momentum

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throughout all of the tumult of this year Maxine’s presentation will run for about

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30 minutes and we’ll have time afterwards for questions from our live streamers today so please ask your

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questions in the Q a box in text or if you raise your hand we can bring you in as a panelist and you can join us with a

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live voice to speak with us during the Q a period so with that Maxime I’ll hand

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it over to you thank you

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thank you Jesse for your great introduction and information

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everyone who worked on this project and the convex path that we took to

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kind of um show you today what we’ve got my name is Maxim as you heard and I

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represent the team of the center for special Technologies almost everything

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and I’m gonna show you today is done by the team and

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it is quite strange to go back to this work because

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um as as Jesse mentioned we used to be cave-based office and due to Russian

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invasion there were a lot of um breaks for us in terms of operation as

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normal um it is great though to to have a chance to show you the work and to kind

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of properly let it be out there finished even with new data from the new sensors

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um as a sort of also the structure of not giving up to

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the you know the destruction and damage that is quite only present for everyone who’s

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Ukrainian um as a way to you know saying that you continue to do things that we wanted to

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do um I’ll start from telling you what domain is it’s it’s a wonderful project that

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has quite a long history by now but um it is

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something that started from a curiosity towards uh blockchains and smart

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contracts and at the same time as a group of Architects been involved in

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trying to solve issues relating to complexities of living in contemporary

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cities particularly ones that have to do with housing affordability and you know

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that complexity can be very well understood through Thomas speak at this Capital book where

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is um kind of showing how wealth over time

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grows faster than wages which basically means that rich people are getting richer the poor people getting poorer

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there is this paper that was published in mit’s graduate student and he he his

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argument is that you know that um Dynamic is very much related to housing

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um it’s always easy to talk about this to people in the context of north

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northern America it’s even easier to learn about this to Vancouver as particularly

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um we never had such enthusiasm from people as we did in Vancouver particularly

7:43

because this is extremely important to see

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um in the core of the project there was this idea that we can take existing

7:55

residential units and basically collectively owned through

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this kind of shares that would be powered by smart contracts and as simple

8:07

as it sounds it does provide a new uh reperto R of tools for activism for

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for people who want to make sure that the city does not get completely

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privatized and kind of owned by corporate landlords so

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again the provocation was that we can split each unit between Google friends

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or people who don’t know each other uh through the process of tokenization

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and then create certain types of um incentives

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for housing to be more of home and less

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of an asset right this is an important kind of dualism here where you know as

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soon as the economy is based on housing as soon as buildings and particularly

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residential flats are the biggest asset crust in the

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world um it’s kind of increasingly puts pressure on especially younger people or

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unprivileged people too get access to to this

9:20

feeling of of being at home sometimes so we also thought it would be interesting

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if we in this model where there is a range of people who call on Flats if we would

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also distribute some points of equity to people who live in the flats longer so

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the idea was again the more rent you pay the more you stay in an apartment the more you kind of generate shares of

9:43

ownership in this way it’s quite simple mechanism which is kind of like similar

9:49

to rent to own schemes except again for for us this was more of a

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apparatus to think about ways to make living in cities more equitable

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um this project uh took us a while and and particularly in the beginning of it

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we were focusing on Eastern Europe Eastern European cities are specific

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because housing there is very cheap so property prices will cost you around

10:23

10 years of rent right so as much as you pay for rent you multiply that by 10

10:28

years you get at 10 12 years that’s that would be the apartment cost and we wanted to solve

10:35

that through this kind of shares generating in the city for Eastern European cities

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and when we started working with 221a uh we partnered with Francis tsang who’s

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a new york-based programmer with whom we developed this game which

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was trying first time to look at Northern America

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and we of course discovered that there’s a completely different set of issues in

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the US we we worked with um

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U.S Berkeley UC Berkeley um

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PhD scholar and Professor called Desiree Fields who writes on kind of these

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automated landlords who basically use AI to buy cheapest

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properties in the city and you know make money on Flipping properties this was

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the game where you would play as Commons and you would try to resist the pressure

11:47

from these kind of corporate automated landlords who try to buy the whole city and by doing that they also of course

11:53

increase prices uh for the people um yeah so so this was the game that we

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also developed very closely working with the 2008 and it was in a very early time

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of our collaboration you can see here some of the assumptions behind this game

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where you know there there are certain types of mechanics that users can take players

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can take to defeat this force of an automated landlord and while doing this we also realized

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that um a lot of these things are possible to understand through just looking at data

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and looking at property markets and how they basically push people out from from

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certain cities this is uh data from Vancouver that we put together in the beginning of this project just for

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ourselves to understand kind of the way property prices and rents are

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distributed throughout the city uh here you can see how I’m selecting

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this from here and different types of things I’m looking at and I can basically see how how radically things

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shifted from 2006 to 2019

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uh these changes are present all around the world this this

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kind of direction for housing becoming less and less affordable but of course

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Vancouver is one of the frontiers of that and that’s why we also had a lot of

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trouble with data so gearman who developed this tool often had this

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question of like I I must have a mistake in my code it’s it can’t be the case of

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course because you know we’re also kind of we haven’t lived in Vancouver therefore we don’t have a visceral

13:43

feeling of how terrible things are in terms of this kind of housing affordability so sometimes it was hard

13:49

to even intuitively grasp the the extent to which these things are

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um in in Vancouver but what you um can play with and I encourage you to

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to open this uh oh sorry this is my zoom link but here’s the dashboard

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and it’s very simple this is something that we did as a way to basically help you go through the same

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process that we go through when we try to understand how housing situation is

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in a certain City you of course have this income slider where you can see how

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uh how much you make over the year um and then depending on the year you

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can also see how things changed and what what these parameters are also crucial

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for us because they show you how your income corresponds to your rent so

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there’s this like um kind of Boomer advice that you have to spend up to 30 percent of your income

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on your rent but that advice is very hard to follow if you’re kind of a

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younger person who makes 30 50k per year and lives in contemporary Vancouver

15:07

right uh or even if if yeah if you if you go back in time you can see how those

15:13

things change not that radical so this these colors here also come from

15:20

um weather forecasts kind of like hinting at discounts uh more visceral

15:25

feeling of hot cold how how overheated the market is in certain uh moments of

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time so uh indeed as Jesse said we we wanted to

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publish this in the late 2021 fortunately it was covered but then we

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have this another uh idea that will will publish this dashboard in sometime in

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February and it happens so that the the date for the second launch was the 24th

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of February and of course this is the the day where you know things quite radically shifted

16:03

for us and we started doing things that are quite different from this

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I want to briefly talk about that and I want to briefly

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kind of let you get a sense of what CST is and what types of project we normally

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did um this is the link to the the Vancouver dashboard that you can play with and

16:28

this is our headline on on Instagram if you want to see some of the newer work but I’ll just say you know like in the

16:36

core of everything that we have been doing there is this idea that you can model

16:42

things to understand them better right so this is um Manhattan and Highline

16:51

case where we looked at fairly similar issue to what we had in Vancouver

16:56

in a way where uh here we wanted to know how publicly

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funded elevated Park which is called Highland uh some of you especially those

17:07

who have to do with architectural landscape architecture know it well it’s a beautiful park that is built on a

17:13

former Railway [Music] a line and it kind of caused an insane

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lift in property values so it costed 187

17:24

million dollars at the construction of the spark but it cost 3.5 or 3.4 billion

17:31

dollars of private basically private properties value

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uplift so if you can see by cost I mean that the closer properties are to this park

17:47

the more they went up in price and if you calculate the correlation

17:52

you’ll see that the the effect of The High Line is 3.4 billion dollars which

17:58

is interesting because it’s it’s a public investment that caused uh insane

18:03

private gaze and this is a project we did together with a london-based studio called Dark Matter labs and you can read

18:11

read about this more in the smart Commons project

18:17

um the things that we would work with often had this Spirit of

18:23

kind of orientedness towards the future and desire to use the tools that we know

18:29

how to use for some sort of societally beneficial cause so

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what you see here is this kind of a flat that we purchased in the heart of cave

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and together with our team we basically recorded every single element that was

18:49

used in this process of of renovation and the reason we did that is of course because uh of thoughts about

18:56

sustainability and we had this little project funded by

19:01

Simon kick which is one of the biggest European funds that supports green initiatives in Europe

19:08

and you know it was a as a result of it we had a bunch of exhibitions but at the

19:13

core of it there is a very simple desire to understand not only costs not only timelines of how this launched this

19:20

renovation uh kind of took but we also wanted to to

19:27

understand how much embodied carbon each of these materials have and through that to

19:35

understand their environmental impact and what do you see here again is kind of the method that we use all around in

19:43

most of our projects that the modeling is used to help us research

19:49

basically to help us understand something and help us see things that are not visible on Surface right

19:56

um these types of projects were 99 of what

20:03

we were working with these kinds of things where there is a desire to look

20:08

for something better in the future by understanding something and this is the the desk

20:15

um where I used to sit in caves this is the view from from our office in cave

20:22

and um this is this these are these two on the map the TV cave TV tower which was later

20:30

bombed by Russians of the 1st of March this is our office this is a territory

20:35

that we spent two years studying this was the only project that we did which kind of

20:42

um looked more towards this darker

20:47

uh and also instead of looking towards the future look towards the past look

20:53

destroyed darker topics of death trauma and genocide so Robin ER is one of the

21:00

most important locations in the history of the Holocaust particularly because especially in the west many people don’t

21:07

know about this phase of the Holocaust as much as they do about gas Chambers

21:12

and Auschwitz and that kind of already much more industrialized space this is

21:19

the place where people were shot by uh bullets so each person had a killer

21:25

basically and because this landscape changed so much and the reason it

21:30

changed so much is because Soviets didn’t want to kind of pay attribute to this this

21:37

landscape this flat and it’s turned it into something developable

21:42

um it was very hard for even for the help of Scholars to understand this place from the perspective of of for a

21:49

special perspective you know so what we had to do was to find archival maps and

21:55

to build these 3D models which show you to which extent this landscape got flattened right

22:03

um You can see uh here the most important images uh that kind of like

22:09

they’re the almost the only images where you can see the aftermath uh for from the massacre and what we did was we

22:18

studied them and we figured out the exact locations where they were taken

22:24

and the way we did it was through identifying this field uh the hill that is visible from many

22:30

angles and first we noticed it we figured out that there are these key markers that is that are

22:37

possible to identify on this this terrain and then my colleague caller or

22:43

the script the positions the camera in a very precise way against these markers so that we know

22:50

where the photographer who took these photographs stood in a way where you can then jump out of this landscape and see

22:58

how the photograph is projected towards towards the landscape so

23:04

so this was quite an important Discovery actually because in the end we managed to

23:10

locate these important images historically important images and before we we did this work there was actually

23:16

an argument between historians over where these places were which is quite

23:24

crazy uh we worked a lot with witness testimonies we analyzed them we made

23:30

this tool where you can click on any name of the street or any kind of type

23:35

of object like bags with clothing for instance and you would find every single

23:42

testimony that mentions those things and what we were doing right before the war was kind of like trying to

23:49

reconstruct these specific locations with the help of all

23:55

of these archival documents that we could find including witness testimonies photographs

24:01

you know some other documents aerial images and so on so we’re trying to

24:09

create these images that basically do not exist

24:15

um here was also the first time when we met forensic architecture it’s a it’s a london-based group that we collaborate

24:22

with right now and they’re Pioneers in kind of these using this multimedia

24:28

tools to uh kind of uh work with with topics of

24:33

war crimes and so on so this is the landscape about Vineyard this is

24:39

flattened and right next to this Latin landscape uh they built uh the TV tower

24:46

in 1970s so you can see here how it’s being constructed how it’s going up it’s

24:52

the biggest tallest Ukrainian steel structure oh sorry it was actually

24:58

tallest in the world when it was constructed uh tallest only steel structure in the

25:03

world that’s the correct way to decide that uh it’s a beautiful architectural

25:09

uh kind of edifice and you can see um it’s standing uh

25:16

over caves landscape and here is it from from our office and of course on the

25:21

first of March it was hit by Missa

25:27

um which was quite striking um

25:32

it’s of course the symbolic meaning of it that is also important here not only

25:38

the fact that it stands right next to one of the most important Holocaust sites and the the kind of the country

25:45

that presents itself as denotsifiers fits hits

25:51

um this building with a with a missile uh it’s also of course the fact that

25:57

it’s the tallest building in Ukraine it’s something that everyone in the city knows uh we simply wanted to understand what

26:05

exactly happened on the day so this is the project that we did in partnership with forensic architecture where we

26:11

tried to model the situation in as much detail as we can we found all the footage that we could find and on this

26:19

footage if you look closely you can actually identify the missiles and what you see here is

26:25

um the missile the the first missile did hit the building and you saw the the

26:31

results of that but this this there is a second missile that it seems like it missed the tower and hit

26:37

one of these buildings that was actually meant to be used as a holocaust museum

26:43

so 200 meters away crossed the road there is this soviet-style jail which

26:50

basically uh caught on fire as a result of the strike and also five people were

26:57

killed as a result of this particular missile Landing you I can see everybody’s here blurred

27:04

[Music] um this was the the very quick investigation that we did uh also you

27:10

know like knowing this place very well I want to uh very briefly tell you about

27:16

the the last project that uh Usher now and it’s something that we have kind of

27:22

like all our energy it’s kind of

27:29

uh yeah kind of dedicated towards it’s the investigation of

27:36

uh maripo theater explosion that was an

27:41

airstrike and um this particular project is

27:48

something where we we were starting this investigation to understand what

27:53

happened and we we started to uncover so many different layers

27:58

so many different aspects of this particular story that

28:04

uh the more we found the more we wanted to stop on it and really pay

28:09

uh tribute to this uh this event and it’s increasingly becomes something

28:17

uh kind of massive in terms of ways of looking at at this particular building

28:26

and of course I mean the way stupid Architects start something like this is they look at drawings we found

28:33

these in the archives and these are the drawings of the

28:38

the theater quite beautiful um of course as an architect seeing these

28:45

drawings you can then build the 3D model of the theater in a lot of details so you can understand where which spaces

28:52

were maybe sometimes even locate them on the 3D model so this is all the footage

28:58

that we collected their historic photographs of the theater in the 50s

29:04

you can see how that theater then kind of becomes a Ukrainian Institution

29:12

um uh at a certain point of time uh on the

29:17

24th of February this year it suddenly stops being a theater and starts being a

29:23

bomb shelter so people from all around Maori will come to this place to seek

29:29

Refuge to kind of hide from the missiles that are

29:34

first hitting only kind of peripheral areas of mariopo but at a certain while

29:41

you can also see explosions being in the bottle shelter of of the theater

29:47

almost a night and day non-stop up until the 16th of March when the Airborne hit

29:54

the building itself so this is a very simple thing that we’re kind of building now but again you

30:01

can see that there are photographs that are located against some of the rooms so we use this to work with Witnesses where

30:07

we can if we need to pull out certain piece of information we’ll be able to see oh like let’s let’s look at this

30:14

particular room this these are the images uh kind of located against the building in the same manner we we use

30:22

this technique to understand the events of babinyar and of course oftentimes there are these

30:29

videos this is a video that is literally from Russian TV that we then turn into

30:36

pieces of evidence because it’s possible to turn them into a 3D model and photogrammetry

30:43

where you can kind of see important elements of the way the building is destroyed

30:49

these scans are super useful for us this is this kind of the building before the explosion this is the result of 3D

30:57

modeling by drawings and this is the scan of the building affected after the

31:03

fire so the missile and the explosion didn’t damage this part of the building but it caught on fire and burned this is

31:11

the image of how the building got uh damaged destroyed right so so this of

31:18

course is the space of the stage and here you see the the curtain would

31:24

would hang here and you can see the um Auditorium on the side

31:30

images like this are possible to locate and understand where exactly they were taken which was also is important

31:37

because then we can understand that the nature of Destruction and we can understand what exactly are these debris

31:44

and where they come from and what what they are this is before and after photogrammetries uh one thing that is

31:52

very new for us and that we’re kind of now very much uh focusing on is working with Witnesses

32:02

so um we managed to identify around 60 people

32:08

already who were at the theater and out of them we talked to 22.

32:14

we record these interviews when when we speak to them for over an hour normally

32:22

and they tell us details about what they saw

32:27

what they experience went through and with some of these Witnesses we then

32:33

run something we call situated testimonies which is the Technique we

32:38

learned from forensic architecture where we invite these witnesses to our office here in Berlin and

32:44

with them we basically go through the spaces where they were

32:49

and we try to reconstruct in as much detail uh exactly what the experience and what

32:56

they saw so how those rooms were what kind of stuff was there why is it important why

33:02

they remember it and you know in this case you can see Sergey

33:08

zabowanski who is one of the first people who came to this theater uh explaining how him and his wife were

33:16

positioned in a room where the explosion wave reached them and kind of smashed

33:23

the metal door against them so these These are the the kind of

33:29

preliminary results of these saturated testimonies and as a result of this

33:35

project we hope to kind of overlay as much information that we can learn about

33:41

this particular attack against the architectural model so architectural model in this case

33:48

works as a backdrop for us to add things that we know about this

33:54

particular incident including this incredible story of people

33:59

self-organizing if you can imagine 1 500 people at some point lived in this

34:06

building in a city that is besieged in a city that doesn’t have electricity

34:14

that doesn’t have access to the internet of course um it’s quite amazing how you know we

34:22

started talking to them keeping in mind that these are potentially traumatized people who are victims of horrible

34:29

on war crime but they don’t actually think or speak

34:34

that way they are actually quite proud about what they were able to achieve in this particular

34:41

context in terms of you know separating tasks helping each

34:46

other making sure the food is there a baking bread you know I’m doing these incredible things at the same time

34:54

um you know the telling this story and and

34:59

kind of like recording this story against the backdrop of this building is

35:04

important for us because then we can understand what was destroyed on the

35:10

16th of March and exactly how the destruction is distributed in a special way right so

35:17

where were most casualties which rooms were supposedly more occupied than other

35:23

ones and so on so this is something that we currently are busy with here again you can see the

35:30

website that Jesse mentioned it’s the place where we share these investigations it’s called

35:37

investigations of support and if you want to follow the practice the our handle is below

35:43

um this is it from my side uh I think it’s good if we can shift this towards

35:49

more questions and answer um that performance I’m aware that the

35:55

arc I made between the the work we did in collaboration with 2218 or was this

36:02

recent work is quite dramatic um but still hopefully you would come

36:08

across some of the Logics that are that are present in our work that are kind of like uh continuing through through time

36:15

and irrespectively of the uh you know uh what what’s going on in

36:22

the world um yeah this is it from my side thank you

36:32

thanks Maxim um I’m hoping everyone can hear me now and

36:37

I’m brought back in as a as a as a box and in the presentation

36:43

um yeah the the the breadth is quite astounding and and the courage to

36:48

persist throughout it is quite astounding as well um and I think it’s just the demands of

36:54

this year that I’ve placed upon the team to to kind of make that dramatic Arc in

37:00

the shift and I think it proves you know to a lot of us outside that um you know

37:06

Citizen and kind of Civic LED not Civic is in a governmental response because

37:12

you’re very much independent of that but but but these are quite crucial in solving large-scale problems and trying

37:18

to document large-scale problems so I think that’s what ties your work together and and why we wanted to work

37:25

with you over the past couple of years to kind of engage in in that um what other problems are immediate

37:31

like like for war at hand or whether they’re maybe a couple years out with

37:37

climate change or or whether they’re something that occurred gradually and

37:42

persistently over a generation like like the the way the property has has become

37:48

so unaffordable in Vancouver and has changed the lives for for countless many many people and families and and

37:54

communities here um so so thank you um for the work

37:59

um I’ll open it up to anyone attending the the live stream if you have any questions please put them in the Q a

38:06

um and uh you can write them in the Q a box or if you want to raise your hand

38:12

um our our webinar Pilots uh Tau and and Justice can can bring you in as a live

38:19

voice um I mean Maxim hell is

38:27

how has it been trying to reassemble the team or or kind of um continue the

38:33

through line of work because you’re based in Berlin but of course after the situation like like an

38:39

invasion people don’t always get to choose kind of where they end up afterwards and and how is the team been

38:45

operating yeah I mean the team is currently scattered um

38:51

the colleagues of mine who were part of the

38:57

tattoo on your project as you know uh for Essa and German who made the

39:03

dashboard possible the different reasons not always were more related they’ve

39:08

kind of um we still collaborate a bit but we’re not currently part of the team who does

39:14

the investigative work and two of our team members now are

39:20

based in cave um so you know

39:26

um the distributedness of the team is is part of the game it seems

39:33

um the first thing we started to do when the war started was to map these events

39:39

and to be honest it was kind of Unthinkable for the first two months of the war to

39:46

do anything else we completely dropped all the other collaborations and projects and very intensely focused on

39:54

first making sure that our loved ones are safe and somewhere

40:01

somewhere safe and second you know trying to to work on

40:06

this kind of investigative work um I think now as things are

40:16

I mean you know I mean I can’t say normalizing but you get to understand that this is the reality or that that

40:25

you’re is facing you and that’s what’s going on so as as that’s going on we

40:31

basically started to slowly open up the older

40:38

types of work that we did and it’s actually quite useful for sometimes for

40:43

things that we uh build even sometimes technically you know in terms of

40:51

development and code and stuff like that um

40:56

so at this point we’re still mostly focusing on the investigations project and that’s what where where my mind is

41:04

currently but yeah I mean this is roughly where how this this whole thing

41:09

happened we have a question coming in um from

41:15

Leanne Carly um she says awesome work so inspiring um have you seen change occurred based

41:22

on the work with 221a have you seen it shift perspective and actions on stakeholders who work in housing in

41:27

Vancouver um maybe I can just say that what we’ve just launched it today uh the dashboard

41:33

so this is the first public instance and um in developing it we also kind of met

41:39

with a couple of um housing folks who work in housing who study housing who study the issues and I

41:46

think they were quite encouraged by the work at hand but maybe Maxime you can

41:51

reflect on that question or what kind of effect might something like the the dashboard have

42:02

yeah it’s a very good question um

42:07

yeah I have to say this is like um

42:14

you know that we tried and we did some things that were extremely complicated

42:19

in terms of for instance at some point we were trying to figure out how to buy

42:25

a flat and sell it to 100 people you know as in as these shares and how that

42:30

would legally be possible and so on uh but in the end the the dashboard I

42:36

mean like if I can look at it now from from a bit of a distance it looks almost

42:42

stupidly simple right it’s like such basic stuff that you can see there you can see oh like you know like if you

42:50

have average income in Vancouver like 40 or whatever percent of your

42:57

um income go towards housing these things are are very basic but

43:03

somehow I feel like those types of you know like it’s very very simple

43:10

um kind of steps towards people being aware of what housing market is in their city

43:17

and also what is normal worldwide and what is also like um actually comfortable

43:23

what is it that we want to fight fight for what is it that is desirable

43:29

um I think that is quite an important thing to figure out

43:35

um this the idea to like that we had when we did this in terms of

43:42

uh future was to then think about ways to then do this comparatively for other

43:48

cities so you know someone who’s from Vancouver may find this uh dashboard too obvious

43:55

for example but then imagine seeing that how this something like this works let’s say in Berlin or in some sort of in

44:02

Jakarta in some of the completely different types of markets and of course for

44:09

something like this it’s it’s also important to engage with this on the level of policy making so

44:16

with Jesse and the team that to do when they put together we had a range of consultations

44:24

and calls with actually quite a lot of influential people who study either uh

44:30

housing market in Canada or um or policy and that was very helpful

44:35

because we could kind of like also get their perspective on these issues

44:43

um yeah I mean I generally think the quicker the simple response for your

44:48

question is you know by by understanding what is desirable in the most simple and basic

44:56

terms uh we can better you know unite together to to fight the

45:03

the common foes whether they’re automated landlords or or policy makers who don’t work hard enough to make sure

45:11

things are uh you know livable

45:19

thank you um just some more comments coming in from Sharon Kaplan who says incredible

45:24

work um Julia Aoki one of our board members uh she says not a question just a

45:29

message of appreciation this presentation’s done me a bit as it documents the Urgent transition in your

45:34

work um and then a question coming from B Bogart do you have any thoughts

45:40

Reflections on the potential tensions between Notions of objectivity in relation to creative practice and the

45:47

construction of your images and models Etc and was it national objectivity yeah in

45:55

relation to creative practice

46:00

yeah I I love that question that’s like that’s exactly where my brain is in a

46:08

way that I think the stuff that we did before and that we

46:15

um you know the the things that we focused on were

46:22

kind of more uh dealing with these issues of like City scale data let’s try

46:28

to see the subjectively let’s try to figure out what is what can be the good solution let’s try to figure out in the

46:34

process of renovating Flats in a certain city what is the biggest pollutant maybe

46:40

it’s something that is easily substitutable or something else you know these kind of questions of a kind of

46:46

person who hopes for for a better future and helps to wants to help to contribute to solving some of

46:53

these issues um and we tried to apply something like

46:59

this for the investigations stuff because in the beginning we saw the scale of

47:06

Destruction and how many people suffer from it and how many different locations are targeted and what is the pattern

47:13

behind this and so on so we started to collect data and we started to basically log every day all the

47:21

incidents that happened um and then we started to collaborate with a bunch of people and we realized

47:26

that actually there’s quite a lot of organizations that are doing similar thing

47:32

and this was a very wise kind of advice on

47:38

alongside the foreign Weissman when he was like basically

47:43

suggesting maybe we should not chase that scale of you know like fully

47:48

representing something and instead looking at things that are more

47:54

um kind of dense and complex and at the same time that through looking at which

48:00

for a long time you can maybe see the reflection of the world where where the supersisted in also in in a historic way

48:07

so in that way we started looking at the more people theater and in that way we kind of dropped a bit

48:15

of this image of of a scale but still wanted to see it in an objective way as

48:22

possible but there was a second shift which happened to be

48:28

the witnesses um when we speak to them they

48:34

completely kind of shifted the way we perceived this attack and the way even what we wanted to figure out you

48:41

know and in the beginning we wanted to understand the explosion what exactly was hit where did the method explode

48:47

what kind of weight it had what kind of you know what exactly that missile wasn’t and we still want to figure that

48:54

out but increasingly we are kind of diving deeper into these very

49:01

subjective very sentimental stories from from the people we work with

49:07

and I also find incredible satisfaction in that I feel like this is

49:13

why this work is also in a white therapeutic for us um

49:19

and also this this process that I showed you were Witnesses sit with us in the

49:24

room and model some of these events it’s also kind of in a weird way therapeutic for them it seems in a way that they you

49:31

know they don’t want to leave they kind of like have this extendedness of time to look at these

49:38

things and to recall what happened and to somehow process you know even what happened

49:46

um so yeah I mean it’s just my current like what I’m

49:51

currently focusing on is trying to think about topics like memory or topics like

50:00

you know like kind of Nationwide trauma in how societies deal with it and of

50:05

course for something like that it you want to read and learn about things that are

50:12

more kind of in sensitive and is opposite to ones that

50:18

are more kind of trying to to read something at scale with correct

50:26

data sets um and I I do see value in both approaches you know it’s just that

50:32

it was nice to hear your question because it almost encompasses the shift from from one to another

50:40

another question coming in from Leanne Carly so could you see potential for

50:46

this situated testimonies um in the housing work uh for Vancouver yeah this

50:51

is I’m very intrigued by what will happen to us after we’re done with this I don’t know this is something which is

50:59

so fastly changes the way we see things here with this particular project that

51:05

I am scared to do now freestyle on this because I’m sure there will be some way

51:12

that this affects us but um but it’s it’s a great question of course

51:17

yeah I have to think about for us to think about too in a 221a as

51:25

we think about this because we’re also involved with housing now through the um 22na artist from Housing Society

51:33

um with our first Residential Properties on uh on Main Street here um

51:38

Maxine maybe you could just um say where where where is this work going that

51:45

you’ve been doing in the past year and and what has it been supporting because now all of a sudden your work is entered

51:51

the realm of kind of um human rights and and and War documentation and then who’s

52:00

who’s using it or who’s who’s using it as documentation yeah this is a great question and it

52:06

also is it’s always confusing when you are trying to be multi-disciplinary

52:12

um it’s always confusing where is your um kind of client or what is this

52:20

director towards I think the the we already tried to work in

52:26

certain Frameworks so through forensic architecture we know the rule

52:32

um basically submit these materials that we work on towards legal procedures

52:38

right and this is amazing this is super interesting because we also through this will learn a lot we get a lot of advice

52:44

on what types of things we have to pay attention uh towards or maybe even if we

52:50

talk to Witnesses how exactly we should do it and what we should not do and stuff like that

52:55

we also worked with mass media so we have a collaboration with the big Ukrainian media

53:02

we’re discussing the partnership with the Spiegel here in Germany and the TV

53:07

tower case was published in the New York Times where these kind of scroll telling

53:12

type of thing where you spend the model and you read things and that was quite nice but I think

53:18

neither neither the traditional kind of context nor

53:24

media one is not our primary kind of focus at least that’s where I stand now

53:30

and that this is literally um for me is the way I think about this now

53:38

is that we’re trying to think about memory and memorializing the site that is so

53:44

important for Ukraine and for ukrainians at the same time it is Out Of Reach and we don’t

53:52

know when it will be back um before it’s back we cannot touch that drawing and we

54:00

cannot um you know

54:06

we cannot use it for anything that would help us figure out what exactly happened

54:12

and we cannot um I mean I’m just thinking on what’s going

54:18

on there now when you know it’s of course being manipulated and affected by the Russian side in very specific ways

54:27

um maybe a month ago they played the Tchaikovsky concert there um as a kind of a way to show old Russian

54:34

culture is and how it you know makes the city great um things like that are quite striking

54:42

and painful and I think kind of as a response to seeing that having this

54:48

space digitally in a way that people who care about this can gather and almost almost literally

54:56

go there as as if they’re we’re going to a memorial is something that in my mind

55:01

is something that this is going towards [Music] um

55:06

I mean but also this is very new and we are figuring things out on the way and

55:11

of course these contexts such as you know the mass media or the legal institutions we of course will work with

55:18

them um if that if that makes sense just yeah definitely

55:24

um I think it’s up to the world to figure out what to do about the work too which is um having the information out there is

55:30

is very valuable and so many people from from survivors from witnesses to to

55:37

larger bodies to Media we’ll be able to draw from it and I think that multi-disciplinary it just makes its um

55:45

its impact like so much more um Broad and so much more impactful

55:52

um I’ll open I’ll leave it uh for one one

55:58

more or two more questions if there’s anything else coming um from our live streamers

56:06

I haven’t seen any hands raised okay well Maxime

56:12

um this has been incredible to work with you over the past couple of years and it’s always good to see you and hear

56:17

from you and and I follow along with a lot of interest and support always

56:23

um so thank you so much thank you yeah man um I think you’re on the call as well so

56:29

waving to you thank you so much for all your data crunching and your responsiveness

56:34

we haven’t seen you in a while but thank you so much for the work over the years

56:39

um on this as well uh Virginia Hong says thank you so much for sharing this incredible work

56:46

um one more autonomous Anonymous attendee just asks incredible work what other data do you wish you had access to

56:55

um yeah I mean there is always uh issue of quality of data

57:02

um there’s always issue of kind of making assumptions towards making

57:07

something that is um you know I assume the questions about Vancouver dashboard but uh since there’s

57:16

no specifications about that I’ll say I really wish to see the video on the missile strikes the the theater or

57:23

something like that [Music] um what I was about to say is that the the

57:30

there’s always this work that is necessary to make this image clear and

57:36

possible for people to engage with such as the with them weather type of

57:42

gradient that shows you the how it feels to live in Vancouver there’s a lot of things that would be nice to see it

57:48

would be interesting to have more data on uh people’s incomes and their

57:53

distribution in a way that is also kind of special it would be great to have

58:00

more Census Data more spatial that’s what I heard from German uh but but what I was about to say is

58:06

that in the end it’s still not the main question it’s you can figure out the way

58:12

to to do things with data that is out there

58:17

um and then as soon as it’s yeah is as you know what what to fight for that’s

58:24

that’s my main thought about that I agree I think it’s designers like you

58:31

that help us make sense of it for those who call them some numbers and things don’t always make the most sense so

58:38

thank you um all right we will leave it there I wish you a good evening in Berlin

58:44

um thank you to everyone who joined us today and take care bye-bye thank you all thank you so much bye-bye

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