Livestream: 221A + CST Vancouver housing access dashboard launch

2023

A conversation with Maksym Rokmaniko from the Center for Spatial Technologies on their newly launched Vancouver housing accessibility dashboard and their continuing work documenting the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Link to dashboard: https://doma.city/vancouver/dashboard

Learn more:

DOMA


https://spatialtech.info/A conversation with Maksym Rokmaniko from the Center for Spatial Technologies on their newly launched Vancouver housing accessibility dashboard and their continuing work documenting the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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Autogenerated Transcript from YouTube (if available)

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0:03

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

0:08

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

0:14

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

0:20

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

0:27

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

0:34

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

0:40

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

0:47

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

0:54

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

1:01

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

1:07

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

1:15

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

1:21

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

1:27

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

1:34

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

1:40

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

1:46

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

1:54

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

1:59

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

2:05

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

2:11

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

2:19

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

2:24

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

2:31

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

2:37

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

2:43

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

2:49

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

2:55

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

3:03

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

3:08

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

3:15

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

3:21

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

3:27

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

3:33

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

3:39

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

3:45

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

3:51

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

3:58

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

4:03

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

4:08

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

4:14

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

4:19

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

4:24

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

4:31

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

4:37

it over to you thank you

4:42

thank you Jesse for your great introduction and information

4:48

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

4:54

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

5:02

represent the team of the center for special Technologies almost everything

5:07

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

5:12

it is quite strange to go back to this work because

5:18

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

5:25

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

5:33

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

5:40

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

5:50

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

5:55

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

6:03

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

6:11

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

6:18

has quite a long history by now but um it is

6:23

something that started from a curiosity towards uh blockchains and smart

6:30

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

6:36

trying to solve issues relating to complexities of living in contemporary

6:43

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

6:49

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

6:56

is um kind of showing how wealth over time

7:01

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

7:08

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

7:16

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

7:24

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

7:30

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

7:36

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

7:43

because this is extremely important to see

7:49

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

8:02

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

8:15

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

8:20

privatized and kind of owned by corporate landlords so

8:26

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

8:33

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

8:38

and then create certain types of um incentives

8:44

for housing to be more of home and less

8:49

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

8:57

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

9:03

residential flats are the biggest asset crust in the

9:09

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

9:15

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

9:25

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

9:31

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

9:37

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

9:56

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

10:03

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

10:10

we were focusing on Eastern Europe Eastern European cities are specific

10:15

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

10:42

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

10:49

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

10:55

was trying first time to look at Northern America

11:01

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

11:06

the US we we worked with um

11:14

U.S Berkeley UC Berkeley um

11:20

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

11:27

automated landlords who basically use AI to buy cheapest

11:35

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

11:41

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

12:00

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

12:06

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

12:12

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

12:19

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

12:27

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

12:34

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

12:40

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

12:47

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

12:52

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

12:57

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

13:04

shifted from 2006 to 2019

13:09

uh these changes are present all around the world this this

13:15

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

13:20

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

13:26

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

13:31

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

13:37

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

13:55

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

14:01

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

14:07

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

14:14

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

14:20

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

14:27

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

14:34

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

14:40

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

14:46

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

14:54

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

15:00

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

15:32

time so uh indeed as Jesse said we we wanted to

15:38

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

15:45

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

15:50

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

15:56

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

16:09

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

16:14

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

16:21

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

17:02

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

17:18

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

17:38

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

18:36

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

18:42

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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