In this seventh episode of Choreographing the City at MIT, Dr. Adesola Akinleye and Professor Gediminas Urbonas are joined by urban theorist and director of Theatrum Mundi Dr John Bingham-Hall. 

‘Moving forward from the notion of agency and things having their own futures proposed in the last conversation with Dr Pratt, this episode looks at a number of research projects combining ideas from urbanism and the arts, carried out by Theatrum Mundi. We particularly discuss how infrastructural ways of thinking can help us understand what makes places work as active forms, rather than finished artefacts. Dr Bingham-Hall discusses looking at scores as offers of possibility and how this notion can be used as an instrumental approach to design. This speaks to the concept of four-dimensional space that Dr Mahina discusses in episode five: how we create art or cities that are four-dimensional (in movement, emerging, ever connecting and separating) seeing the lived-experience (or the matrix of mind-ful-body in environment) as including the temporal in order to be in relationship with […]. To be in relationship with […] being a key notion across all the Morning Conversations and my residency in general.’ - Adesola

This podcast is the result of the Morning Conversation series held in the Fall 2020 Choreographing the City class, offered by the Art, Culture and Technology Program at MIT in partnership with Theatrum Mundi and Professor Richard Sennett. The course was taught by Professor Gediminas Urbonas, and the MIT Center for Art, Science, and Technology's visiting artist, choreographer Dr. Adesola Akinleye.

Dr. Akinleye’s residency looks at emerging lexicons for movement in urban space that connect to ideas shared across dance-making and choreography to city-making and building community.
This series of eight episodes is hosted by Dr. Adesola Akinleye, Professor Gediminas Urbonas, and Chucho Ocampo Aguilar.

References and further reading:

Theatrum Mundi Library:
https://theatrum-mundi.org/library 

https://theatrum-mundi.org/?s=adesola%20Akinleye
To see Adesola’s work at Theatrum Mundi 

Scoring the city: 
Scoring the City http://scoring.city/
Referred at the beginning of the pod cast, with Gascia Ouzounian (Oxford University)

Sonic-urbanism:
https://theatrum-mundi.org/project/sonic-urbanism/

Urban Backstages:
https://theatrum-mundi.org/library/urbanbackstages-londonfieldwork/ 
Referred to particularly in terms of how artistic/ creative spaces are felt and their impact through this 

Easterling, K. (2016). Extrastatecraf : the power of infrastructure space. London / New York: Verso Books.
Referred to during the conversation by John (particularly ‘Knowing to… Knowing that…’)

Other info: 
Date of conversation November 16th 2020 

Key words:
urbanism, encounter, score, music, improvisation, infrastructure, embodied knowledge, possibility

Choreographing the City - Ep. 7 | Scores and Infrastructure, Instruction and Encounter

Art, Culture, and Technology program at MIT