Van Alen Sessions presents Season Three: AUTONOMOUS INFRASTRUCTURE

Van Alen Institute and Atlantic Media's CityLab today launched Season Three of Van Alen Sessions, an online short-documentary series highlighting current debates about urban infrastructure. Watch Season Three, Episode One here.

In the first episode of Van Alen Sessions Season Three: Autonomous Infrastructure, viewers get an inside look at a technologically sophisticated yet whimsically presented barge that collects trash in Baltimore's Jones Falls River. Mr. Trash Wheel is both a popular character, with nearly 15,000 Twitter followers, and a serious solar-powered machine, having retrieved more than 1.4 million pounds of garbage from the river since May 2014.

"This story and the next two in the series, which feature drone use in bridge inspection in Minneapolis and power generation via Portland's water supply, illustrate beautifully how cities can combine human talent with new technology to become both more productive and environmentally efficient," says Van Alen Institute Executive Director David van der Leer. "In these videos, we've woven together professional, academic, and everyday voices to show the interplay between complex city systems and daily life."

The three, 5-7-minute Season Three videos explore the capacity and limits of rapidly changing technology in cities at a time of increasingly automated infrastructure. The expert insights of designers and engineers and the experiences of everyday people illuminate these stories. These new episodes give viewers an up-close examination of revolutionary robotic maintenance systems and retrofitted underground waterways.

Van Alen Institute produced Season Three in collaboration with independent documentary filmmaker Lucy Wells. She has directed original documentary series for The Atlantic, Bloomberg News, and The Washington Post and produced commercial work for brands including Bacardi, Johnson & Johnson, and UPS. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts.

Episode One is live on citylab.com and vanalen.org. Episode Two will be posted on the same sites on January 17th, and Episode Three will follow on January 24th. After the release of all three episodes, an article by Van Alen research fellow, Komal Kehar, a graduate student at the School of Visual Arts, will further explore the issues raised in the videos.

Season One of Van Alen Sessions dealt with massive transit tunnel building projects, while Season Two explored the relationship between energy infrastructure and communities. Season Four will be released in conjunction with Van Alen's public program festival in June 2018.

Van Alen Sessions are produced with talented documentary film directors and graduate student researchers. Funding for the first three seasons has come from the National Endowment for the Arts, AkzoNobel, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. NEA funding continues through June 2019, and Van Alen is seeking new funders to match the NEA grants for subsequent seasons.

Season Three is made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

About Van Alen Institute

At Van Alen Institute, we believe design can transform cities, landscapes, and regions to improve people's lives. We collaborate with communities, scholars, policymakers, and professionals on local and global initiatives that rigorously investigate the most pressing social, cultural, and ecological challenges of tomorrow. Building on more than a century of experience, we develop cross-disciplinary research, provocative public programs, and inventive design competitions.

Current Van Alen Institute projects include Ecologies of Addiction/Urban Mind, a joint US-UK initiative to explore how digital technologies can be used to better understand the complex relationship between the built environment of the city and addictive behaviors. Urban SOS is a competition Van Alen co-produces with AECOM. This year's theme, hOUR City, invited students to propose new solutions to housing, transportation, and economic development problems. Keeping Current is an ongoing series of design challenges to adapt to the effects of sea-level rise in Greater Miami through the lenses of economy, ecology, and equity.