McGregor, G.L. (2006). Architecture, Space and Gameplay in World of Warcraft and Battle for Middle Earth 2 , Proceedings of the 2006 international conference on Game research and development, pp.69-76. This paper, which is very relevant to my work at the lab, is an architectural analysis of the spa...
Weather influence on spatial behavior of catchbob players
Writing a paper about the affordances of space, I tried to get back to Catchbob data and create some heat maps that would represent players's exploration of the environment with two different weather conditions: with (first) or without snow (right)... a sort of commonsensical demonstration of how w...
Computational tricycle or bicycle?
Paul Saffo's latest column on his web notepad interestingly deal with the "bicycle versus tricycle" design issue: "Hewlett Packard’s announcement last month of a “Retro” edition of its HP35S calculator highlights another interface that is an even greater lost opportunity -- Reverse Polish Notation....
Using real-time heart-rate to control a physical game
The following paper Using heart rate to control an interactive game (by Nenonen et al.) presented at CHI 2007 propose to use real-time heart rate information to control a physically interactive biathlon: "Instead of interfacing the game to an exercise bike or other equipment with speed output, the ...
Outdoor ad and shoe polish device
This device is an elevated seat employed by shoe polisher in Puebla, Mexico (Seen last month there). What is strikingly intriguing on this picture is that it has been used as an outdoor advertisement space. Why do I blog this? this draws some good reflection about spatial features in cities and cu...
Research studio (in architecture)
In a very insightful blogpost entitled "Is there research in the studio?", Kazy Varnelis wonders about "research studios" in architecture. The main issue here is that"such studios invoke analysis rather than design as their method and aim for publication or exhibition as end products". Quoting Turp...
Seating in a phone booth
(Seen in Lyon, France last friday) The design of phone booth is often problematic: you have stand while calling. Fortunately, some folks manage to get rid of that problem for others by simply destroying some glassed-wall of the booth... which allows to seat on the edge. And yes, there are still pe...
LIFT event in Seoul, Korea
We've put together a small LIFT event in Seoul, Korea on September 12th with speakers such as Adam Greenfield, Bruce Sterling and Korean architect Yoo Suk Yeon to discuss real and digital spaces. Topic: Spaces: From Real to Digital. How technological developments in both the physical worlds and vir...
Patina on a map
How to know where you're located on this map? simply by looking at the biggest white area, where people are used to point other that this town is located there, in this arid area of Mexico. Patina on map, great indicator, although the name of the village is then removed (Zapotitlan). ...
Architecture and gaming
Alla Varney in The Escapist has an interesting piece about gaming and architecture. Some excerpts that I found relevant (some parts are quotes from an interview of Andrew Hudson-Smith): "Slowly, architects - not software architects, the brick-and-mortar kind - are starting to notice. They're gradua...