For people interested in the relationship between Science-Fiction and the urban environment, Cyberpunk Cities Science Fiction Meets Urban Theory by Carl Abott is certainly a good resource. (A picture of a Shadowrun sourcebook that I ran across in Denmark this week) The paper argues that cyberpunk ...
The graphing calculator plateau
This piece in The Atlantic by Alexis Madrigal deals with an interesting case in technological evolution: the stabilization of a technical objects, which in this case in the so-called graphing calculator. The column wonders about the reasons why graphing calculators such as TI-83 did not change tha...
User study about check-in usage in Foursquare
Performing a Check-in: Emerging Practices, Norms and ‘Conflicts’ in Location-Sharing Using Foursquare by Cramer, Rost and Holmquist is an interesting paper presented at Mobile HCI2011. It's basically a user studies of Foursquare usage, based on in-depth interviews and 47 survey responses, about eme...
The promise of locative media seems to remain just that: a promise
Read in the "Rise and Fall of New Media" by Lauren Cornell and Kazys Varnelis: Locative media remained the stuff of demos and art-technology festivals until 2008 when Apple released the GPS-enabled iPhone 3G. Paradoxically, the mass realization of locative media seems to have taken the wind out o...
Filming, from the object point of view
This fellow, encountered at Monument Valley, AZ two week ago, took plenty of time to install this little camera on his huge SUV, a somewhat robotic eye... (or, more likely, a proxy to capture souvenirs). A brief chat with him allowed me to understand that he wanted to get an exhaustive view in the...
Design as cultural invention
An interesting quote found in a NYT piece about Berg London: “Historically, design has associated itself with utility and problem-solving, but we prefer the landscape of cultural invention, play and excitement,” Mr. Schulze said. “When technology is infinitely complex, and our attention increasingl...
"Beyond Locative: media arts after the spatial turn"
BEYOND LOCATIVE: MEDIA ARTS AFTER THE SPATIAL TURN is a panel at the upcoming ISEA 2011 conference in Istanbul. Chaired by Marc Tuters, it will feature talks by Tristan Thielmann, Mark Shepard and Michiel de Lange: "In 2006 Varnelis and Tuters published "Beyond Locative Media", which discussed the ...
Cities as printed circuits
Read in the marvelous novel by Thomas Pynchon called "The Crying of Lot 49": "She drove into San Narciso on a Sunday, in a rented Impala. Nothing was happening. She looked down a slope, needing to squint for the sunlight, onto avast sprawl of houses which had grown up all together, like a well-tend...
What are 5 things all designers should know (by Leila Takayama)
Interesting perspective by Leila Takayama on Kicker studio's weblog: "What are 5 things all designers should know? 1. People respond to many interactive technologies in ways that they respond to people, even when they won’t admit it or can’t recognize it. (See: The Media Equation) 2. There is often...
Björk's crystalline and new personal experience with [mobile] music
Biophilia - Björk's app-based music album - is a curious experience. Among the different app, the one that caught my eyes is certainly "Crystalline" (which corresponds to the first single off the new album) made by Scott Snibbe. From a musical standpoint, the song is played with Gameleste, an iPad-...