Mapping Swizterland

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Mapping Switzerland was an interesting exhibition by Hosoya Schaefer Architects, Zürich:

This exhibition curated by Pius Freiburghaus and organized by the Perforum at the Kulturzentrum Seedamm looks at maps, art and myths. It attempts at finding new ways to describe the identity of Switzerland ranging from the scientific to the artistic. Participants in the exhibition include the ETH Studio Basel, the ETH Institute of Cartography, Büro Destruct und Ursula Palla.

Hosoya Schaefer is showing eleven maps of Switzerland and its global context on 2m x 2m panels. With the panels leaning against the wall or propped up on wooden blocks, the installation alludes to the provisional and impermanent nature of the information on which these maps are based. Not an apodictic new ‘truth’ is searched for, but new ways of thinking. (...) Visualizations can help to propose new ways of thinking. They can help to see oneself not only in the historically grown context but also in the flux of globalization. We looked at a series of such factors. The graphic language of the maps, based on the density of information used in an atlas, is meant to go beyond the straightforward transfer of information and to evoke associations and open up space for fantasy.

There was also a nice article about it in the Weltwoche (pdf, 6.3Mb).

Why do I blog this? I like these visualizations that try to show things in a spatial way.

Wanderer: continuous movement in space guided by GPS

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Wanderer is a project by Jiri Heitlager & Jonas Hielscher (which I met last sunday). From what they explained me, it's an interesting location-based game. The main idea is very intriguing; it might lead to very curious patterns of movement in space:

The game Wanderer was developed during the CARGO WORKSHOPS 2005 in Oostende, Belgium. The theme of the workshop was to create an innovating game that uses Global Positioning System (GPS). The game Wanderer is played outside. The object of the game is that the player has to be in a continuous motion and has to respond to auditive signals provided through a headphone that is connected to the game system. Because the game is not mapped onto the coordinates of the physical space, it can be played in any location. The player is continuously confronted with the objects in public space functioning as game obstacles. In this way the game transforms the meaning of the physical object in public space.

Why do I blog this? I think it's a very simple game design that is very clever, I like this usage of technology to create weird kind of situations (like you receive order to get in certain direction but there are obstacles that you have to deal with).

More about it here.

About toilet usability

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Yes that's a field too! I ran across this interesting blogpost about it.

Forget web sites and technology interfaces for a minute. What about public bathrooms? They generally rank high on the "suck meter" for usability and customer experience. Here are just a few common irritants:

Horrid stall doors with locks that never seem to work Hand dryers that wouldn't blow an eyelash of your skin Toilet and sink sensors that play hit or miss games Soap dispensers that reguarily fail and clog Small, narrow, wall-mounted garbage bins overflowing with trash Double roll vice-grip dispensers that will not dispense the T.P. Banked sink counters, which collect puddles of water that: --> Dampen your personal property if you set it down --> Dampen your pants if you lean in to wash your hands Airport bathroom stalls too narrow for a person and a roll-aboard

Now, I am presenting my next complaint largely from the perspective of "a sitter." I'm sure you "standers" have your own bathroom usability problems, and I don't paricularily want to know what they are. However, even the standers need to sit eventually, and I am sure all of us want to know the answer to this question:

Who was the braniac that invented the gigantic roll of one-ply toilet paper?!

Why do I blog this? well it's sort-of a way to show that user experience of technology is broader than some folks expect it to be.

Studying Location-Based Reminders on Mobile Phones

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Place-Its: A Study of Location-Based Reminders on Mobile Phones by Timothy Sohn, Kevin A. Li1, Gunny Lee, Ian Smith, James Scott, and William G. Griswold, Ubicomp 2005. Some excerpts:

Context-awareness can improve the usefulness of automated reminders. However, context-aware reminder applications have yet to be evaluated throughout a person’s daily life. Mobile phones provide a potentially convenient and truly ubiquitous platform for the detection of personal context such as location, as well as the delivery of reminders. (...) This simple application, with the mobile phone as a platform, permitted the integration of location-based reminders into peoples’ daily practice. (...) an exploratory user study of Place-Its performed with ten participants, over a two-week period in Winter 2005.(...) We conducted our study in three steps, a pre-study questionnaire, a two week long deployment, and post-study interview. (...) We provided each participant with a Nokia 6600 to use during the study.

Conclusions are quite interesting:

Our findings from a two-week deployment of Place-Its help validate that location-based reminders can be useful even with coarse location-sensing capabilities. Notably, location was widely used as a cue for other contextual information that can be hard for any system to detect. On the whole, it appears that the convenience and ubiquity of location-sensing provided by mobile phones outweighs some of their current weaknesses as a sensing platform. This bodes well for the use of mobiles phones as a personal ubiquitous computing platform.

Our study revealed unexpected uses of location-aware reminders. We found that Place-It notes were often used for creating motivational reminders to perform activities that would vary in priority over time. This is similar to using post-it notes in highly visible areas for motivation. The locations for motivational reminders were often set at frequently visited places, such as ‘home’. We also found that a majority of the uses for Place-Its involved communicating with people through a variety of media (e.g. email, phone). Communication is typically not tied to specific locations, implying that location is being used as a cue for other kinds of situational context.

Why do I blog this? because, in my research, I am interested in how location information are disrupting group processes, such as communication.

Photographing every object used since 2003

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A very curious project by Alberto Frigo (professor at the Art and Technology department at the Gothenburg University). Since September 24th, this articts has photographed every object he has used. His purpose is to compile the unique code of different objects an individual uses throughout his life. The digital archive is here but he also printed his pictures: all of the images of a month on paper tablatures of 815x315 mm, each row being a day. The result is long-lasting The estimated numbers of tablatures at Frigo's death would be of 600, a strip of 500 meters. Here is the way it works:

1_During a life-event every object* the dominant-hand uses is photographed once and while used. 2_If an object of the same type is the following to be used, this object is not photographed unless the life-event changes. 3_A life-event changes as soon as the dominant-hand uses a different object in a different space. ALBERTO FRIGO, 2003/09.24 *Every artifact that is graspable, consistent and independent.

Why do I blog this? it's an impressive way of collecting a huge load of information, documenting an individual's life. What is interesting is the way this pictures are organized (try to click on the picture on his webpage): the connections between images are intriguing and it's funny to find the common pattern between them. It might be the outcome produced by camera blogject...

Report from the Blogject Workshop at LIFT06

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On February 1st, a day before the LIFT06 conference, a workshop about 'Blogjects and the new ecology of things' has been held in Geneva. The purpose of this event was to discuss usage scenarios of Blogjects, the design issues they raises as well as their significance in various contexts. The description of the scenarios helped us refining what would be the Blogjects features and capabilities. This report (.pdf, 18.6Mb) summarizes all the topic we discussed by presenting the main characteristics of Blogjects and four potential scenarios elaborated by the groups formed during the workshop.

As the Internet pervades more physical space and more social space it is likely that objects in the world will become able to connect to the network and participate in the web by disseminating and receiving data communications. As "things" participate within the Internet and once the Internet soaks through physical, geographic space a differentiated kind of Internet may arise. The Internet of Things sets up a different set of relations to social practice (we will be "in" a pervasive network) and a different set of relations to space (the Internet will be co-occupied by both social beings and things.) This shift generates new possibilities for integrating networked things into the Internet. This workshop addresses this shift by considering its characteristics in relation to an existing, prevalent set of practices and technologies currently in existence variously referred to as "the social web" and "Web 2.0." We then proceeded into four groups to conduct design scenarios in order to further explicate our understanding of a world in which things are connected, networked participants within a pervasive, wireless, mobile Internet. We conclude that there is a significant opportunity for designing compelling usage scenarios for such a near-future Internet of Things world and recommend a follow on, intensive, multi-day workshop/retreat to continue contributing to this important topic.

Feel free to spread it, make any comment, reblog it!

Field trial of a location-based annotation system

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My colleague Mauro is looking for guinea-pigs for the field trial of his STAMPS application, a location-based annotation system running on mobile phones.

STAMPS: Share your experience of the city

What is it?This is an academic research project of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. STAMPS is a little application that allows you to leave notes on a map using your mobile phone. You can see a map of the place where you are, visualised on the screen of your mobile. There, you can write a kind of SMS and attach it to the map so that other friends can see your message appearing on their map. You can write for instance: “this is my favorite pizzeria!”, to offer advice to your buddies. All the messages left in the system say something about the city where you live: what are the sport locations, the place to eat, the meeting spots. After a while, we want to use all these information to help the users to ‘navigate’ the city. You can ask the system, for instance: “where is a pizzeria nearby?”, and the system will search for other people’s messages which refer to the term pizzeria to give you an advice.

What are we looking for? We are looking for a group of ‘activists’, friends, who like to walk the city and annotate the spots they like the most, the places they hate. If you want to participate in this trial you need to be passionate about your city, informed on the activities running in the surroundings and ready to share this information with your friends. We expect from you to participate intensively for the next few months leaving notes of your activities in the urban area.

What is it for you? If you will be selected for the first trial all the connection costs that you will have to use the system will be reimbursed. If your telephone is not compatible with our software, we will give you a new one for the period of the trial. The most creative and active participants will be awarded with a monetary prize.

How can I apply for participating? Please send an email to shoutspace[at]gmail.com with your coordinates, your telephone model and your operator. If you apply with your friends you will have more chances to be selected. Please add the coordinates of your friends to the message.

Gispen XS: table to support collaboration

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Dutch designer Emilie Tromp pointed me on her Gispen XS table, which is aimed at acilitating creative collaboration (this is also the subject of her Master's thesis at Industrial Design Engineering of Delft University of Technology).

Table for creative collaboration and informal meeting in offices. High table with integrated computer that supports a dynamic way of meeting. By reducing the width and depth of the table the interaction is less formal and hierarchic. The table supports the creation of shared understanding by focussing on human-human interaction instead of human-computer interaction.

Meant to support creative collaboration and informal meeting in offices. The scope was to improve the creation of shared understanding by creating an informal atmosphere (by reducing the depth and width of the table, since distances are related to the level of formality of the conversation) and stimulating a positive body language with the collaborators (by adding tactile interesting aspects to the table).

Why do I blog this? I like the idea of playing on specific features to raise the informality. Besides, I am curious about the articulation of "the creation of shared understanding" and "creating an informal atmosphere".

BBC on the Future of TV

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According to the Guardian, there's going to be a report about how we will watch TV in the near future, published by the BBC. Some excerpts:

The year is 2016 and Chloe is 16. (...) In Chloe's world, there are no TV listings because there are no TV schedules, and there are no TV schedules because there are no TV channels. Instead, sitting at her PC, she logs on to a website geared specifically to teenage girls. She watches programmes sold there by independent production companies, or even fellow teenagers - not broadcasting, but narrowcasting. (...) Older generations are still likely to seek the identifiable channel brands they have grown up with. (...) Digital is not a matter of choice; for every TV viewer, it will be compulsory. At present digital and analogue signals are broadcast simultaneously but gradually analogue will be switched off around the country, (...) The giants roaming the television undergrowth are anxious not to become dinosaurs...

Why do I blog this? The article asks lots of interesting questions and is well, down-to-earth compared to some crap I've read about the future of content. Still have to find the complete white paper they are mentioning.

Update: the report is here (thanks Adrian McEwen!).

Wrap-up of the crystalpunk workshop in Utrecht

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A more structured summary of what I found interesting at the Crystalpunk workshop for soft architecture in Utrecht last week-end:

  • Pablo Miranda's talk targeted two aspects of architecture: being critical and projective. As for the critique part, a lot of things in architecture comes from the assumption that one can do stuff by drawing (before, people were building directly). The use of computer application has complicated this situation: new tools (3ds max, maya, catia...) gives a very important flavor to what's been designed: so who is going to be the author of a project built using such a tool? the architect or the designers of the tool? Concerning the projects, he presented those of his group which are amazingly interesting, especially those playing with genetic algorithm in architecture.
  • Adam Somlai-Fischer's point was about 'bionic spaces", not smarthomes. Sdam is against smarthomes, makes you dumb and incapable to interact with reality (which I definitely agree with, I hate the crappy intelligent fridge idea that may be refilled when empty). For him, architecture is not the building itself, not the behavior, it's not a dress code BUT the idea that space that surrounds us is a responsibility AND it's a social process. He thinks that now that social software are paving this way (web2.0, flickr...), we have familiar ground to replicate this in architecture. He then presented his incredible projects.
  • Jelle Feringa elaborated on Pablo's critique about interactive architecture. For him, each architect style is bound to the software they used (marcus novak - mathematica /greg lynn - maya kas oosterhuis - virtools / frank gehry - catia). His critique was also that specific software designed for architects are regressive. For example piranesi is very limitative: the software creates romantic-sketchy-cheesy models that make architects bound to old-fashioned model to create architecture. For him, archiCAD is also regressive in the sense that it helps quickly resolve design dilemmas and site-constraints unique tu strict municipal-building codes and client requirements through its interactive abilities. One of the most interesting project he presented was a chair design produced with genetic algorithm. They started by asking a question: "what is the minimum volume defining a chair" which they try to answer using genetic algorithm techniques. For Jelle, this was a new way of designing by addressing a specific question before creating an artifact.
  • Jonas Hielscher (Z-25) presented his project Dat-a: an installation based on RFID technology. The dat-a project allows to track people in an exhibit using rfid (you can see people's name in different rooms). He said: "we are in effect creating and Internet of Things". He and Pablo also mentioned this interesting fact after my presentation about blogject: we will get enormeous piles of data, how would we do deal with that (data mining gets hot as Jonas said).

Thanks Wil for all of this!

stuff

Video-Game auto-maps

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Via Wikipedia:

Automap is an abbreviation for "automatic mapping" a navigational aid featured in many video-games. It shows a limited top-down map view of the game world that is centered on the player's character and is updated in real-time as the character moves around. Automaps usually display traversible terrain, allies, enemies, and important locations. Some team-oriented multi-player games allow players to draw temporary lines and markings on the automap for others to see.

In Doom (quite possibly the game that popularized the term), the "Automap" is an item that looks like a flat-screen with green lines on it. Once picked up, the entire map of the level is divulged to the character, with red walls indicating places already seen and gray walls indicating places which the player has yet to explore. The game updates the map in real-time as you explore a level and allows you to play directly from the map screen, but unless you have the Automap item, monsters will not be displayed.

Why do I blog this? I am fascinated by players who video-game mapping freaks, either those who develops technologies to map the game environments or the one who draw them by hand.

Blogjects and the crystalpunk workshop in Utrecht

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Here are my slides from the presentation I prepared for the Crystalpunk Workshop for Soft Architecture, be careful, it's a 5Mb powerpoint (the pdf was too big).

The presentation actually describes the blogject concept as it started when Julian started talking about it and it presents what emerged from the workshop we did at LIFT06.

This is not the final wrap-up document of the workshop, we're still working on it :)

Bits and pieces from the CrystalPunk Manifesto

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I am actually in Utrecht, in the former utility area of a vacant 13 floor office (for the "Crystalpunk Workshop for Soft Architecture"). Rooted in self-education, DIY and drawning "connections between disconnected fields of knowledge" is the motto. Reading their description, I ran across this part that I find fundamental:

Now that we have found data, what are we going to do with it?!

Technologists have for decades been playing with the idea of the supposedly smart home: the entire house adaptive and responsive and proactive, providing conveniences like that resurfacing dystopian killer-app: the refrigerator that makes sure the milk never runs out. No matter how device-centric and profit-inspired these efforts are, and as such divided by a royal mile from the super-serendipity of Crystalpunk roomology, this workshop is moving in the same problem-space of obvious possibilities and unresolved puzzles of making sense from the surplus of automated data production. Everybody can generate a source of water by opening the tap, few are given to come up with conceptually stimulating ways to process the output.

Easy mobile-robots for PC enthusiasts

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WhiteBoxRobotics is a group of visionaries that aims at becoming an industry leader and innovator of PC based mobile robotic platforms for the entertainment, educational, and personal robotics industry.

White Box Robotics is setting the standard for an entirely new category within the mobile robotics industry. The company will deliver unprecedented value to enthusiasts, educators and OEM's through its PC-BOT platform. Our mission is to develop networked mobile robotic platforms that empower people by eliminating the difficult learning curve typically associated with building robots. (...) This technology allows anyone with a rudimentary understanding of assembling or upgrading PCs to build this new species of robot. The 9-series PC-BOT is a new and open standard which allows us to customize on a common platform, using mature, off-the-shelf parts. (...) The 914 also features integrated capabilities like vision-based navigation, object recognition, speech synthesis and speech recognition - all in an easy-to-use yet powerful point-and-click graphical user interface.

Check their manifesto on their blog.

Why do I blog this? I like this idea of easy access to assemble one's own robot.

Archikluge: Genetic Algorithm that evolves architectural diagrams

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Just met Pablo Miranda Carranza at the Crystalpunk Drug Workshop in Utrecht. One of Pablo's project seems tremendously interesting: ArchiKluge

ArchiKluge is the first of a series of small experiments written in Java which explore ‘artificial creativity’, automatic design and generative approaches in architecture. ArchiKluge is a simple Genetic Algorithm that evolves architectural diagrams. It explores the qualities of design made by machines, devoid of any intention, assumptions or prejudices, and which often display a very peculiar form of mindlessly but relentlessly pounding against obstacles and problems until overcoming them, a manner of acting nature and machines commonly exhibit. (...) ArchiKluge implements a Steady State Genetic Algorithm with Tournament selection. (...) The fitness function consist of the addition of each cell’s added ‘shortest paths’, a measure often used in network analysis (and in space analysis such as Bill Hillier’s Space Syntax). (...) For illustrating the resulting circulations through the evolved layouts, the paths left by random walkers, or agents that move randomly through the lattice have been used.

Why do I blog this? I like this idea of evolving architecture and would be happy to see it as tangible as this project of self-replicated robots! It also reminds me this dog who reconfigure itself into a couch (or check this).

Additionaly, related to the blogjects or fabject concept, it would be curious to integrate genetic algorithms in spimes and let them evolves on their own... would a spimey couch work?

Upcoming events this week-end

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Tomorrow and sunday, I'll be at the Crystalpunk Workshop for Soft Architecture in the Netherlands. I am going to present the scenarios we discussed at the LIFT workshop about blogjects/. Here is a description of the event:

Between September and December 2005 the Crystalpunk Workshop for Soft Architecture brought together a large international group of people to think about what all this means for spatial design and experience. Looking back at what we learned some underlying threads emerged. From the beginning we had only a peripheral interest in the technology itself; we proved it’s donkey stuff of which the basics you can learn yourself for cheap and without teachers. But what had our real interest was what to do with it. A room that does things for you may sound like a good idea, at least to some, but what if locks you out of the control structure in your own room: the inability to switch off the lights, say. We are not interested in silly input-output control situations of the kind architects and product designers come up with, but in rich Yeatsian entities that have their own life independent of us.

Saturday 11 March 14.00- 18.00: BOT / AIML workshop by Mario Campanella.

Sunday 12 March 14.00-19.00: Presentations by: Mirjam Struppek / Z-25 /Adam Somlai-Fischer / Pablo Miranda Carranza / Nicolas Nova / Jelle Feringa

Thanks wil for the invitation! Slides will be online soon.

And next monday, I'll be at for a workshop about foreseeing “Digital Civilizations": how the future of the digital revolution might impact social, cultural, economic spheres. Thanks Daniel! See the previous work did by this organization in this report (.pdf file 1,5 Mb).