Strata by Jody Elff

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Doing a presentation in Lyon (France) today, I encountered this interesting sound installation in a parking garage (the policy here is to put art installation in every underground parking garage, which is nice): Strata by Jody Elff

Commissioned by Lyon Parc Auto, Strata is a reactive sonic sculpture distributed throughout 6 levels of the new subterranean parking garage at the Cité Internationale complex in Lyon. The work is the result of 2 years of combined effort between Jody Elff, Lyon Parc Auto, and Art/Enterprise. Strata explores the relationships of levels, or strata of the structure itself

The work consists of 6 unique sonic “personalities,” one for each level of the facility. A computer controls the occurrence and distribution of the sounds throughout the facility. When an observer is on a particular level of the garage, they hear only the sound of that level. However, there is a global control process in place that guarantees that all six levels are harmonically and rhythmically coherent. In addition to the control of the sounds by the computer, the sounds of vehicles themselves will be transformed and integrated into the final presentation. The result is one of a spontaneously generated composition, comprised of the individual sonic events from each floor. This combined result can be heard in the main pedestrian entrance hall of the facility.

In addition to the sonic sculpture, a visual component of the work was installed in the elevator cars. A series of patters drawn directly from the software used to create the sound sculpture was realized in a light filtering material. As your visual relationship to the elevator cars shifts, the materials change color, from amber to blue to translucent.

Why do I blog this? what I like in the parking company approach here is the idea that space is not a neutral domain. Their interest is to pay attention to the aesthetic considerations of their spaces.

Ethnography of Petrol Station Stay

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TENDING TO MOBILITY: INTENSITIES OF STAYING AT THE PETROL STATION by Daniel Normark (Environment & Planning A. Pion, vol. 38, no 2, pp 241-252.) is an ethnographic study of ongoing social activities at a petrol station.

Petrol stations constitute a nexus for mobility. Through ethnographic observations it is tested how the continuous flow of vehicles, commodities, money and people is sustained and made accountable. The fieldwork demonstrates that despite its transitory character, the petrol station offers a wide spectrum of ‘duration of stay’. The station was used while being on-the-way as well as providing a possibility to disembark from automobility, i.e. being off-the-way. However, the most important finding is that the station tends to mobility, from the production and recognition of fluency, the constant negotiation and articulation work of situations, to continuous maintenance and repair of movement. Accomplishing a flow of people, vehicles, money and commodities is a complex and delicate task requiring subtle negotiation between staff and visitors as well as among visitors themselves. A negotiation supported and hampered by available materialities of the place.

Why do I blog this? I like this idea of studying non-place (à la Augé), and gas stations are of particular interest, their identity (placeness?) is very intriguing.

Modalities of space in video games

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Axel Stockburger has a very interesting research topic entitled "THE RENDERED ARENA: MODALITIES OF SPACE IN VIDEO AND COMPUTER GAMES". He's working on this at the University of the Arts London, Research Scholarship London Institute with Dr. Angus Carlyle (LCC), Alan Sekers (LCC), Prof. Clive Richards (Coventry University).

one of the most evident properties of those games is their shared participation in a variety of spatial illusions. Although most researchers share the view that issues related to mediated space are among the most significant factors characterising the new medium, as of yet, no coherent conceptual exploration of space and spatial representation in video and computer games has been undertaken.

This thesis focuses on the novel spatial paradigms emerging from computer and video games. It aims to develop an original theoretical framework that takes the hybrid nature of the medium into account. The goal of this work is to extend the present range of methodologies directed towards the analysis of digital games. In order to reveal the roots of the spatial apparatus at work an overview of the most significant conceptions of space in western thought is given. Henri Lefebvre’s reading of space as a triad of perceived, conceived and lived space is adopted. This serves to account for the multifaceted nature of the subject, enables the integration of divergent spatial conceptions as part of a coherent framework, and highlights the importance of experiential notions of spatiality. Starting from Michel Foucault’s notion of the heterotopia, game-space is posited as the dynamic interplay between different spatial modalities. As constitutive elements of the dynamic spatial system mobilized by digital games the following modalities are advanced: the physical space of the player, the space emerging from the narrative, the rules, the audiovisual representation and the kinaesthetic link between player and game. These different modalities are examined in detail in the light of a selected range of exemplary games. Based on a discussion of film theory in this context an original model that serves to distinguish between different visual representational strategies is presented. A chapter is dedicated to the analysis of the crucial and often overlooked role of sound for the generation of spatial illusions. It is argued that sound has to be regarded as the privileged element that enables the active use of representational space in three dimensions. Finally the proposed model is mobilised to explore how the work of contemporary artists relates to the spatial paradigms set forth by digital games. The critical dimension of artistic work in this context is outlined. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the impact of the prevalent modes of spatial practice in computer and video games on wider areas of everyday life.

Why do I blog this? since space/place are the cornerstone of what I investigate in my research about pervasive games, I am interested by this approach.

Wow and job training

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John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas wrote a very insightful article about World of Warcraft in Wired. Their take is that such kind of multiplayer game is a very relevant training for people's future job.

what takes place in massively multiplayer online games is what we call accidental learning. It's learning to be - a natural byproduct of adjusting to a new culture - as opposed to learning about. (...) When role-playing gamers team up to undertake a quest, they often need to attempt particularly difficult challenges repeatedly until they find a blend of skills, talents, and actions that allows them to succeed. This process brings about a profound shift in how they perceive and react to the world around them. They become more flexible in their thinking and more sensitive to social cues. The fact that they don't think of gameplay as training is crucial. Once the experience is explicitly educational, it becomes about developing compartmentalized skills and loses its power to permeate the player's behavior patterns and worldview. (...) The day may not be far off when companies receive résumés that include a line reading "level 60 tauren shaman in World of Warcraft."

Why do I blog this? what I like here is that the author do not talk about the common misconception about learning with games: you barely learn a content while playing game but rather you learn processes and problem solving tricks (through trials and errors for instance). This article also makes me think of Nick Yee' paper about how video-games blur the boundaries of work and play.

Information versus Knowledge

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In the april 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review (Vol. 84, Issue 4), there is a column by Lawrence Prusak that struck me: "The World Is Round". The author is actually taking the counter position of Thomas Friedman who claims that "“Several technological and political forces have converged, and that has produced a global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration without regard to geography or distance – or, soon, even language.” along with Bill Gates or Jakob Nielsen (who advocate for a similar idea).

Yes, we are interconnected on a truly astonishing scale. But Gates, Friedman, and many others make a fundamental error (...) Their mistake is that they’re confusing information with knowledge. (...) What’s the difference between information and knowledge? Information is a message, one-dimensional and bounded by its form: a document, an image, a speech, a genome, a recipe, a symphony score. You can package it and instantly distribute it to anyone, anywhere. Google, of course, is currently the ultimate information machine, providing instantaneous access to virtually any piece of information you can imagine (...) Knowledge results from the assimilation and connecting of information through experience, most often through apprenticeship or mentoring. (...) Most of the people in the world remain out of the knowledge loop and off the information grid. One billion people on the Internet means there are five and a half billion people who aren’t on it. Bringing those people into the global conversation is essential to achieving true democratization of knowledge. But simply giving everyone access to e-mail and Google will never in itself flatten the earth. Until our governments, NGOs, schools, corporations, and other institutions embrace the idea that knowledge – not information – is the key to prosperity, most of the world’s people will remain a world apart.

Why do I blog this? I fully agree with the distinction between information/knowledge; it's often a misconception, especially in the domain of educational technologies.

Colors in email

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In the last issue of Communication of the ACM, there is a paper about the value of color in email by Moshe Zviran , Dov Te'eni and Yuval Gross. The authors conducted an interesting field experiment about it.

DOES COLOR IN EMAIL MAKE A DIFFERENCE? Yes, if used correctly, it can excite and please, prompting recipients to respond as the sender intended— clicking a designated link or even buying something.

Color has two main functions—attract attention and set the right mood—for responding positively to a message or request. And because of our increasinglyshort attention spans and the relatively quick interaction speed we expect in today’s electronic world, it must do both at the same time. Color can be a prime attention grabber when and where people’s attention is scarce

Why do I blog this? this kind of topic is absolutely not related to what I do but I am sometimes amazed by color usage in email exchange.

RFID overview: report by the ITU

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UBIQUITOUS NETWORK SOCIETIES: THE CASE OF RADIO FREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION is a "background papers" by by Lara Srivastava, Telecom Policy Analyst, International Telecommunication Union (ITU). It's actually a very accurate and comprehensive overview of the RFID R&D. The part about existing usage is of particular interest, few examples:

  • RFID to combat counterfeit drugs
  • Using RFID to manufacture dental prosthetics: The French company Dentalax has launched an RFID-based system for the manufacturing of crowns and bridges for the dental industry.
  • Vatican Library deploys RFID: About 30’000 books were tagged as of October 2004. It is likely that an additional two million pieces will be tagged.
  • RFID helps parents keep a tab on their kids: Parents can choose to rent RFID-enabled wristbands from the LEGO park administration for the purpose of keeping a check on their children’s whereabouts.
  • RFID tracks runners in marathons
  • Radio frequency tags in smart watches remind people that they may have forgotten something
  • ...

A good complement of the other report about the "Internet of Things".

IM evolution

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TR has a good piece on how IM is evolving, especially through open-source processes (article by Kate Greene), quoting the interoperability of Jabber (which I use everyday as a gateway for AIM/MSN contacts) or the like of Meebo and Trillian (that "seemingly combine the major IM networks (...) they merely supply a unified user interface; there's no true inter-operability"). Some snippets:

Beyond voice and text communication over the Internet, other applications have emerged that are a far cry from the traditional image of IM as a computer-to-computer chatting tool. A U.K. company called Trakm8, for example, uses the Jabber protocol and Global Positioning System to send text messages to mobile phones about the location of a car. The system also offers a feature alertings drivers via text messages if their car exceeds the speed limit.

Some investment banks have also adopted Jabber IM, building applications to fit their specific needs. Workers have multiple chat windows open at once, and when certain financial information pops up in one window, it can be routed immediately into spreadsheets containing financial models that, in turn, trigger buying decisions, Saint-Andre says.

Why do I blog this? I have already discussed here that I like IM interface and that it might be a good starting point for interacting with webservices like asking weather forecast/movie (it's possible today) and why not for RSS feeds sorting/trimming, ideas/memes exchange, delicious tagging/queries...

Besides, the Trakm8 application seems interesting too: an expansion of IM to do other things than just "chatting".

A MAZEing MOON- Digital experimentation Scenarios for Science Learning

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A MAZEing MOON (by Marc Jansen, Maria Oelinger, Kay Hoeksema, Ulrich Hoppe) is a nice example of an educational application that combines handhelds (PDAs) and programmable Lego bricks in a classroom scenario that deals with the problem of letting a robot escape from a maze.

It is specific to our setting that the problem can be solved both in the physical world by steering a Lego robot and in a simulated software environment on a PDA or on a PC. This approach enables the students to generate successful sets of rules in the simulation and to test these sets of rules later in physical mazes, or to create new types of mazes as challenges for known rule sets

Why do I blog this? well, apart from the learning scenario that is interesting (embedding problem solving into a concrete and tangible device control), I love this device:

Interview of Peter Burgaard from Innovation Lab by Regine

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Regine's interview is a very interesting way of stepping away from projects and having a meta-discussion of emerging tech/art trends. Today, the interview of Peder Burgaard is very pertinent for that matter.

The guy is studying Information Studies at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, working as a Gadgethunter and an event manager at Innovation Lab (a neat consultancy group in Denmark that is right on spot of my interests with regards to their "technology insights division"). Some excerpts of the interview I liked:

Technology will be moving even faster and among others will the convergence of established disciplines in the future contribute to this increased pace. Convergence in research fields will be more common because we are increasingly looking to apply the construction work of Mother Nature for creation of advanced technology. So the biologist will need more mathematics and vice versa. Also the merging of biotechnology and nanotechnology will create a demand for researchers which interdisciplinary skills. A forerunner of this trend is Stanford University’s Bio-X Lab of interdisciplinary research connected to engineering, computer science, physics, chemistry, biology, math and medicine (Bio-X Lab).

A future ability to reverse engineer the human organs and other advances in technology will keep the pace of new discoveries at an exponential level of unheard dimensions if compared to past rates of discoveries. Some predicts that the next 50-100 years will yield advances in technology equivalent to 14.000 years of previous discoveries. So modern society will experiencing even more rapid changes in the future. (...) The interaction art projects at NEXT are to be seen as an emerging trend where involvement of artists and designers in the finishing touch of consumer products will increase. So the gab between pure consumer development and artist esthetic expressions will be winding and eventually join forces. Research studies have shown that more esthetic products have a correlated improvement on user interaction. And the ever increasing demand on technology for ease of use will have artist leading the way of innovation in the future. Perfects example of this is the iPod which have a beautiful design and just feels nice and intuitive to operate.

Why do I blog this? I like this kind of agenda: the NEXT conference has an important point: introducing new technologies that to a broader audience than just researchers and forecaster. Moreover, I fully agree with the trends he describes. The Innovation Lab also seems to have an very good model (consultancy + insight division).

The mobile phone as an emerging social, cultural and technological phenomenon

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The Fourth Screen Global Mobile Media Festival Call:

The Fourth Screen Global Mobile Media Festival will focus on the mobile phone as an emerging social, cultural and technological phenomenon. We invite artists, technologists, and other creative thinkers to submit creations, inventions and concepts in two categories:

1/ moving images: videos made with mobile phone, movies, animation and games intended for mobile delivery

2/ wise technologies: software art, software and hardware that proposes new uses for mobile multimedia communication, applications that have positive cultural, social and economic impact in diverse cultures

The use of phone cameras is already pervasive, millions shoot, share, watch video clips with this all-in-one personal production - distribution - player device.

Why do I blog this? cell-phones based art, that's an intriguing concept. What's cultural content creation with such devices? how they help circulating culture, there are interesting issues related to this festival.

Networked Publics Conference and Media Festival April 28 + 29

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Networked Publics Conference and Media Festival at the Annenberg Center for Communication, University of Southern California (April 28-29, 2006).

This two-day event will bring together new media scholars and practitioners to exhibit and discuss the roles of audiences, activists, and producers in maturing networked media ecologies. The event is organized by the Networked Publics fellowship program (netpublics.annenberg.edu) at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center for Communication.

The conference includes a media festival and an academic program.

  • “Do-It-Yourself: Emergent Networked Culture,” is an experimental news and entertainment media festival featuring new kinds of viral, remixed, and amateur media works enabled by current networked ecologies. Categories of curated work include: political remix videos, the digital handmade, anime music videos, machinima, alternative news, and infrastucture hacks.
  • The academic program is dedicated to three topics: Politics, Infrastructure and Place. For each of these topics, netpublics fellows will convene a session to interrogate current issues and controversies related to emergent networked ecologies.

The format of the event is designed to promote interaction and dialog across a diverse set of participants. Our goal is to facilitate conversation on topics of shared concern and a mixture of formats that include screenings, debates, and interaction around computer kiosks.

Why do I blog this? I'll be there (thanks Julian!), the event seems great and very pertinent to my interests.

Button mashing

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According to Wikipedia, button mashing is:

Button mashing is the term given to repeated button presses over a short period. Most of the time, button mashing is seen in athletic and fighting video games. (...) Button mashing was first popularized by Track & Field in 1983 (...) Sometimes, random button mashing is actually more effective than skilled button pushing. This is frustrating to skilled players, who consider button-mashing a mindless action. There are many games that greatly rewarded the player for punching, kicking, or shooting a gun as fast as possible, which must be achieved through button-mashing. In order to reduce wear on controllers and allow players to gain the advantages of button mashing without having to actually mash the buttons, some game controllers feature a turbo button. This easily allows the player to maximize performance in games where a single button must be pressed repeatedly, but gives no advantage in fighting games or when two buttons must be pressed repeatedly one after the other. (...) Modern game designers recognize that many players do not enjoy hours of button mashing to complete games. The designers often incorporate auto-fire features or power-ups that alleviate button mashing requirements in their games. Button mashing is still used in gameplay, but sparingly during climactic points, such as a tight grapple with an enemy or breaking free from a confining attack.

Why do I blog this? button mashing refers to the good ol' day of video games but in terms of interaction design it was quite not that effective (not talking about the impacts of your joystick). However, the total craze it generated was quite funny (especially in those old sports games).

Protospace: augmented CAD

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Protospace Demo 1.2 by the Hyperbody Research Group at TU Delft.

Protospace Demo 1.2, successor of Protospace Demo 1.1, explores 1) the appliance of swarm behavior in an early stage of a building project and 2) the use of experimental user interfaces with motion tracking, wireless controllers and speech recognition. It is a tool for designing diagrammatic layouts, in 3D and with dynamic (as opposed to static) elements. (...) Protospace is as much the intelligent design tools it provides as the user interface(s) for interacting with them. We believe that C(A)AD systems will benefit from more natural interfaces than the classic mouse, keyboard and small computer screen. In Protospace Demo 1.2 we experimented with wireless controllers, motion tracking, speech recognition and sensorial 'playing' field.

Why do I blog this? I like this kid of way of interacting in an embedded way.

Telephoning has lost its physicality

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Via news.3yen: Telephoneboxing is an art installation which very clear aims:

Telephoning has lost its physicality; it has literary become weightless. The smaller the telephone gets, the easier it is to communicate, anytime, anywhere, with anyone. (...) What would communication mean if a phone call would become an extremely physical action? When dialing a number requires a lot of concentration and words need to be exclaimed?

"Telephoneboxing" is an installation which explores the borders of communication. In a 20ft container, 10 buttons are attached to the walls. The buttons look like boxing balls and that is exactly what they are. In order to make an international phone call, one puts on boxing gloves and hits the buttons to dial a number. When a connection is made, one has to stand in one specific spot and speak loudly in order to be heard. The answer can be heard on a spot a few meters further into the container. The calling person will automatically adjust the level of communication to his or her eagerness to talk and/or to his or her physical condition.

Why do I blog this? I like this idea of re-introducing physicality in phone communication using tangibility.

CHI2006 Workshop on Mobile Social Software

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I spent the end of the afternoon reading the whole set of papers from the future CHI2006 Workshop on Mobile Social Software. They're all available (which is great, I wish other papers from other worshops could be on-line too). Organized by Scott Counts, Henri ter Hofte, and Ian Smith, this workshop "workshop seeks to address these and other key issues around the proliferation of social software on mobile devices. Additionally, the workshop focuses on research tools and approaches for studying these questions, projected future directions for social software on mobile devices, and the role of related technologies, such as hardware and communication protocols. Workshop position papers cover a wide range of topics, from privacy issues to study methodologies to novel social presence mechanisms."

Overall, the papers are dealing with:

  • the balance between awareness information (location, availability, profile...) and privacy
  • the balance between automatic capture of context and an explicit disclosure by the users
  • the use of social-software applications and their relevance for users in various groups (sportspeople, patient communities...)
  • how these applications might be used to share different content (music, digital photography)

Among others, and related to my research I found interesting:

  • Affective Speech for Social Communication: Implementation Challenges in Text-to-Speech for Short Messages by Alia Amin: I am intrigued by this finding
    "Currently, short messages (e.g. SMS/MMS) are only available in visual form. However, in certain situations, users may like to have these messages presented in audio form. (...) Evaluation of this alternative presentation reveals that, for emotion recognition, it was easier to interpret emotion messages generated from affective synthetic speech."

  • REXplorer: A Pervasive Spell-Casting Game for Tourists as Social Software by Rafael Ballagas, Steffen P. Walz and Jan Borchers. It's an interesting pervasive game designed to enhance the tourist experience in the medieval city of Regensburg. The game offers good perspectives and pertinent situations.
  • “That doesn’t tell me what I want!” by David Dearman is perhaps the closer to my interests. Dearman is studying location disclosure in mobile communication. He seems to be interested by this to design more efficient applications:
    "For disclosure applications to be useful and eventually prevalent they need to respect the privacy of their users when disclosing their location, ensuring no information or detail is revealed beyond what they are comfortable disclosing. Inversely, if the information disclosed is not appropriate to the task the requester is attempting to accomplish then they will not use the application."

    This is explicitly an act of "mutual modeling" that aims at supporting coordination between agents (a topic I address in my research).

  • In Visibility Within Mediated Networks: An Exploration of Contextual Factors by Catherine Dwyer and Starr Roxanne Hiltz, I appreciated the reference to Catherine Cramton's work: it's basically the premise of their work: designing applications which aim at increasing mutual knowledge between electronically connected collaborators. This topic is of great importance in the CSCW community.
  • Exploiting Social Environment to Increase Cellphone Awareness by Ashraf Khalil and Kay Connelly offers a pertinent approach:
    "a collaborative approach to minimizing inappropriate cellphone interruptions. The approach uses Bluetooth technology to discover and communicate with the surrounding cell phones in order to read their notification profiles. The profile of the majority is assumed to be the most suitable setting for the current social environment. Cellphones running the collaborative service can automatically update their profile according to the majority profile or at least alert the user to do so. (...) For instance if a user in a meeting has forgotten to turn his cell phone ringer off, his cell phone can contact other cell phones in the same room and learn that most of them have their ringer off. Consequently, the cell phone can safely assume that it should also have its ringer off, and when the meeting is over the cell phone can return to its default state (ringer on) without the user having to take action. (...) we envision many other interaction paradigms between users and the surrounding environments that could benefit from such approach. For example, cell phones may carry their users’ preferences for room temperature, and smart places could customize the room temperature according to the majority’s preference."

Why do I blog this? even though I am more concerned by how location awareness features of this sort of tool might modify collaboration, the topic addressed here are interesting and sometimes related to what we do with catchbob.

REX: a pervasive spell-casting game on mobile phones

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REXplorer is a pervasive game designed to enhance the tourist experience in the medieval city of Regensburg. More about it here: REXplorer: A Pervasive Spell-Casting Game for Tourists as Social Software by Rafael Ballagas, Steffen P. Walz and Jan Borchers.

Participants will begin by renting their “magic wand” (actually a smartphone loaded with custom software and data necessary for the game) from the visitor center. (...) As they move throughout the city, players can attempt to cast spells at historic buildings using the Sweep technique that performs motion estimation by the way of the phone camera, and gesture recognition in (x, y, theta) dimensions. In response, players hear voices from magical spirits trapped inside the buildings through their magic wand (the loudspeaker on the smartphone). If they cast the spell incorrectly, the spirits will be disgruntled and uncooperative. (...) Participants may also need to duel against other participants in a spell-casting battle to achieve their goals. In addition, and more importantly, players can “cellcast” cooperatively to solve challenges. (...) As visitors are capturing media of the city in the game, the Regensburg application servers are automatically cataloging the media content they create to generate a website to show where they've gone and what they've done. During the game, this blog can be used to monitor the current game status by getting an overview of the teams' progress.

Why do I blog this? I like the interface trick using the phone camera, that's a good hack to create an innovative gameplay. The game seems also to be a good situation to have cooperative/competitive behavior.