An interesting project from the //////////fur//// workshop @ ECAL, 2004 :
CARPET FIGHTING by Patricia Armada / Pierre-Abraham Rochat / Gabriel Walt / Mathias Forbach Compete on the keyboard against a player in the real space in this multiple reality crossing, tic-tac-toe like game. (PC Laptop, EZIO interface board, carpet, electronics)
Why do I blog this? I like the reality crossing idea and the messiness of such technology with wires.
Cultural anthropologist Dr. Mizuko Ito recently published a draft about Kids' participation in new media cultures which is very worth reading. She addresses the question of how young people mobilize the media and the imagination in everyday life andand how new media change this dynamic. Some excerpts I found intersting:
Our contemporary understandings of media and the childhood imagination are framed by a set of cultural distinctions between an active/creative or a passive/derivative mode of engaging with imagination and fantasy. (...) Scholars in media studies have challenged the cultural distinctions between active and passive media, arguing that television and popular media do provide opportunities for creative uptake and agency in local contexts of reception. (...) new convergent media such as Pokemon require a reconfigured conceptual apparatus that takes productive and creative activity at the “consumer” level (...) The important question is not whether the everyday practices of children in media culture are “original” or “derivative,” “active” or “passive,” but rather the structure of the social world, the patterns of participation, and the content of the imagination that is produced through the active involvement of kids, media producers, and other social actors. This is a conceptual and attentional shift motivated by the emergent change in modes of cultural production. (...) New technologies tend to be accompanied by a set of heightened expectations, followed by a precipitous fall from grace after failing to deliver on an unrealistic billing. (...) technologies are in fact embodiments, stabilizations, and concretizations of existing social structure and cultural meanings, growing out of an unfolding history as part of a necessarily altered and contested future. The promises and the pitfalls of certain technological forms are realized only through active and ongoing struggle over their creation, uptake, and revision.
She then describes 3 important constructs:
contemporary media needs to be understood not as an entirely new set of media forms but rather as a convergence between more traditional media such as television, books, and film, and digital and networked media and communications. Convergent media involve the ability for consumers to select and engage with content in more mobilized waylateral networks of communication and exchange at the consumer level. (...) These changing media forms are tied to the growing trend toward personalization and remix as genres of media engagement and production. Gaming, interactive media, digital authoring, Internet distribution, and networked communications enable a more customized relationship to collective imaginings as kids mobilize and remix media content to fit their local contexts of meaning. (...) described the kind of social exchange that accompanies the traffic in information about new media mixes like Pokemon and Yugioh as hypersocial, social exchange augmented by the social mobilization of elements of the collective imagination
Why do I blog this? I met Mizuko last month at the Netpublic conference and was very interested in how she's taking another stance regarding kids engagement in new media culture, especially what she was explaining about convergence and hypersociality. I find particulary pertinent the way she rephrase the question of the kids participation into something broader and - in the end - much richer. These constructs are important to me, both as researcher in the field of emerging technologies and also when working with game designers to make them understand the implications of their creations.
"Playfully situated messaging in the home: appropriation of messaging resources in entertainment" by Mark Perry (Brunel University, UK), Dorothy Rachovides (Brunel University, UK), Alex Taylor (Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK) and Laurel Swan (Brunel University, UK) is a paper from the "Entertainment media at home - looking at the social aspects" workshop at CHI 2006. The authors promotes an an embodied, everyday gaming paradigm in which people artfully employ the everyday resources in the world around them to entertain themselves and others. This is exemplified by a field study of how people are engaged in playful activity through (asynchronous) messaging at home.
The activities that we have seen are very much about household members creatively making use of the resources around them to entertain themselves, and (they hope) the others around them. Here lies a serious point for technology designers: systems that open themselves up for, perhaps unanticipated, use (cf. Robinson, 1993) give their users a powerful tool for artfully integrating them into other practices, a good deal of which in the home are playful and entertainment-related. By allowing users to generate, co- opt, display and annotate a variety of media we can give them the resources to do many forms of communication, one of which is the ability to support play. And whilst play does embody social rules, it is the very socially constructed nature of these rules, and not their technological embodiment, that makes them powerful, and allows them to be applied in a variety of ways. We would therefore not encourage strong rule sets that form ‘methods’ of play, but would rather allow these to be generated on an ad hoc basis, and to draw from the existing social practices around messaging that household members already use in their everyday lives.
Why do I blog this? What I like here is the idea that gaming is not just interacting with a gaming system (console, PC...) but something broader that would involved everyday artifacts.
A test card is (according to Wikipedia):
A test card, also known as a test pattern in North America, is a television test signal, typically broadcast at times when the transmitter is active, but no program is being broadcast (often at startup and closedown). Originally, all test cards were actually physical cards at which a television camera was pointed, and such cards are still often used for calibration, alignment, and matching of cameras and camcorders. Test patterns used for calibrating or troubleshooting the downstream signal path are nowadays generated by test signal generators, which do not depend on the correct configuration of (and presence of) a camera. (...) Most include a set of calibrated color bars which will produce a characteristic pattern of "dot landings" on a vectorscope, allowing chroma and tint to be precisely adjusted between generations of videotape or network feeds
Some examples:
Why do I blog this? first because I like their odd design; second because it's an artifact that belongs to the past. What's the equivalent of the test pattern for the Web?
Archrecord has a good read about building foresight: Imagining the future: How will we make buildings in 2030? by Sara Hart.
magine thirty years from now. Will urban areas in 2030 look like Ridley Scott’s Los Angeles in the sci-fi movie Blade Runner—a prelude to Armageddon where the affluent reside in the tops of 400-story skyscrapers, and the less fortunate scratch out an unsavory existence in the seamy, polluted, and lawless regions on the surface? Or will Americans live the utopian dream in self-sufficient, fossil-fuel free communities. (...) At this moment, however, the future is already taking form. On one hand, materials scientists are locked in laboratories inventing new, smart, and sustainable materials and composites, which are touted elsewhere in this issue as the beginning of a revolution in design and construction. At the same time, building materials that dominated the 20th century still dominate in the new millennium. (...)Still, in an era of engineering virtuosity and genuine collaboration and teamwork, who will own the architecture?
The article describes the material of the future with specific case studies about new developments that concerns concrete, steel and glass. Why do I blog this? the blade-runner like city is still the nightmare of urban planners but it does not seem to be where we are heading; I find this discussion interesting in terms of foresight research and my interest towards urban computing makes me think about these issues too.
IHT describes the few points about Galileo, its 5 levels of services of Galileo (the European quasi-GPS) and other interesting things with regards to locative technologies:
Galileo would have five levels of service, the most basic of which would be free, like GPS. The others would be commercial and offer higher levels of accuracy, security, strength or a combination of those qualities. The second tier of service would be designed for basic commercial applications like truck-fleet management, while the third would be accurate enough for more sophisticated services like assisting aircraft to land or guiding ships loaded with dangerous materials through coastal waters, he said. The fourth level would offer higher security in the form of encryption and anti-jamming measures and would be used by government authorities like the police, ambulance drivers, fire brigades and the armed forces, de- Ledinghen said. The final tier would be used for search and rescue and would offer a unique two-way service, providing the sender of a distress signal an acknowledgment of its receipt.
The article also mentions the current assisted GPS:
Several services around the world offer enhanced, or assisted, navigation services based on the open GPS service. Such services enhance GPS with additional geostationary satellites and ground stations that monitor the GPS signals and correct them. (...) while normal GPS is hindered by buildings, trees or anything else that blocks out the sky, "assisted" GPS works much better in urban canyons and can even operate indoors. (...) Alcatel and Orange, the mobile operator owned by France Télécom, conducted a trial from October to February in which 200 users were given Hewlett-Packard devices that combined the functions of an advanced mobile phone and an assisted-GPS receiver. The gadgets allowed users to roam around towns on foot, with accurate maps beamed to them via the mobile network. Alice Holzman, marketing director at Orange France, said the customers were impressed with the speed and accuracy of the devices. She said the increased accuracy of assisted GPS made it feasible for mobile phone operators to offer services to track valuables or for applications like emergency services and medical assistance. More "fun" services like friend finding and mobile gaming will use the technology when costs come down, she added.
Why do I blog this? since I am interested by the user experience of location-based applications, I'd like to know more than " customers were impressed with the speed and accuracy of the devices", what does that mean in terms of people's behavior: is it " Phew wow my assisted GPS is so accurate!" or a "ok I have to make a right and a left to finally find my car"? That's really an important topic, when it comes to how people feel technologies' discrepancies, accuracy (or non accuracy) and responsiveness.
Next week, at EPFL (may 29-30), CRAFT will host the second blogject workshop. The first one was hosted by LIFT06. Organized by Nicolas Nova and Julian Bleecker. By talking about "blogjects" (objects that could potentially disseminate a record of their interactions with people, context and other objects on the web), we envision a new participation of "things" in the physical and social space. In this context, the so-called "Internet of Things" may give rise to a new ecology of things, and consequently to a different set of social practices and relations to space.
The previous workshop addressed that issue by considering how this would generate new possibilities for integrating networked artifacts such as "blogjects" in both the physical world and the Internet. The description and discussion of various scenarios allowed the definition of usage opportunities.
The first workshop was devoted to finding interesting research avenues and questions related to this "blogject" thing. People from various background and perspectives participated in the discussion, which eventually lead to this big report (pdf, 19Mb!). This time, the participants will have a different background (rather technical) and the aim of the 2-days is to have a more "hands-on" follow-up so that we design prototypes of networked artifact of the future (be it a blogject, a pervasive device, a slogging place, a locative thing, a pre-spime or an everyware).
For those who want to keep in touch with cognitive sciences, let's have a look at the one hundred most influential works in cognitive science; here is just the top10:
- Syntactic Structures Chomsky, N. (1957)
- Vision: a computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information Marr, D. (1982)
- Computing machinery and intelligence Turing, A. M. (1950) Mind, 59, 433-460.
- The organization of behavior; a neuropsychological theory Hebb, D.O. (1949)
- Parallel distributed processing: Explorations in the microstructure of cognition Rumelhart, D. E., McClelland, J. L. (1986)
- Human problem solving Newell, A., & Simon, H. A. (1972)
- he modularity of mind: An essay on faculty psychology Fodor, J. (1983)
- Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology Bartlett, F. C. (1932)
- The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information Miller, G. A. (1956) Psychological Review, 63, 81-97
- Perception and Communication Broadbent, D. (1958)
Why do I blog this such ranking is weird but interesting, I was wondering whether there could be more diachronic representations, both for research work and paradigm: a Kuhn-esque ranking would be curious.
The paper from the Pervasive gaming workshop during the Pervasive2006 Conference has been released.
The PerGames series of international workshops addresses the design and technical issues of bringing computer entertainment back to the real world with pervasive games. The previous PerGames events were held in Vienna (2004) and Munich (2005) and attracted researchers and practitioners from all over the world
So there are papers about AR gaming, smart RFID cards, the use of seams, cross-media gaming, the user experience of flow, the use of haptic feedback...
Why do I blog this? lots of stuff to parse about the future of gaming, using new paradigms such as tangible interactions, AR or haptic feedback (or new tech like RFID...).
Augmented street skating is a project done at ECAL by Valentin Kissling:
Why do I blog this? I like skateboarding and computing so I am curious when both merge.
Some design studio are envisionning the use of origami displays: as attested by this Origami Cell Phone and this Origami DVD player
This is a future cell phone concept developed at Inventables. The concept was inspired by the e-paper developed by Mag-Ink and the Popout Map. The map uses origami paper folding technique to expand and collapse automatically as it is opened and closed. This concept addresses the need for larger displays on cell phones without sacrificing a small form factor.The Origami DVD Player is a portable DVD player concept that could be manufactured with a new e-paper (a full-color flexible display technology) being developed by Mag-Ink in Israel. As a product, it would target the business traveler who wants a convenient way to watch DVD movies. For this user, portability is a key requirement, but they are not interested in sacrificing their viewing experience and are willing to invest extra money for a higher quality product.
Why do I blog this? this is an intriguing way of taking advantage of a small device to expand the display through e-paper...
Another origami-related tech: it may help cellphone cameras to focus. (via emily)
Heard in "No Maps for Those Territories" (doc interview of William Gibson):
"when those events occur, it changes the nature of the game; another example and maybe a better one is when it was confirmed that Michael Jackson was going to marry Elvis Presley's daughter, a good friend of mine in the States faxed me, and said 'this made your job more difficult' and I knew exactly what he meant"
What he means is if that is the world, what can he does to make the world more fantastic in his novels.
In 1912, Alphonse Norgeu did a wonderful postcard serie for the "Chocolat Lombart" company (printed on chromolithography); it's called "Comment vivront nos arrière-neveux en l'an 2012" (How will our grand-nephew live in 2012?)
(Source : Trésors des Postes et Télégraphes, PTT Cartophilie, 1989.)
1) Bonjour mon enfant... Nous t'envoyons ton Chocolat Lombart par l'aéronef des vides ! / Hello my son... We send you the Lombart Chocolate by the Indian Aeronef
2) Back from the Moon: in 8 hours, we'll have our Lombart Chocolate in Paris!
While doing random searches on google image, I ran across the work of Ingrid Hora. I like her research agenda:
There is a whole category of people living on the order of madness and normality. I want to narrate the life of a disordered (or hyper ordered) society, a life of people left on their own. People builds walls around themselves to create oder and borders. I am interested in showing what happens behind these walls, where obsessions, desires and fantasies hide. I want to show the anarchic constructions initiated by the individuals to accommodate their strange desires and needs.
For instance, see those two pictures:
I basically found them on Regine's blog and I have nothing to contextualize (more than just the outline of her work described above) and I definitely makes me thing about how people modify ("détourne" in french) for other purposes that makes sense to them and not always for others.
Why do I blog this? this is a topic very interesting to me because of (1) cultural feeling, I tend to be interested in such borderlines experiences and how they are translated into behaviors/craft (2) how this affect technology usage research: what Ingrid Hora is nothing more than extreme users (or tinkerers) of technology.
Besides, see this rhetorical vision in her description: how "space" features (walls, borders...) are deployed? No space is not dead.
Deloitte's new report "Eye to the Future: How TMT advances could change the way we live in 2010" is a curious read; especially when it explains how technology is expected to keep changing the workplace and who will be able to manage it.
"More and more, the ability to get things done is expected to depend on the ability to understand and use increasingly complex technology - and those with a greater degree of technological literacy may find themselves moving up the corporate hierarchy more quickly than those without."
To me, there is also another step that they don't address: the "disconnection literacy": the fact that in a pervasive world with always-on capabilities, people will definitely need to disconnect. This, of course, to step away from information overload or passive physical behavior.
Will we have to pay to have a non-connected place? Will there be social differentiation about who will be aware of such a need?
Brainoff has posted this mapufacture, a geoRSS aggregator:
mapufacture is a GeoRSS aggregator. here you can layer multiple GeoRSS feeds from different sources into a single map, and search the database of GeoRSS feeds by keyword and location. search results are themselves available as GeoRSS feeds. if you do want to create a map, we ask that you go through a simple registration process.
Why do I blog this? this is the new trend, aggregating different flows of information on top of a spatial representation using the simple RSS adaptations. I like the idea of having search results as geoRSS feeds.
What I also find interesting is the fact that those RSS derived standards are more and more available and this should eventually lead to more interesting aggregating interfaces, what are the progress in this area so far? Lots of components could be helpful (spatial, social, datamining features...).
Chocolate Infinity is a project from the HMC MediaLab for Cadburys Chocolate Factory. It's carried out by Adam Montandon and HMC members. It interestingly used a shock sensitive floor and a series of motion sensors to immerse people in an intriguing interaction (to improve the visitors' experience):
As you enter the infinity room a giant chocolate bar melts into gloopy puddles beneath you and, when you jump in them, chocolate splashes all over the floor. Then a sprinkling of individual Roses chocolates appear beneath your feet. You won't believe your eyes when they unwrap as you tread on them – but as you step off they wrap back up.Chunks of chocolate then fill the floor and when you stamp on them they break open showing gooey caramel, squidgy turkish delight, chunks of mint, orange or Cadbury's Crunchie inside. Finally you get to chase three Creme Eggs across the floor but don't stand still because they'll pop their tops and taunt you until the game is on again.
Why do I blog this? this is one of the trends in roomware: using floor/sensor-based interactions to trigger specific behaviors. I see more and more project about that and I am wondering about potential new places that would allow people to play games with this settings (arcades revival?).
Cyber rodent seems to be a classical research project that use robots to study goal-directed behaviors.
Based on the theories of reinforcement learning and evolutionary computation, we exlore parallel learning mechanisms using a colony of small rodent-like mobile robots called Cyber Rodents. Cyber Rodent HardwareThe Cyber Rodent robot has an omnidirectional vision system as its eye, infra-red proximity sensors as its whiskers, two wheels for locomotion, and a three-color LED for emotional communication. Especially it has the capabilities of recharging from external battery packs and exchanging gene (program or data) via IR-ports.
Why do I blog this? just like the robot looking + the underlying idea of the project (learning mechanisms). Besides, it's interesting to see that the "rodent" metaphor is still in use even with robot counterparts...
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Mitsubishi Electric Research Lab (MERL), and Paul Dietz in particular, seems to be working on something called Submerging Technologies (as attested by this SIGGRAPH presentation): |
Goal: To show, somewhat whimsically, how emerging sensing technologies can be applied in unusual ways. Three interactive water displays: a tantalizing fountain that withdraws when a hand comes near, a musical harp with water "strings," and a liquid touchscreen.
Enhanced Life The displays apply emerging sensing technologies to the medium of water. In each case, the electro-optic properties of the water itself are exploited to make the water a fundamental element of the sensing system.
While there are serious industrial applications in coating, painting, and soldering for these sensing technologies, this project focuses on human interaction. The larger point is that as new sensing technologies become available, they can and will be used in very surprising ways to change how we interact with our world.
Why do I blog this? that's a curious context with challenging issues in terms of User Experience and human-artifacts interactions.