The Design and Realization of Real-World Multi-Media Systems

This week I attend a serie of lectures given by Dr. Paul Verschure on methods, concepts and technologies behind complex interactive multi-media installation. Verschure was project leader of the Ada project, a 200 m^2 interactive space that was equipped with tactile, auditory and visual sensors and could interact with groups of up to 30 visitors using sound, light and graphics. This installation was deployed for 6 months in 2002 and was visited by 556000 people. Ada was constructed with the goal to construct an artefact that sensitized the visitor to future brain-like technologies.

The goal of these lectures is to identify and discuss design principles for future complex interactive multi-media systems.

Lecture 1: History and concepts
History of entertainment automata and interactive multi-media systems
> Architectural and scenographical concepts
> Technological and scientific concepts
> Construction and deployment
> Management and planning
> Preceding installations
> Interaction design for interactive multi-media installations

Lecture 2: Technology
> Sensor components
> Effector components
> Sensor processing
> Neuromorphic control strategies

Lecture 3: The user
> Deployment
> User experience
> User data
> User analysis

Lecture 4: The future
> Implications of Behavioral & Experiential analysis for multi-media
> interaction design
> Subsequent applications
> Future projects

Interactive Maps à la SimCity

edushi.com provides interactive maps of various Chinese cities. Instead of a standard map or satellite image, it features an oblique representation of the street layout, along with 2.5 dimensional looking buildings (there is a term for that technique, but I do not remember which one). A good example of the isometric projection technique for maps.

Shangai on Edushi.com

Via Cartography.

Qualitative Analysis of Human-Computer Interaction

Former colleague Jean-Baptiste Haué did a presentation at the EPFL on qualitative analysis of human-computer interaction.

LIFT06. Day 2

Transparency is LIFT second day’s word with Thomas Sevcik‘s Innovation Lab (the spontaneous, very focused, networked based, Al-qaedaesc version of a Think Tank, and deliverable oriented, long-lasting, expensive version of a workshop), Euan Semple experience in knowledge management at the BBC, Robert Scoble‘s new PR, Marc Laperrouza on the control of the Internet in China (what will happen with the majority of the web’s content will be in chinese?) and Jeffrey Huang‘s open design (Alec Issigonis: A camel is a horse designed by committee).

A horse designed by committee. Some much for the wisdom of the crowd and web 2.0.

Unique quote:
“I am totally not agree” Xavier Comtesse

Justice Mapping

Criminal-justice experts name the “million-dollar blocks” phenomenon when the total cost to incarcerate residents from one city block exceeds $1 million.

The Million Dollar Blocks project is part of a two year research and development project on Graphical Innovation in Justice Mapping by the Spatial Information Design Lab of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia.

These maps have attracted attention nationwide from state legislators struggling to balance their budgets. Prison-spending maps highlight the fact that money spent on million-dollar blocks winds up in another part of the state—far from the scene of the crime.

Via Régine

GarbageScout

GarbageScout.com is a recycler’s dream, a cheapskate’s best friend, and a dumpster diver’s companion. It is a spatial annotation tool that put light on the daily physical rejects of the city. This is the kind of very unique and very specific use of spatial annotation I would believe to be engaging. Members of Flickr’s street cleaning vehicles and molested bikes groups ought to us to augment their digital harvesting.

Smokers Spatial Awareness

Smokers seem to have a better spatial awareness of the conference center hosting the LIFT conference. One of the smoker’s first task is to explore the new space to find smoking areas and create scenarios (e.g. detect the closest place to smoker after lunch).

LIFT06. Day 1

Too much content and too many people to summarize the first day at LIFT06. I leave the running notes to Nicolas Nova, Bruno Giussani, Mauro Cherubini and Daniel Kaplan. Most relevant talk related to my work have been:

Bruno Giussani’s keynote [Bruno]
Matt Jones, Nokia – “Play & Mobility : Small Toys, Loosely Joined” [Daniel]
Bruce Sterling, Spimes and the future of artifacts [Bruno] [Daniel] [Nicolas]
Stefana Broadbent: The specialization of communication channels [Bruno] [Daniel]

One of the most joyful moment was when was when journalist Bruno Giussani was talking about the now existing “cloud of connectivity” over 70% of the population of the world and we (all with engineering background) could not get setup a basis Subethaedit back channel because we do not have the control over the routers and subnets. Very ironic moment (not for Bruno Giussani who I value his talent to grasp and communicate about technologies and people) and great for my thesis! We were covered by a few clouds of connectivity (WiFi, GSM, UMTS, …), which does not mean that a collaborative service would work. Technology is about chaos, complexity (in scale up), disturbance, frustration and of course adaptation.

I enjoyed Bruce Sterling vision on technology that “of course” lead to disturbance and cutting edge meaning “broken last week”. Moreover his spimes are not about being aware or smart. They have no computational capabilities nor ubiquitous. The “wands” control the spimes (same way as a mobile phone is a current gateway to the connected world. Bruce mixes wild ideas of “Fabjects” (objects on demand) with actually pretty down-to-earth, pragmatic requirements and questions of adoption and deployment. I hope that in Bruce’s next novel, the main character will feel either some sort of frustration to be among seamless spimes or incredible mental load to manage seamful spimes . And what about the ultimate goal of ubiquitous computing and the “Internet of things” (the term to talk about spimes if we want to make money)? Why would people want it? Reaching sustainability, having a society that can cleanup for itself. It is related to the study Effects of Pervasive Computing on Sustainable Development that I mentioned a few weeks ago.

In yesterday’s workshop Julian Bleecker mentioned first class citizen, first class objects and some objects becoming more important than humans. It think it is also now also relevant for countries, when the economy in World of Warcraft is more powerful than in some third-world nations. A break-down in this virtual world would create more disturbances than a catastrophe in a poor african country.

The terms Internet and Web are now definitively mixed, even among a specialist crowd of LIFT (browsing the Internet!). I am not a stuck up purist, but I am not sure if this is a good sign…

Finally a couple of nice expressions (mainly from Cory Doctorow (brilliant speaker!)):
“dot-com non-sence”
“dumb info hippie”
“John Doe lawsuits”
“as lost as last year’s Easter egg”
“jurassic era blogjects”
“a rothweiler beating the living shit out of a teddy bear”

Tag: lift06

Blogjects in the World of Interconnected Things (2)

Extension to my first thoughts for Today’s Blogjects in the World of Interconnected Things. Unfortunately I do not have too much to dedicate myself to the questions asked by Nicolas and Julian.

A blogject is…?
A context-aware and social-aware object that periodically communicates on categorized themes with its owner(s) and fellow blogjects using web protocols and blog stantdards.

What are examples of mobile, tangible, chatty networked objects today?
Tagged cows, My electricity and gaz counters (I receive a bill in the end of the month). I am still trying to find the first blogject in history. I believe blogjects might go back until ancient history.

“Technology-Fiction” is a genre of writing based upon Fictional Technology for design-innovation practices in which the style and language of technical, design, research and technical report writing is used to help envision an imaginary (future or past) technology that does not yet exist. It is distinct from fictional technology in that it emphasizes the social-cultural aspects of the world in which the technology exists, and distinct from science fiction in that . In effect, technology-fiction is a way to creatively explore novel, potentially unrealizable forms of technology for the purposes of design-innovation. In what usage contexts do you think a blogject or something related to this concept could be part of a compelling design?
Humans have a social identities and status in the physical and virtual space (with these 2 worlds now converging). Object do not have social statuses in the real world (expect some exception). Some objects are actually used to change an identity (a car, a cell phone, clothes, …) Blogjects might gain social status in the digital world and it would be interesting to see how to design blogjects that challenge their owner’s social status.

What would then be the design challenges of creating such a thing?
Make it grasp the context in uncontrolled environments and transfer a sense of trust. Affordable communicatation (except PAN, connectivity has a price). Make sense out of context. Or do we want lying objects?

For particular objects and specific user communities, consider blogject scenarios.
* Children… as en extension of the tamagochi or nintendos. Old people to feel less alone. Summarize my day (to-do list follower) and send it my girlfriend’s blogjects

Think about an object that can track history of interactions with other objects or with people. How might these interaction histories be used?
As memory, reasoning and imagination helper. Blogjects could be yet another physical form to extend our memoroy. To keep track of my unformal social network. To prevent us from interacting with people. Externalize imagination??

Alongside of recording its history of encounters and experiences (where it has been and what it has seen, for example) what would a blogject have to say to other blogjects?
Sharing gossips