dOCUMENTA (13)
"dOCUMENTA (13) is dedicated to artistic research and forms of imagination that explore commitment, matter, things, embodiment, and active living in connection with, yet not subordinated to, theory. These are terrains where politics are inseparable from a sensual, energetic, and worldly alliance between current research in various scientific and artistic fields and other knowledges, both ancient and contemporary. dOCUMENTA (13) is driven by a holistic and non-logocentric vision that is skeptical of the persisting belief in economic growth. This vision is shared with, and recognizes, the shapes and practices of knowing of all the animate and inanimate makers of the world, including people. (C. Christov-Bakargiev)"
(dOCUMENTA)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Why Design Education Must Change
"even were a design school to decide to teach more formal methods, we don't really have a curriculum that is appropriate for designers. Take my concern about the lack of experimental rigor. Suppose you were to agree with me - what courses would we teach? We don't really know. The experimental methods of the social and behavioral sciences are not well suited for the issues faced by designers.
Designers are practitioners, which means they are not trying to extend the knowledge base of science but instead, to apply the knowledge. The designer's goal is to have large, important impact. Scientists are interested in truth, often in the distinction between the predictions of two differing theories. The differences they look for are quite small: often statistically significant but in terms of applied impact, quite unimportant. Experiments that carefully control for numerous possible biases and that use large numbers of experimental observers are inappropriate for designers.
The designer needs results immediately, in hours or at possibly a few days. Quite often tests of 5 to 10 people are quite sufficient. Yes, attention must be paid to the possible biases (such as experimenter biases and the impact of order of presentation of tests), but if one is looking for large effect, it should be possible to do tests that are simpler and faster than are used by the scientific community will suffice. Designs don't have to be optimal or perfect: results that are not quite optimum or les than perfect are often completely satisfactory for everyday usage. No everyday product is perfect, nor need they be. We need experimental techniques that recognize these pragmatic, applied goals.
Design needs to develop its own experimental methods. They should be simple and quick, looking for large phenomena and conditions that are 'good enough.' But they must still be sensitive to statistical variability and experimental biases. These methods do not exist: we need some sympathetic statisticians to work with designers to develop these new, appropriate methods."
(Don Norman, 26 Nov 2010, Core77)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Imaging Research Center at the University of Maryland
"Since 1987 IRC researchers and students have been exploring the rapidly developing landscape of visual technology. Initial research involved high-end 3D computer animation to create rich worlds and characters. Visualizations of the otherwise invisible, ranging from biology to long-gone or unrealized architecture continue to be created at the IRC for national broadcast and current feature films.
As digital media tools became more powerful, the IRC began developing interactive, real-time virtual worlds that could respond to the decisions of an involved viewer. Researching and utilizing current game-art technologies, the IRC has created internationally recognized interactive visualizations for museums and other institutions. Additionally, pure research in real-time visualization has involved UMBC students in immersive projects that have attracted national attention.
Today, visualization capabilities have become all but limitless. At the same time, the role imagery plays in contemporary culture is of rising importance. Research at the IRC has expanded to include multidisciplinary research projects to better understand and realize an effective use of imagery to help culture process its most profound ideas. Understanding social media, online communities, and interactive collaborative virtual spaces are basic aspects of this research."
(Imaging Research Center, University of Maryland Baltimore County)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Will Li-Fi be the new Wi-Fi?
"FLICKERING lights are annoying but they may have an upside. Visible light communication (VLC) uses rapid pulses of light to transmit information wirelessly. Now it may be ready to compete with conventional Wi-Fi.
'At the heart of this technology is a new generation of high-brightness light-emitting diodes,' says Harald Haas from the University of Edinburgh, UK. 'Very simply, if the LED is on, you transmit a digital 1, if it's off you transmit a 0,' Haas says. 'They can be switched on and off very quickly, which gives nice opportunities for transmitting data.'
It is possible to encode data in the light by varying the rate at which the LEDs flicker on and off to give different strings of 1s and 0s. The LED intensity is modulated so rapidly that human eyes cannot notice, so the output appears constant. ...
But some sound a cautious note about VLC's prospects. It only works in direct line of sight, for example, although this also makes it harder to intercept than Wi-Fi. 'There has been a lot of early hype, and there are some very good applications,' says Mark Leeson from the University of Warwick, UK. 'But I'm doubtful it's a panacea. This isn't technology without a point, but I don't think it sweeps all before it, either.'"
(Jamie Condliffe, 28 July 2011)
Jamie Condliffe (2011). New Scientist magazine, 23 July 2011.
Fig.1 Harald Haas, July 2011, TED.com.
2). Steve Perlman "Distributed-Input-Distributed-Output (DIDO) Wireless Technology: A New Approach to Multiuser Wireless".
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Sonic City @ Future Applications Lab
"In order to determine how people might use Sonic City in everyday life, we have conducted a short-term user study with a variety of people using the prototype in their own familiar environments. Focusing on considerations of musical performance, embodied interaction as well as engagement and control, this study helped us to understand how people approach Sonic City and interact musically with the city, revealing emerging urban behaviours and music creation processes integrated into everyday life.
Process: the study took place during winter of 2003-04. It consisted of observing how a set of participants used the prototype in their own everyday environment during a limited period of time, and in collecting their feedback about it.
The study participants had various backgrounds, activities, ages, music tastes, and perceptions of the city of Göteborg.
In order to gain insight into their everyday environments, the type of path they would take, and their perception of them, we started by giving them cultural probes (individual self-contained small packages handed-out to users in order to gather information about their everyday life) prior to the testings. This also helped determining where the test sessions would be conducted, as they had to take place in the users' everyday environments. Participant were each given a cultural probe for a few days, with instructions to only open it and proceed when taking a path they would have taken anyway. The probes contained the assignment of documenting a single everyday path with a digital still camera, taking pictures of obstacles, resources and what would catch their attention. Then, they would write down answers to both clear and ambiguous questions about their path, draw their own map of it, put stickers where the pictures had been taken, and locate themselves on a larger city map (see user pages - links below user pictures in results' part).
Eventually, we let each participant use the prototype in the documented area. The users were told how the system worked but not where to walk or how to behave. Each user was video-filmed in action and the music produced recorded on a MiniDisc. This enabled a close study of paths and behaviours during use. Each session was completed with in-depth interviews about the experience.
We then synchronised the videos with corresponding sounds for analysis purposes. This allowed us to get a deeper understanding of the details of interactions by linking interactions with musical results, and repeating playbacks. The videos were first watched together with each user in order to collect their own comments and analysis of the sessions, and followed by complementary interviews. By synchronising these comments with the videos, we could compare the users' feedback with an objective analysis of their behaviours, while avoiding misunderstandings about their intentions.
Results: the study showed that mobility could indeed become a musical interaction between a user and her urban environment, enhancing her perception of and engagement with these everyday settings.
The study also opened the question of how to improvise and adapt one's musical interaction when confronted to a lack of control due to unpredictable and uncontrollable factors encountered in urban environments. The city was perceived to be more in control of this interaction than the user. However, she was able to actively influence how the music was created through different tactics and through situated interventions, all of them related to how the system was designed, what it highlighted and thus how it encouraged her to act.
In terms of interaction, the users were engaged on the level of the global path and of local interactions. Both levels were managed in an ad hoc, rather improvised way. Paths were most often planned in advance by the users but were sometimes randomly or intentionally modified during the course of a session in order to look for more interesting contexts and test how they would sound (e.g. a noisy construction site for [A.S.], a dark corner next to an electricity chamber for [D.R.]). Participants looked around themselves to seek local interactions opportunities, which they also found by accident (e.g. metallic objects). Some had favourite inputs, such as human voices for [M.K.] or noisy traffic for [F.M.].
On a local level, the users actively directed sensors with their body. In order to produce input, they often got closer to fixed artefacts at hand such as metal or walls. They also turned their body and thus the sensors towards or against diffused sources of input in order to amplify respectively shadow them, thus modulating the city's input. [D.R.] turned his back on traffic to reduce the impact of the sound level for example. Paths could thus be considered as a score articulated by ad hoc local bodily interactions."
(Future Applications Lab)
6). Gaye, Lalya, Mazé, Ramia, Holmquist, Lars Erik (2003). Sonic City: The Urban Environment as a Musical Interface. In Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME-03). Montreal, Canada: 109-115 [http://www.ears.dmu.ac.uk/spip.php?page=artBiblio&id_article=1973].
Sonic City is a collaboration between Future Applications Lab (Viktoria Institute) and PLAY Studio (Interactive Institute), in Göteborg, Sweden. Project members include: Lalya Gaye (FAL) - engineering, electroacoustics, Ramia Mazé (PLAY) - interaction design, architecture, Margot Jacobs (PLAY) - product & interaction design, Daniel Skoglund (ex-8Tunnel2) - sound-art. Lalya's supervisor at Future Applications Lab: Lars Erik Holmquist. Participating Master's students (IT-University Göteborg): Magnus Johansson (HCI / interaction design) + Sara Lerén (cognitive science). This project is funded by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF) through the Mobile Services project, by the European Union IST program through the Smart-Its project, and by VINNOVA through the IT+Textiles project.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
