A nicely folded map for a careful bike-rider? At first glance, its looks as if the owner folded a map intelligently to find his/her way in the city. But the same map is on every bike around and if you read it you notice that it’s a warning about the upcoming removal of the bike. An interesting signal of map usage with bikes anyway. Seen in Zürich, Switzerland this week.

Two interesting projects that I ran across recently and which aims at making invisible phenomena more explicit:

Magnetic movie b Semiconductor (Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt) shot at the NASA Space Sciences Laboratory, UC Berkeley, California, USA.:

“In Magnetic Movie, Semiconductor have taken the magnificent scientific visualisations of the sun and solar winds conducted at the Space Sciences Laboratory and Semiconducted them (…) In 1744 a simple experiment was conducted in Sweden to reproduce the underlying cause of the Aurora Borealis in a laboratory, what we would now think of as a room. A small hole in a shade “the size of a large pea” let through a ray of sunlight that then was refracted through a prism. The small patch of light broken into a spectrum of colours then traveled through a medium of turbulent air directly above a warmed glass of aquavit.
(…)
scientists at the SSL at University of California in Berkeley theoretically model, conduct experiments, and develop instruments to study the magnetic fields of the sun. They study them deep inside the sun’s core, their effect on the looping of the corona flaring above its surface (the photosphere, that lights our days), and the solar winds of charged particles that interact with the earth’s own magnetic field, creating the auroral displays at the poles. Magnetic Movie is the aquavit, something not precisely scientific but grants us an uncanny experience of geophysical and cosmological forces.“

The Pollstream series

“Pollstream is a collection of ideas, forms and images that explore man-made clouds. We are fascinated by clouds because of their movement, and because of their natural undefined form - which makes them difficult to be fixed in time. Across a number of projects, clouds are used as a visual metaphor to aestheticise emissions and chemical toxins. (…) This project is an intervention in environmental ethics. It creates a series of environments and processes to monitor and localise pollution at the very same time that it is produced. (…) Pollstream, using visual, kinetic and sonic technologies, undermines these typical defences of disengagement by speeding up the normal time it takes for our actions in and on the environment to have consequences. Across a number of projects, a sense of constant rather than delayed feedback is created. Thus, in its final form, color coded communal information is projected onto the vapor of a power plant that is visible to all residents. The movement of the green vapor emission changes size to show levels of energy being consumed at any given time; the chimney becomes a community measuring tape, a shared canvas. Nuage Vert is the ultimate aesthetisation of pollution, while seeking to draw critical attention to it. “

Why do I blog this? two “pervasive art” projects that I’ve found intriguing recently, when looking for documentation before preparing the talk I gave last week in Torino. Can this be part of the “4D urbanism” described by Dan Hill?

Beyond the aesthetic of these projects I am often amazed by how recurring is the visualization of pollution in new media project related to ubicomp. Of course there’s a growing concern about the environment but it’s interesting to see how the locus of representation is geared toward this topic.

Just saw that in a the newspaper this morning, there seems to be a guy in town who’s attaching those little ashtray in various places because he’s fed up of people throwing paper and cigarettes on the ground. A bottom-up urban fux of some sort if you want.

URBAN TRACES - TELEPHONE is a project I recently stumbled acrosss, which examines public phones in different countries. Alina Tudor & Răzvan Neagoe sees public phones as a interesting sign of daily urban life that reveal the relationship between certain cultures and public space:

“We start up from the idea that the identity cannot be anything else but the object of a horizontal analysis and can’t be simply defined as an urban artefact. It represents a cultural sign as long as the virulent changes affecting all the social structures register as a natural answer a form of resistance over the all these mutations.

TEL. continues the series of unconventional spaces as part of the Urban Traces project. Following the interactive “Up in the flat there’s a house” and “Courier” projects, this one brings in front a small but… sizeable space, which is ignored. We have chosen the public phone because it is getting sick of daily urban life syndrome. It has become a place for passers by to have rest, a shelter to hide from the rain… it is vandalised and almost none of the phone booths has the door. This project is a warning sign regarding the collective indifference that is representative for big cities.“

An example from this project:

This project is also part of a “Bank of images”, that is to say a collection of public telephones from different countries and regions of the world:

“The Bank of images project has the intention to collect a series of photographs of public phones searching to offer them a new identity. Images that are representing different telephones and phone booths used accordingly to any other destination besides their primary one, but also the public phones which are placed in different contexts and thus acquiring a double sense in relation to that place are expected.“

Why do I blog this? Public telephone (with or without phones) is definitely a urban signal I am always looking at when visiting a city. A topic we covered in Sliding Friction as well. What I find intriguing in that project is the idea of thinking how they can reveal the state of public space cultures in modern societies. Other public services can also be relevant to observe, such as public toilets, benches or traffic lights.

A recurring topic here, as seen in Zürich yesterday: what it takes to support urban computing: infrastructures and configuration issues.

SO… LIFT is going to South Korea for LIFT Asia 08, a three-day event taking place on Che-Ju island on September 4, 5 and 6.

As in Geneva, the conference theme revolves around social change in information society. What we mean by that is that we will focus on the influence of technologies such as the web, mobile software and ubiquitous computing on our societies in domains such future cities, social media, mobility, sustainability or money transactions. Our goal is to spark discussions about the important changes, challenges and opportunities brought by technology, with the great diversity of the participants and their contributions providing a global reach.

An envigorating mix of researchers, designers, entrepreneurs, policy-makers and other thinkers will present us their viewpoints on eight topics: Beyond the web we know, Online for better society, Towards a Networked City, From robots to networked objects, The near future of social worlds, Techno-nomadic life, Virtual money and green tech. Since the conference is going to be held in South Asia, it’s also our purpose to have a mix of westerners and asian speakers for each session so that discussion deal with a mix of perspectives.

Sci-fi writer Bruce Sterling and UK consultant David Birch will talk about virtual money: Recent changes in the digitalisation of money are less perceptible than more glamorous technologies, but they are of considerable importance. New banking solutions and money circulation practices are around.

In “Aiming for a better society” Wonsun Park from Hope Society and Raphael Grignani from Nokia will describe how technologies can help shaping a more inclusive and sustainable society as well take advantage of the world’s diversity.

Given that the urban environment is of considerable importance when it comes to technological development, we will have a dedicated session about the Networked City with 2 architects Jeffrey Huang and Yang Soo Yin as well as user experience specialist Adam Greenfield. They will describe how new digital layers provided by ICTs on contemporary cities have now become reality and what it will mean for its inhabitants.

Close to the future of the city, mobility will also be a hot theme with the “Techno-nomadic life” session with design researcher Jan Chipchase, i-mode inventor Takeshi Nastuno and Christian Lindholm. They will talk about the user experience is reshaped by mobile technologies, and whether the mobile Web is going through the same process as the Web of the 90s.

Social platforms and media such as the one developed by Nexon will also be an important topic with Jonmoo Kwon, among other speakers. Social platforms on the Web and Massive Multi-Player games are indeed now merging in a new category of digital entertainment platforms with new business models and screens such as mobile phones. This will eventually lead to innovative usage and new forms of sociality.

In the “Beyond the web we know” session, we will talk about what’s exciting on the web from the near future, what comes after web2.0 with Laurent Haug and Eric Rodenbeck from Stamen Design.

Moreover, a special event about sustainable development will feature Dan Dubno who will talk about green gadgets and an upcoming speaker coming from a NGO.

The final session will be about robotics and the convergence towards networked objects, or how current robots are going beyond the traditional anthropomorphism and start to communicate with Tomoaki Kasuga, Frédéric Kaplan and Bruno Bonnell.

If you’re interested you can register here.

Obviously related to my talk about the invisiblity of ubicomp, Kazys Varnelis wrote an intersting A+U paper that you can find on his blog about how we live in “Hertzian space” the cloud of electromagnetic radiation that surrounds us and wonder how architecture that actively engage Hertzian space would look like:

“Two examples tentatively suggest ways in which urbanism might take into account our radically changed environment. The first of these forces us to confront the invisible forces in our environment. The second proposes to warp the very fabric of the city.
(…)
In Osman and Omar Khan’s project “SEEN-Fruits of Our Labor” the designers crafted (…) acrylic screen, (…) The designers set out to foreground questions of labor in the United States by asking members of three groups crucial to the Silicon Valley economy—technology workers, undocumented service workers and outsourced call center workers—the question “What is the fruit of your labor?” The Khans displayed the responses on the screen via a grid of infrared LEDs. (…) viewers saw a message that otherwise existed only in Hertzian space, invisible to the eye, on their camera screens
(…)
Robert Sumrell and I produced the second piece, “Windows on the World” (…) Windows on the World proposes to site multiple portals in multiple cities to create a true world planetary network, based not on capital and planning but on chance encounters. Remixing Hole in Space and Guy Debord’s map of the “Naked City,” we propose a telematic dérive, with each portal becoming what the Situationists called a plaque tournante, a center, a place of exchange, a site where ambiance dominates and the power of planners to control our lives can be disrupted. “

Why do I blog this? documenting interesting examples of the interlinkage between the digital and the physical, as usual.

Seen in Torino, last week. The practice of changing names (and also to put a random “grazie”).

In a recent issue of Communications of the ACM, Designing kinetic interactions for organic user interfaces, Parkes, Poupyrev and Ishii reflects on the notion of “kinetic user interface”:

“Kinetic interaction design forms part of the larger framework of Organic User Interfaces (OUI) discussed in the articles in this special section: interfaces that can have any shape or form. We define Kinetic Organic Interfaces (KOIs) as organic user interfaces that employ physical kinetic motion to embody and communicate information to people. Shape-changing inherently involves some form of motion since any body transformation can be represented as motion of its parts. Thus kinetic interaction and kinetic design are key components of the OUI concept. With KOIs, the entire real world, rather then a small computer screen, becomes the design environment for future interaction designers.“

They also discuss “salient design parameters and research” issues to consider when utilizing kinetic motion in interaction design:

“Form and Materiality. In order to recognize and comprehend motion, it must be embodied in a material form. Hence, a crucial and little-understood design parameter is how properties of materials and forms affect motion perception and control. (…) Understanding the material affordances, their interaction with the user and other objects, environmental light and sound is crucial in designing kinetic interactions.

Kinetic Memory and Temporality. While computational control allows actuated systems to provide real-time physical feedback, it also offers the capability to record, replay, and manipulate kinetic data as if it were any other kind of computational data. We refer to such data as kinetic memory (…) for example, objects can fast-forward or slow down motion sequences, move backward or forward in time; or the objects can “memorize” their shape history and share them with other objects.

Repeatability and Exactness. We can easily distinguish artificial motion because of its exact repeatability. In designing kinetic interactions, repeatable exactness is the simplest form of control state, and in many behaviors it is easily identifiable.

Granularity and Emergence. If this principle of dissecting form and mechanics into single elements—kinetic phrases—is combined with contemporary digital control structures, new materials, and actuators, it becomes possible to imagine a system where a kinetic behavior could be designed both concretely and formally.“

Why do I blog this? working recently on tangible UI project in which sensors can be put on everyday objects, the ideas expressed in that paper are relevant to what sort of design parameters should be taken into account (and serves as design constraints).

Last week in Torino, Italy, I spent some time in the Lingotto building which was a huge FIAT car factory built from 1916 and opened in 1923. A place Le Corbusier called it “one of the most impressive sights in industry”, and “a guideline for town planning”. It’s now a complex, with concert halls, theatre, a convention centre, shopping arcades and the hotel where I was staying.

The most impressive part if of course the rooftop track for testing cars. I ain’t a car enthusiast by any means but that piece of architecture is very intriguing to observe. Especially, if you consider how it has been pointed out as an “example for the future”. According to Jonathan Glancey in Architectural Review:

“The Futurists claimed that ‘Fiat Lingotto was the first built invention of Futurism’, although Matte-Trucco (1869-1934) was a level-headed, if adventurous, structural engineer, much indebted to Albert Kahn, and very much not a Futurist. His famous reinforced-concrete factory boasting a test-bed race-track on the roof, and now remodelled as a civic, commercial and arts centre, by Renzo Piano (AR November 1996), was designed very much in line with Giovanni Agnelli’s curt instruction: ‘You will not be allowed to enter the Biennale Exhibition. You must have no aesthetic concerns. That’s how you must work for industry.’ Matte-Trucco did not question his FIAT boss. The result, in any case, was a masterpiece, a building that was all but mythical before it was completed.“

Wandering around the track is still a curious experience, especially when the weather’s very hot. The ground looks like a skateboarding grip and the curves are quite steep as attested by how Mr. Greenfield is taking care not to slip:

Moreover, the structure is not only about a flat rooftop… there is also the path to get the car on the very roof:

Why do I blog this? Like the Atomium, la Grande motte, this piece is inspiring to me as it exemplifies the avantgarde of the industrial era… the very presence of a tremendously big testbed as part of the architecture of the factory. Surely an interesting remnant from a past future, relevant to keep in mind when doing foresight research. Both in terms of urban and design research.

In his talk at Frontiers of Interaction in Torino, Italy last week, Bruce Sterling dealt with the failure of technology and why we don’t have jetpacks or flying cars:

“to say a word is not the same as engineer a thing (…) we/people think it’s a smooth and practical process but it’s not (…) they don’t fail because of science they fail because of political frontiers between groups that we don’t know how to cross (…) the real frontiers are no longer engineers’ law like Moore’s law or Metcalfe’s law but social and legal practices”

Why do I blog this? this echoes with the list of failing factors I am trying to write-up for a project.

The IFTF recently released an interesting “future map” called “Future of Making Map:

“Two future forces, one mostly social, one mostly technological, are intersecting to transform how goods, services, and experiences—the “stuff” of our world—will be designed, manufactured, and distributed over the next decade. An emerging do-it-yourself culture of “makers” is boldly voiding warranties to tweak, hack, and customize the products they buy. And what they can’t purchase, they build from scratch. Meanwhile, flexible manufacturing technologies on the horizon will change fabrication from massive and centralized to lightweight and ad hoc. These trends sit atop a platform of grassroots economics—new market structures developing online that embody a shift from stores and sales to communities and connections.“

Why do I blog this? this topic quite resonates with the near future laboratory purposes and concerns. It’s interestingly frames in that document showing the driving forces (eco-motivation, rise of amateur-professionals…), the signals from today and trends.

“I cant believe it, the way you look sometimes,
Like a trampled flag on a city street, oh yeah,

And I dont want it, the things youre offering me,
Symbolized bar code, quick id, oh yeah,

cause Im a 21st century digital boy,
I dont know how to live but Ive got a lot of toys,
My daddys a lazy middle class intellectual,
My mommys on valium, so ineffectual,
Aint life a mystery? “

Bad Religion - 21st Century Digital Boy
Why do I blog this? listening to old tunes while reading critical studies about new media often leads to interesting encounters and resonance.

How to represent a map for blind people. Seen this week in Torino.

Some device usages sometimes rely on a great confidence of certain technologies.