We Rep Ideas

“To the analyst, such as me, interfaces are where the fun lies. Interfaces between people, people and machines, machines and machines, people and organizations. Anytime one system or set of activities abuts another, there must be an interface. Interfaces are where problems arise, where miscommunications and conflicting assumptions collide. Mismatched anything: schedules, communication protocols, cultures, conventions, impedances, coding schemes, nomenclature, procedures. it is a designer’s heaven and the practitioners hell. And it is where I prefer to be.”
Donald Norman

It’s a couple hundred years before the advent of GPS, Sextons and the Compass. You’re in the middle of the ocean, and your not lost. This is most likely because you have become literate to seamarks, the environmental cues and signals of open waters. Schools of fish, celestial alignment, cloud formations, and flocks of birds all tell of ones position and probable future conditions. It is also likely that you did not discover all of these cues on your own. The understanding of these signals and signs is a skill that has been passed down, preserved and cherished for generations. A complex mix of curiosity, mortality, and passion combined with the perceived value of unknowns too seductive to abandon forced these first literacies to emerge.

But are these signs really signs, or are they cues? In terms of the present-day way finding of concepts, could it be that our equivalent forms are more like hyperlinks than definitive words? Does a cloud, icon, or object contain meaning, or trigger a learned response?

When asked to write a paper for DeSForM: Design & Semantics of Form and Movement, I was intrigued by the purpose of the conference. Its edict is to facilitate a dialogue between schools of design, human-computer interaction, interface design, and tangible computing. The resultant discussion would determine how information will be communicated through a dynamic use of form and movement by objects and spaces.

How might object and spatial behavior communicate meaning? What dilemmas can we foresee at the outset of this exploration and how might we approach them? The question posed by the organizers of DeSForM was twofold. How might we set forth to design this system of dynamic symbols in a systematic and scientific manner, as well as what are some of the best practices, precedents and knowledge in this area?

One only needs to look at conferences such as DesFoRM and blogs such as WeMakeMoneyNotArt to see existing advances in university labs, art and design colleges, unorthodox startups, basements and garages all working towards solutions and applications in this area. The examples are exhaustive, there is opportunity in harnessing this narrative of edge competencies these diverse and driven collections of individuals are creating. In identifying the connections, links and overlaps between their work, there is much value in acknowledging, aggregating, framing their discoveries and explorations. Navigating these concepts and contributions to this language will be much like navigating open waters. Through the sketches, prototypes, products and papers we will individually and collectively negotiate their value and use, their successes or failures.

(more…)

Causes, values, motivations and concentrated actions become destinations as people and places become increasingly findable. How do situated technologies augment the lifecycles of these elements?

Through locative and social technologies what was once qualitative speculation now has the ability to shift into the domain of the measurable and recordable, generating a new species of data around the relationships between individuals, groups and their environment. Organizations such as Microsofts spinoff company Inrix “tracks the behavior of 750,000 vehicles, cell phone users, and others with digital devices to determine how Americans would react to different situations.”   vividly illustrates the growing interest and unique opportunity to harness human geospatial data. Experimentation with this form of information makes practices like Suprise Modelling thinkable.

Intrix, being such a novel geographic information retrieval company is a weak signal pointing toward our data traces becoming a new form of communication that creates a social metric, which diversifies the voices authoring geographical data. As urban computing is further embedded in our daily interactions new potentials for informing decisions and revealing choices can be realized. Through our data traces we will be able to co-author custom, space, policy and our material culture in new ways. In the background of this emerging context personal behavior will become personal advocacy. Our implicitly authored data may be used to cast votes, leave gestural and locative commentary. It may become a new voice, and new way to speak.

New dialogues of power occur at the intersection of human behavior, emerging technology, and inherited infrastructures and processes. Locative technologies point toward real-time visualization that offers a new individual and collective vantage, which will undoubtedly inform urban “logistics of perception” deeply effecting social dynamics and personal action. How might near-future “geo-strategic” identity building, expression, and management demand a “re-socialization” between individuals and their environment? How will people adapt?

Locative technologies, situational awareness and mobile haptics are a form of contextual and behavioral stenography. They offer a fertile ground to deploy location and behavior based “passive or explicit multi-player citizen games”. These future games (or “systems”) could also act as a base for dynamically negotiating rules, goals, conditions, and social accountability. We discuss current weak signals in our environment, such as serious games like World Without Oil, and the BCN Formula Game that contain elements that can be recombined and resituated as a robust infrastructure for effective democracy populated with informed citizens engaging in civil participation through new media.

“Social learning/training” based on the affordances of locative technologies and a “re-socialization” around the concepts of city and citizen could be proposed. Consider the environment itself as an agent - that is, the city would be, communicable and mutable rather than only a background. It is possible to reinvent the social space of the street as a much-needed infrastructure of expression and presence to facilitate and realize influential social relations. These emergent systems can be designed as educational frameworks for interacting and understanding converging literacies in the new environment. A new literacy and curricula are a vital to better equip people for emerging contexts that will require augmented political and social mobilization.

The need for a new educational framework is evident. However, the curriculum and implementation is up for debate.

INTRODUCTION

How is it that we truly know the world?

What is the true nature of things?

Science tells us that the true nature of things lies beneath the surface. If we look upon a chair and ask, what is that, the common answer would be, but of course - a chair. And who would deny this? It is after all what we have learned.

A chair is not a chair however. Beyond the surface of the chair are a whole series of phenomena that are invisible to the “naked” eye. The chair is actually made up of atoms, tiny particles that are the building blocks for everything. A desk, a chair, even humans are made up of atoms. And atoms themselves are made up of even smaller subatomic particles.

Science and the scientific pursuit have proven this to us through instruments that measure, and through experimentation. The scanning tunneling microscope used for observing atoms, for example, presents us with a reality that is objective and rational. Or so it seems.

But is this really how we know the world?

Knowing seems to be indicative of a deeper visceral engagement with the world. One that is mediated through the senses and understood only after repeated sensory impressions.

Experience is the mother of all invention.

Reality is not objective and rational. Rather it is a subjective experience dependant on the one doing the perceiving. And it is precisely this dependency that has given birth not only to the apparatus for sensing, but also to that which the senses pick up. There is a certain mutuality or reciprocity to the phenomenal world in the way that acts of expression and perception form mutually co-dependant relationships. If the bee cannot smell the pollen what good is it to the pollen producing plant? Thus, our perceptual ways of knowing are tethered to the world itself, intimately weaved, and not separate from it.

Science and technology however have distanced themselves from these corporeal ways of knowing preferring instead a rational and objective outlook. And has as a result of these extensions created a gap between nature and us. Between the mind, and the body.

Take for example, the term “naked eye” as it is used above. As if the eye that is naked is insufficient without the prosthesis of scientific technology. The assumption itself that the eye is naked to begin with is skewed. These assumptions, that have in essence made their way into a common language suggests a deeply engrained prejudice that displaces the senses from their natural ability to pick up what is given, and instead suggests that the true nature of things somehow lie beneath all appearances. This way of thinking has not only displaced the senses from their inherent right to know, but has distanced us from what I would call proper ways of thinking about the world and our place in it, by privileging a rational techno-scientific outlook over one grounded in the bodies corporeal ways of knowing.

I would like to close that gap and reclaim the rightful place of the Sensus Communis as an intelligent and rational faculty that can, and should inform our forages into technological and scientific pursuits.

Over the past several years I have been deeply engaged with a body of work that advocates for the inclusion of the human senses into a common practice. One that states that the senses are the foundational support for everything we experience and for everything that we create as a result of those experiences. As such, the senses are something we should be paying more attention to, and giving them their due credit.

In consideration of the many facets of multi-sensorial intelligence, this paper will briefly touch on three aspects I think are important in bringing to bear the relevance and significance of a return to the Sensus Communis.

FOOTNOTE: “Sensus Communis”

Aristotle postulated a central faculty capable of uniting all the senses, synthesizing what each sense picked up to form a coherent whole in the mind. He called this the “Sensus Communis”.

(more…)

Original Doc: A New Dialogue - Original

A New Dialogue Redux

Introduction
The central concerns of the following text focuses on addressing the cultural meanings attributable to form, and initiate a discursive dialogue with respect to the inherency of meanings which potentially reside within forms themselves.

The former instantiation of this text was written for a conference DeSForM: Design & Semantics of Form and Movement in the Netherlands which purpose is to develop a platform of products that communicate information through a dynamic language of form and movement. The question posed by the organizers was how might we set forth to design this system of symbols in a systematic and scientific manner. The meaning of form is a human production, as it is both malleable and undefined. As a cultural construct, it has the potential to consecrate meaning as well as confound it. New definitions of form semantics can be revealed through the examination of the intersection of human behavior and emerging technological discourse in the present social climes, a language of form and movement cannot be designed, but a platform in which this language can emerge through negotiation can be.

Form Has No Meaning
The capability and meaning of any form can be defined by the limits of people’s ability to imagine what it can be physically or represent spiritually or intangibly. In essence, form has no meaning; it is an invitation, a window to possible relationships which produce a myriad of meanings. Meaning resides, and is latent within us, in the relationships we perceive and cultivate in our minds and through what we negotiate with others.

What can we learn from these characteristics of forms and how can we, as designers, challenge the need for designing explicit meanings?

How can we create a new dialogue between objects and people to harness the emergent properties of meaning within the human experience?

Time Matters. Location matters. Context matters.
Form triggers multiple meanings. A gun locked safely at a hunting lodge has entirely different denotative and connotative associations than the same gun in the hands of a man in a dark alley. The sign itself, the gun and its function, within the context of alternative environments, is pollinated with probable outcomes that are associated with location and situation. Context influences interpretation of the purpose of that form, shaping the message it conveys. It is through the process of negotiating meaning between social actors, place and location, that form evokes multiple meanings, and likewise meanings can inspire multiple forms. Physical properties in differing contexts can trigger landscapes of ulterior meanings around and between people determined by their personally and culturally informed associations. Context again alters the meanings that forms and motions may trigger, influencing their social role at a given time. The introduction of new information and the mutation of old information alters associated meanings because of what is accumulated, paired and lost during the reallocations and migrations of forms in multiple contexts.

How can we enable forms to embrace this continual process of the production of meaning? Is it our objects that adapt, or do we?

Can a form change its mode of expression to fit those who are present?

How can a single meaning be maintained through multiple modes of expression in multiple contexts?

How can these unfolding dialects, migrations and morphologies of the compositionality of meaning over time be documented?

Will context be the dominant hypermedia form? Will it be the request, the curator, the aggregator and synthesizer in relation to ones identity and state, emotional, situational and physical context?

(more…)

PREAMBLE:

Once upon a time not long ago – when people whore tag jammers and rendered life on the low – when laws were stern and justice stood – and kids were misbehaving like they aught to should – There lived a little toy who was mislead – by another little toy and this is what he said: Me and you kid we’re gonna craft some fame – posting up drama while tagging his name. They hit some spots – fame came with ease – but one couldn’t stop it’s like he has a disease…

-Adapted from Children’s Story By Slick Rick 

The  scenario to follow is a “day in the life of” story about a Graffiti Writer overcoming and subverting what we might call “writers block”: the combined chilling effects of materials prohibition, pervasive surveillance technologies, inaccessible mediums, shrinking spaces for expression (aka habitat destruction) and the inattention of fragmented audiences lost in an over mediated fog of advertising. How does the artist overcome and adapt?

Along with the help of a growing creative insurgency made up of home grown hactivists, moonshiners, code breakers, trackers and map makers; Graffiti Writers do their best to bypass the barriers standing in between them and their pursuits of mediated presence, dialogue and fame. What is the future Graffiti  experience? Where does it take place?

Le Confiture (The Jam) takes place “once upon a time” several decades after the disappearance of graffiti, as we know it today. Technological progress, privatization and public paranoia has forced Graffiti Culture out of its more familiar and tangible surroundings- causing its migration towards freshly augmented realities and virtual worlds that present themselves as blank canvases (Habitats) to express on and speak from. Within this new context, Graffiti lives on.

Unfortunately, many of these augmented realities and virtual spaces apply and enforce the same laws, codes of conduct, and logics that squeezed Graffiti from its original habitats. Within this new paradigm, security, cost of production, bandwidth, connection speeds, traffic volume and membership agreements frequently determine the artist’s potential for self-actualization. Which often finds it-self half rendered and lagging. Further adaptation is required. How does one make their mark within this plural context?

As method to this madness, graffiti artists rely more heavily on soft-tools and semi-autonomous agents, also know as “toy soldiers”. These agents are designed and programmed to help the artist achieve and maintain a plural-all city- digital graffiti presence, now necessary within the complex mixture of overlapping worlds. These agents are, all at once, collaborators, students, and works of art; always evolving in style, sketching themselves out, questioning, collecting, learning from, and commenting on, the landscapes and experiences that surround them. Graffiti writers are their “imaginations”, temporary masters, and mentors guiding their actions, teaching and training them towards achieving mutually beneficial outcomes. What is the nature of this collaborative relationship? What is gained and what is lost? What is the role of imagination in a world of automation?

Within this highly mediated theatre known as Dataspace, the Graffiti Writer and his agents are just one in a billion actors fighting for space, bandwidth and attention on a massively multiplayer mixed reality stage; Performing for an always on and lurking audience inhabited by people places and things. Graffiti is the anomaly always acting up to be seen. What does this mean?

Graffiti has  evolved; writers embrace performance, playing more seriously with time-context-medium, and most importantly message. Graffiti shouts out at you; knowing it will be seen, heard, captured, broken apart, re-assembled and transmediated back into- and across other worlds, contexts- spaces and times by the all seeing, all appropriating audience.   

LE CONFITURE is a scenario-based exploration of expression, identity, learning and collaboration within a futuristic and intentionally dystopic - ubiquitous computing landscape otherwise known as Dataspace. The scenario introduces and projects existing political, socio-cultural, technological, and economic signals into a panoptic world inhabited by yet another generation of Graffiti artists and their culture jamming  hacktivist agents. The narrative explores their motives, logics, values and experiences as they struggle to make their mark within a feudal and over saturated attention economy controlled by pervasive and chilling DRM infrastructures, advanced materials prohibition, and networked surveillance. Furthermore, the scenario explores the context of multiple networked identities, master-mentor and actor-author-audience dynamics, and how new forms of digital media literacy might emerge within a transmediated (Plural) landscape where even the subtlest forms of temporary presence and participation can guarantee new and unimagined forms of permanence, fame and legacy.

 Keywords

Graffiti 2.OH!, Remix Culture, Prohibition, Digital Rights, Collaboration, Ubiquitous Computing, Dataspace, Transmediation New-Media, Expression, Virtual Identity, Surveillance, Telepresence, Trespass, Plurality, Asymmetric, Literacy, Attention Economy, Feudalism, Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Pattern Recognition, Mapping, RFID, 

On the slushiest day of the year, Rafael Fajardo, a young game artist and media professor walks in our Toronto office with a bright green webkins frog. What proceeded was an informal discussion about serious games.

The University of Denver (DU), where Fajardo teaches, has staked a claim in doing “good” for humanity. The digital media studies department prepares graduates “with significant experience in three areas of investigation and aptitude: design, technical, and critical. Trained to establish and foster dialogue across these areas, DMS graduates are prepared to address the entangled, technology-fueled challenges shaping contemporary experience.”

Humane Games
Rafael’s personal interests lie in a concept he calls “Humane Games;” games that are educational through play and through their making. “Socially conscience games”, which serve to articulate and address a variety of perspectives on various social, political and cultural issues. He is also underway working on Humane Games as a concept that has medical and health value. These are games that have physiological advantages, aiding therapeutic practice and patient pain aversion. Humane games are games that are good for people. It is here where the design of games is considered as a component in forming a discipline around the development of games. Game development is described on the DU School of Engineering & Computer Science Game Development Programs website as:

“the academic field focused on the creation of electronic games. The field includes interactive graphics/animation programming, fundamental computer science, game design, studio art, electronic art, narrative storytelling, and critical game studies. The field is concerned with both entertainment and serious games.”

This marks a shift in games as they move from a weaponized nature rooted in a heritage of military simulation and wargaming, to a more holistic and diverse social and cultural expression. An evolution “from sword to plowshare”; from tactical to practical; from kill to chill. In our conversation it was discussed how game developers, by in large, create games for people such as themselves; they are “audience-creators” generally male, young and Anglo. Thus, the industry having been flooded with a spectrum of competitive, action and strategy driven games has come to a level of saturation, and is showing signs of waning in popularity. Rafael in his P4 initiative looks to enable the diversification of voices creating games, and tools to assist in making them mark entry points to relieve saturation and restore integrity to the medium.

Design is all about relationships. Games deal with contexts, decisions and outcomes; they are in effect a medium of fluid and dynamic relationships. Rafael asks in his work, “What are the relationships we wish to curate when designing games?” Could they be a form of editorial media for social and cultural critique and art? To find out he takes the complexity of serious issues and simmers them to an interactive “reduction” that one can engage and embody. Digital Games are a relatively young media, and the concept of games as social critic, action, or as a literary object is even more new. Games like Pax Warrior and Darfur is Dying are cause driven artifacts, suitable and viral pickets in an age of internet ubiquity. Games are also a medium of attention, which is all he asks us to pay.

(more…)

Scenario: Saw-sees

My name is John Hammond and I can do almost anything you can imagine with wood. Ive spent the last thirty years building cabinets in my spare time, and mine are as good as any. Ivory inlays for days.

I’m considered a master.

I’m Xavier Borden, I’m an industrial poet and musician. I make kinetic sculptures that have a dual purpose as instruments. I transform, reform and perform, interact or die.

I’m considered an eccentric.

My friends call me Sady, I take consumer electronics, tools and vintage computers and build violent robots that’ll eat your kitsch installations.

I’m considered an artist

Call me John, Xavier or Sady, I’m a playlist of mastery, but my real name is DeWalt im a model 568X skill saw. Nice to meet you. My tricks, my trades are recallable at any time. Just ask my traces, they’ll shed light on an imagination that lived. The residual imprints of hands, paths, and purposes is my personality.

I’m considered innovation

—

Significance:

I began to toy with the idea that objects can house avatars. There are many ways in which people can express themselves and their identity beyond pixel and volume. As objects become more literate of our behaviors they may one day house our gestural traces.

How would one “play an environment” like a conductor of a remote symphony in real-time? - Embodying an instrument, a section, or whole orchestra at any given moment, an expressive variance similar to that of emphasis in speech. My son should be able to bring a play-list of these “contacts” - live or residual- with him everywhere, for use in a wide variety of contexts. Making any wood shop his fathers’ wood shop. The right contextual links and personal inquiry could prompt, or summon residual knowledge, or “live” presence of an individual or mix of individuals which that a given situation requires - providing - in context, information rich, experiential-mash-up-swarms, with read write capability.

I wonder how something like this could change educational models, could El P be in my sequencer? When I buy a paintbrush, could you throw in Rembrandt too? It brings a whole other meaning to buying a pair of “Jordan’s.”

Objects will perform unimagined means and modalities of representation, vessels of personal and group communication. It is foreseeable that things with communications will enable the expression of our various forms of presence. It is likely that social networks will evolve within single and multiple objects. Merely using something is synonymous to pressing record.

These recordings will be entries contributing to the history of an object, a history that can be searched, recalled, annotated and resituated. Object that teach are nothing new. New is how object may provide a platform to direct the hands in a spectrum of meaningful ways, based on other hands. Like a scene from Ghost. Gesture is technique, and technique can be recorded, codified and expressed. Objects may come to teach, translating motions, motivations and intents into tutorials and curricula. There are stories to tell of the roles they’ve played in the lives of people. If only these walls could talk.