PLAN | ICA | 2005 (First workshop of the Pervasive and Locative Arts Network) Notes by Tom Carden http://www.tom-carden.co.uk Revision 1.01, 10:50 07/02/2005 If I got your name, affiliation or projects horribly wrong, please send corrections to: tom (at) tom (dash) carden.co.uk (terrible paraphrasing, mixed-up vocabulary, elipsis abuse and lapses in concentration are all mine) [later additions are in square brackets] -------------------- Day 1 (February 1st) -------------------- Steve Benford, Nottingham [I was late... but I caught the end of Steve's intro, and a brief aside about designing interfaces for audiences (e.g. presentation software which doesn't reveal your speaking notes or desktop clutter or show you adjusting your screen resolution, etc. etc. Worth noting, I think.] -------------------- Matthew Chalmers, Glasgow. Seamful Design Use of GPS / wireless / PDAs games In the context of the game "Bill": (coin collecting game played outdoors with wifi and PDAs) exploit patchy technology for play neat video of GPS shadows (from someone at UCL I think) (GPS coverage in towns looks surprisingly erratic, even outdoors) ad-hoc signal mapping attitudes to wifi are interesting (people new to it will often stand right next to an AP... why?) implications of weak signal (can be detected but not used, or will only send packets one way) implications of weather / trees / trucks [anything with lots of metal or water, basically - the same things which cause mobile phone signals to flutter as explained by Duncan Campell on the 2nd day] In the context of the game "Dark Bill": game jacket / signals on clothing / "technical textiles" Also mentioned monopoly and "Yoshi Feeding" [private Wifi APs are sources of fruit, public wifi APs have a Yoshi who wants feeding a particular kind of fruit] Thoughts on ambient devices - e.g. wifi lamp for the home which indicates if your wifi is being used by other people (outside) Question - Any thoughts on games which require constant attention vs ones where you can dip in and out? yes... someone used the term "slow games" -------------------- Eyal Weizman (Israeli Architect, researching in Vienna) [much of this talk was focused on a video of an Israeli general lecturing on strategies related to architectural and network theories, and an analysis of his slides] Relationships between architecture and military theory "oppressive archtecture" Military tactics: systems/network thinking independent settlement nodes "moving through walls" alleys for travel (affording travel?) alleys as forbidden space... surprise masterplan vs self-organise battleplan vs "swarming" [this talk was cut short, but suffice to say it affected the tone of the rest of the day considerably. There's a lot to think about here. We can't be naive about architectural research, because it can and will be appropriated by the military just as civilian researchers use military tech (e.g. GPS).] [Eyal was later asked to relate the military tech to the games/toys/devices we'd been hearing about. They are all related, he says, military intelligence feeds civilian technology.] [Asked what will happen next, Eyal related the "through the walls" approach of the IDF to new technologies which will allow seeing through walls (the last barrier on privacy), and linked this to Matthew Chalmers's GPS shadows animation... city construction will change - to the military the only thing of importance will be the shadows.] [Is seeing through walls technology T-Rays?] -------------------- Bill Gaver, RCA designing for place - located vs locative (situated design - doesn't *know* where, but *where* still matters pollution e-sign -> bluetooth broadcasting a location's pollution levels (not bluejacking as such... the info is in the device name) history tablecloth -> halos around objects, flow of objects design - place connections over time GPS City Modelling -> carving building volumes with satellite line of sight (Richard Swinford) Glowing Places -> reactive lighting in furniture (with Philips) Digital Selves -> shared presence, overlapped floor plans between different buildings Domestic Probes -> stuff to use to gateher clues about life - e.g. cameras, maps, etc. Design Documentaries -> objective, poetic, etc. Weather Watchers -> in-home weather displays (e.g. shadow cast by attachment to light fitting, indicates wind speed/direction) Edgetown -> city/suburb boundaries sensor park -> next to airports, "info zoo" motorway home -> different zones, silent/open/bottomless/cage (for picnics?!) Question - what data, why, and for whom? e.g. pollution monitoring, isn't there a "real research" question here? not art, but design? [not sure about that bit] who monitors it anyway? Bill - locative pollution monitoring: empowering locals [my interpretation], not remote, average, processed [top down?]. sensor park: information as aesthetic resource -------------------- Sally Jane Norman, Newcastle University Culture Lab Newcastle (chicken or egg, does art come before tech, or vice-versa?) (connect as an expletive?) (mentions cooperation of telecoms companies after the recent Asian tsunami) examples of locative media in the past: 1914, play conducted over the phone simultaneously in London and Rome [there were more examples] - but *not* saying it's all been done before, just raising awareness unity -> coincidence unity of time/place/action (Aristotle) replaying revolutions(?) audience - performance -------------------- Cliff Randell, Bristol Wearable Computing Sensor integration, Equator, etc. Sussex, Interact Lab location beacons ambient horn (sound [light saber?] - represented photosynthesis!?!) wearables, but not HMDs (doesn't believe in cyborgs) cyberjackets sleeve computer - speech interface, AR display - "find pub" ultrasonic indoor position trackers Show and tell session [lots of cute little computers, including a gum stick one, and some sensors resuluting in a "heart on sleeve" display... nice] -------------------- Wilfried Hou Je Bek, SocialFiction.org Thoughts on a kid who looked like Draco Malfoy... Face recognition tech Fun surveillance e.g. Glasgow vs Rangers could have an unofficial score line (31 Elvises, 1 Cleopatra, 5 George Bushes) People would want to look like obscure celebrities Face recognition in clouds - can it be automated? Origin of human culture... seeing things which aren't there was God from the clouds (heaven above, etc.) --> don't know how that accounts for the devil mind - lamp or mirror? psychogeography... opinions about new spaces... instincts! [lots of finger clicking here... I guess this is the stuff that you *just know*] PML - space annotation, XML/RDF style (he finds it annoying and doesn't like it!) so... "taxonomy of my room" PML was meant to extract the "certain quality" about a space, isolate the properties, but... "it's just one damn thing after another really" (likes/dislikes surroundings) Only One Native Speaker language without rules no interpreter put it online, give it meaning... [something about an evil markup language... being like Draco... more interesting than Potter...] Overlapping markup I guess it would be like this might be an example of what he meant [gestalt parsing?] Hacking the language of crowds we are a giant brain how can we find out what we are thinking? crowd crystal... crowd as solvent / crystals [solute?] rule: move only if there are (3?) people around you [demo is software which looks like cellular automata] can this be read? does it say something? -------------------- Matt Adams, Blast Theory place <-> meaning? we are stuck in simple models/metaphors (Uncle Roy All Around You is "just" a chase game) bus games - posters inviting phone calls public/private boundaries (on the bus) Can You See Me Now? Uncle Roy All Around You I Like Frank Implications of ubiquitous connectivity (with nod to Matthew Chalmers that it's not actually ubiquitous, there are seams) Uncle Roy... deliberately violating conventional game boundaries arranging 12 month contracts between players to assist each other in crises Next... WTC site in NY, more lofi - voice calling related work [invitation to play Can You See Me Now in 2 weeks time] -------------------- Giles Lane Urban Tapestries to Social Tapestries spatial annotation, social implications thereof trans-disciplinary (not cross, or inter) place and mobility (not just location, consumption) co-creativity public authoring "public space" != commons top down defined how to understand the difference *social knowledge* - sharing the everyday presence beyond proximity "body storming" / paper prototyping, mixed groups (old, young, old & young, etc) remove technology common response Urban Tapestries, location based RSS feeds UT was Arts Council *and* DTI funded... a first [I think] -------------------- Usman Haque architect but not the hard (concrete) stuff the inside... the things architecture as Operating System, the hard-soft interface Smell 3D smell positioning but... dispersion so... wind tunnel not just nice smells though mean to kids - low down position for bad smells! Sky Ear we are conditioned by phones and EMF (e.g. standing by the window to talk) [the rest of my notes just say "wow." - Sky Ear looked amazing but I was too busy watching the presentation to take more notes] Wireless Networks mapping living room by signal strength leaking devices the jellyfish as the ultimate "paranoid firewall" [sting everything] making a big blurring device, to cut you off from everything [phones, CCTV, etc] Haunt study stuff which is *wrong*, e.g. haunted space commonalities e.g. infrasound (~18Hz) EMF temperature, air flows (not out to prove/disprove anything, but trying to recreate the feeling by recreating the environment) 1000 technological bodies and spaces intelligence != amiable (just because it's smart doesn't mean I'll like it) whatever they build, there will be 1000 of them -------------------- Richard Hull, Mobile Bristol "mediascapes" experiential, context, media, mobile, in cities broad appeal (like the web) Riot 1831 audio recreation [using locative media to enhance the presentation of oral histories/recreations was a common theme at PLAN] framework and authoring software [a little bit like Flash] available at mobilebristol.com issues... published mediascapes how to find? how to describe/distinguish? what about sensor requirements? [I had some thoughts about their software... it wasn't clear how flexible the scale of the software was. Given decent sensor input, could I use it in a room, or over a whole country (in an aircraft)?] -------------------- Exyzt (French architectural collective) [their presentation was a DVD... good idea] architecture as media urbanism as a game [and an aside about science/urbanism] 4 levels [can't read my own writing here] spaces and buildings can exist in the margins of society organic coding structure basic needs + time + users programming about space Le Rab - empty parcel empty plot reappropriation of unused plot lived in scaffolding house for a month hosted events, adapted space Service Public 450 people - micropolitan / space cheap / self build playground computing 3x3m grid... settlement... observe over a few weeks dynamic... find a spot find privacy + textiles comfort groups etc... -------------------- Julian Priest, Consume King Cnut... regulating waves [TWAJS... ha!] wave regulation by government The Spectrum treated like land why a place? (like ether, and we stopped thinking like that years ago) social construction / not the sum of all possible info exchange we're actually regulating *transmitters* technology changing... now computational processing power regulates switching speed ... regulates potential use 3 ways: top-down [fiat?] fiscal/market - e.g. UK 3G licensing fiasco unlicensed, commons (example unlicenced uses) [2 weeks until government consultation closes, Julian will be furiously writing until then] -------------------- Constance Fleuriot, mobile media / Bristol Seminars building cross-disciplinary vocabularies about mediascapes [shared vocabulary was a big theme at PLAN] "magic moments" e.g. coincidences between sound effects and real-world activity how can we design these without appearing contrived? -------------------- Giulio Jacucci Interaction as performance large scale events beyond traditional media pervasive media for spectators e.g. video phones experience of a rally largely group oriented (less to do with the event itself) Mixed Media Environments and Learning painting textures on a white model (architectural) -------------------- Annika Waern, SICS Issues around NPCs (Non-Player Characters) in pervasive gaming. [how similar are these issues to issues that LARPers face in public games?] NPC violates the "magic circle" (Huizinga) ... taboo Frog Race -> players tag non-players (who are unaware) Rush Hour / Yum Yum Sheep / FlyTag / SpyBob [these were examples of games which involved NPCs as part of the game to a greater or lesser extent and in lower or higher numbers. There was the start of a discussion about the ethics of "using" NPCs in these ways. The games were deliberately designed to highlight these issues. Is it unfair/wrong to single out one NPC? Is it too close to stalking? Is it OK if they don't know? etc.] [Personally, I thought that the depersonalisation of "NPC" had undertones of superiority on the part of the game designers. The general public aren't dumb, or stupid. Also I think people would be aware if they were singled out in a multiplayer game, whether you told them or not, unless you were playing remotely (which was one possibility talked about] -------------------- Rob Van Kranenburg, Virtual Platform ...getting creative industry catalysed in Europe... top down doesn't work Supermarket PFID caution over electricity metaphor for digital territories too "black box" [don't hide it in the walls] -- serendipity and insecurity are default -- not interactions, but resonance -------------------- Pete Gomes, Saul Albert Feeling of technology changing notions of the city/space (signage for the invisible) (geocinema) Wireless London - civic technology articulating existing social networks policy meeting, events, see website london free map -------------------- Minna Tarkka, Tapio Makela, m-cult urban & wireless not locative/pervasive participatory media -------------------- Naomi Spellman Theory as Product land alteration - large scale locative media in the wild -------------------- Mara Traumane, Jaanis Garancs, RIXC (Riga, Latvia) E-lab Acoustic Space (magazine/book) TCM reader locative.net/tcmreader Cartographic Command Center Big Brother Browser ... sousveillance -------------------- Susan Kennard, Banff Center, Canada a wrist-band for gestural interfaces (GA Tech accelerometer) game - throwing gesture, transferring patterns animal powers game health watch - lifestyle game Engineering and design-heavy projects. (happy engineers and designers, frustrated narratologists [I think]) leading to... -------------------- Michael Longford, Concordia and MDCN (Mobile Digital Commons Network) [messy network image] collaboration / funding / interdisciplinary [something about a wifi dog?] MC3 [Cartographic Command Center again] @ ISEA & DEAF -------------------- Gabe Sawhney, Toronto Wifi project (a bit like wireless london) Murmur location specific storytelling collected stories about places recorded personal anecdotes, own voices places signs in a neighbourhood tel. no and location code listen to stories about that place (plays a great recording of a story about the blur cinema, a cute sign boy and a girl called Jacqueline... really good) the use of lofi tech make murmur easy to roll out [seems to have a lot in common with Andrew Wilson of Blink who spoke on the 2nd day] [projector wasn't working at this point, but Murmur didn't need it, it sounded great anyway] MC3 travelling across Canada- gallery of locative work