Initial Presentation

This is the Prezi for the first presentation of the Linked Reserach students held on the 2nd February 2011. The presentation gives and overview of the module structure and the broader structure of the ArchaID reserach group at Newcastle University.

Introduction to Linked Researchers on Prezi

Vermillion Sands

Over Christmas I have been reading “The Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard”. It’s a huge book and so far I’m about a third of the way in. I’m reading it, ostensibly to switch off but inevitably I couldn't help mark a margin or two with little sticky notes in reference to interesting material. I’ve discovered at least 4 or 5 possible projects so far including the Sonovac - a device which vacuums up the unwanted echoes of past events. Among the stories are a set written in the fictional suburb of Vermillion Sands which is like Sunset Boulevard seen through the eyes of Salvador Dali. One story, The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista stood out. The opening paragraphs describe the experience of a lawyer and his wife as they visit possible houses in Vermillion Sands. The challenge is that the houses in Vermillion sands are:

“…composed of early, or primitive-fantastic psychotropic, when the possibilities offered by the new bio-plastic medium rather went to architects’ heads. It was some years before a compromise was reached between the one hundred percent responsive structure and the rigid non-responsive houses of the past. The first PT houses had so many senso-cells distributed over them, echoing every shift of mood and position of the occupants, that living on one was like inhabiting someone else’s brain.” (p. 30)

The challenge for the story's protagonists is to find a house which has not undergone a serious mental breakdown or, in one case, has become seriously psychopathic. Many of the descriptions of the architectural experiences of being within environments which shift and mould themselves reacting emotionally, to their inhabitants are reminiscent of Holger Schnädelbach et als. Exo Building:

as well as older project such as dECOi’s Hyposurface:

HYPOSURFACE Installation - by dECOi, with Paul STEENHUISEN from Art Music Promotion on Vimeo.

Clark experiences Hyposurface from Clark Goolsby on Vimeo.

The interesting thing about this story is that it was written in 1962. Read in the context of today’s technological possibilities it feels like a dystopia which has now turned into an aspiration. It also taps into our emotional relationship with our environment – something that has not really been addressed by any of these technology projects yet.

A Video Primer for Architecture and Interaction Design

A blog post from Johnny Holland entitled Architecture and Interaction Design: A Video Primer is well worth looking at. Holland gives a good intro to each video and all are of some relevance to the themes of the blog but I would recommend spending some time with Carlo Ratti’s and Dan Hill’s after starting with Adam Greenfield’s which provides the best thematic introduction to all the others:

Adam Greenfield at PICNIC08: The Long Here, the Big Now, and other tales of the networked city from PICNIC Festival on Vimeo.

The Beginning...

By way of a beginning, an ending. This is the last few lines of my book 'The Architecture of Information' which will be published by Routledge in June 2011. Its a starting point for the themes in this blog. It starts by musing on a future collaboration between architecture and computer science:

I believe that the relevance of this potential collaboration is all the more important when we look through the history of computing and the change in our understanding of what constitutes a computer user interface. The study of human interaction with computer systems has moved through three distinct phases, characterised by the emergence of Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) in the 1980s, Tangible User Interfaces (TUis) in the 1990s and 2000s and, most recently, through embedded and spatially distributed computational systems, and through ambient, intelligent and pervasive user interfaces. Each paradigm in human computer interaction is associated with particular technical challenges, cognitive models and design paradigms. For example, GUIs have traditionally been developed with reference to the evolution of computer graphics, gestalt models of visual perception and design paradigms such as direct manipulation. Similarly, the development of TUIs has brought together the technical challenges of sensing and multi-touch interaction, theories on embodied and situated cognition and the design of ergonomic and physically responsive material artefacts.

Whilst the study and development of ambient, intelligent and pervasive user interfaces has been substantial and there has been growing research effort across a range of fields (both in and outside computer science), the core principles which bind the technical development and design to an understanding of their cognitive affects have yet to be fully understood. Where graphic design supported the development of the GUI and product design supported the design of tangible user interface, surely the new century will prize architectural design along with relevant cognitive theories in the development of situated and pervasive computing interfaces. In particular, following the discussion in this book, we can observe that, whilst models of design and cognition in human computer interaction are centred around an allocentric frame of reference, (the manipulation of physical objects) pervasive computing requires an understanding of egocentric frames of reference (involving whole body immersion).

We might even call these new types of interface AUIs (Architectural User Interfaces). It remains to be seen what new artefacts and deign agendas might follow their evolution.