Wednesday 31 August 2011

The Writing’s on the Wall.

Since collating my research on the high street I have started thinking about what I would actually like to design and which methods I would use. I hope to create an interactive digital installation that comments on my findings. To find inspiration for this I will return to look at the streets.

When walking down the street, looking past artistic displays in the windows trying their hardest to make you depart with your money, there is a long established urban art scene that is continuing to grow.

Graffiti is still constituted as vandalism and is therefore illegal. There are some artists who argue that advertising is just a form of paid legal graffiti, which I completely agree with. On a daily basis I would say I’m far more offended by awful adverts than I am with graffiti. Who needs this on your way to work?


Jeff Ferrell in ‘Urban Graffiti’ quotes a street artist who says “he tags for the respect of other taggers, who cares about adults?” Ferrell describes the tagging as an alternative system of public communication.

I liked this because it reminded me of not only what I think of the high street as being a place of public communication, representation of status etc., but also of a lot of my girlfriends opinions on fashion. I have heard many girls say they don’t care about what guys think of their outfits but it’s the like minded girls who they are out to impress and whose respect and approval they seek to gain!

Many artists use characters time and again in their work. I would like to create a character just like these famous graffiti artists who would help me develop my own story.






As for it being illegal, I can say if woke up and someone had done this to my flat in Newcastle…..I’d be nothing but impressed!




Tuesday 30 August 2011

I'm Visible

At the outset of this project I was extremely interested in the use of sketch books, and this interest evolved as I came to understand them as a productivity tool having read the "I lie to myself that I have freedom in my own schedule" paper by Leshed et al. One of my initial ideas was that an electronic pen system could digitize the information recorded into sketch books automatically without any need to syncing and serve as the input for a system promoting reflection and collaboration, such as the shooting gallery.

However, during the course of my research I became concerned that not everyone used sketch books in a way that would be conducive to such a system, and that the information recorded under such a system was likely to be lacking in detail, especially in the later stages of a project.

However, the graffiti scrawled throughout the studios caught my attention. A desire to record what I will call shared suffering, has lead a number of students to create a number of informal notice boards of the walls of their studios, including several "Crying Tallies", an "It Could be Worse" board, and a list of "Things You'd Rather be doing". Whilst humorous in nature, their is clearly something in creating these which is supporting the authors moral whilst under pressure. They are accompanied by a large number of quotes, and a huge volume of material relating to projects pinned to the wall for reference.

I began to wonder what would be the outcome if you were to record the input, the act of writing, but move the output, the visible made sign. I'm Visible uses digital pen technology to record writing on a surface, and transpose it elsewhere in the school. Many of the graffiti motifs have responses scrawled beneath them, this system takes the same principle and opens it out to the entire school.

This grants students scope for expressing their frustrations, and enables them to form new interactions with a degree of anonymity. The system could evolve to form dialogues across the school, or even be used as a message service, with students posted requests for help or appealing for ideas relating to a specific field.

The Shooting Gallery

Belonging to the second thread of proposals outlined in my previous post, The Shooting Gallery is a mechanism for prompting students within the SAPL to pause during the course of their day.

The basic idea is simple, that a continuously changing series of images cycling on a screen, projector or other imaging system placed in a public location within the school, can serve as a source of spontaneity, prompting new reflections and interactions amongst passing students. The source of the images is a critical component in making this work, as inclusion needs to carry sense of pride. Likewise, a targeting of the images relevant to certain passers by can only increase the chances of successfully achieving my aims.

Taking the first of these points, how do I generate content for such a system? It would be easy to reduce the system to an archive of past work, but I do not believe there would be any point in this as it would become background noise instead of something relevant to students immediate work. Without this immediate proximity to their current priorities, I do not believe that the gallery would hold a students attention. It occurs to me that images could be submitted by students themselves, or by tutors, or by a photographer, appointed secretly and at random. Smartphones could easily submit images taken in tutorials or of a model completed at 3am that a student happened to by proud of.

The idea would be that other students through interacting with the display would be able to comment, post links etc on the images as the play through, which would feedback to the originating student.

Phones could similarly form part of a targeting mechanism for the gallery installation, scanning for Bluetooth devices with specific names or running a back ground app, and upon detection showing an image relevant to the phones owner. Relevant information could just be an image from their last tutorial, including tags, links, precedents or comments recorded by others, or alternatively images of the people offering feedback.


Monday 29 August 2011

Project Cartography

I have referred before to the split nature of my project. This has now in my mind resolved itself into two distinct threads to be pursued simultaneously. The first thread will examine ways to record students work in a manner that will allow them to refer back to ideas and interactions in retrospect. The second thread will look at promoting wider interactions between students. The junction between these two threads holds a great deal of crossover, and will doubtless be plastic in nature, with outputs from the first thread modifying to feed the second and visa versa.

My first proposal belongs to the first group, and aims to create a system cataloging students work and interactions within tutorials. Many students are already familiar with the idea of site mapping, and of overlaying historical maps, diagrams and other mapped data-sets in order to gain insight into the context of a project. Project Cartography applies the same thinking to a students work in an ongoing project, creating aerial photographs of students work in progress, which can then be browsed, overlain and worked over in a similar fashion to resources from Google maps etc.


Monday 22 August 2011

360° of Inspiration

Today, as you do on a Monday as an unemployed gal around London town, I went to Round House in Chalk Farm to see Ron Arad’s Curtain Call.

It was absolutely brilliant example of digital art. It is an interactive 360 degree installation that show cases over 12 different pieces of work by different people from Paul Cocksedge to the Royal College of Art.

I walked in and was suprised by the sheer scale of the piece. It instantly made you feel like you were entering a different dimension. I walked through the curtain whilst being serenaded by 'plinky plonky' music and staring a pretty patterns. Everyone was either sitting or lying on the floor just taking it all in so I joined them. A minute later the artist changed along with the tone. The music got louder and faster, the beat dropped, the animation got more aggressive and it felt really trippy because you are surrounded!



I spent an hour there in total being taken on a world wind trip through different artists minds. It was awesome and I definitely recommend you go and experience it if you get the chance.

Great thing about it is you pay what you want to get in! So I emptied out my purse and donated 1 moth, 1 Tesco receipt and £1.36 for the pleasure! What a bargain!



Sunday 21 August 2011

Its Simple Stupid - Part Deux

Another slightly off topic post from me, but came across this article via Zach Kron's blog. Dealing with the design of user interfaces in a professional environment, it kind of reminded me of my own little rant about 4 months ago. Essentially a counter argument, it proposes that once a critical mass of people adapt to a crappy user interface, functionality is more important than intuitiveness.

I agree, but maintain that new users, certainly when dealing with new technologies, will overwhelmingly choose a shallow learning curve and immediate results, ahead of the potential of future benefits through greater functionality.

I have for instance recently had to amend a site plan for a project at work, then a fortnight later, remake the SketchUp model to match. Another job, same scope, same client, in BIM was half the work. But, only only because the job started on my desk and I've adapted to the softwares foibles.

Its something for me to think about again as I start designing potential systems and installations.

Skate Pinball

Considering this was only constructed for the purposes of a Mountain Dew advert and a competition, this skate park has had a lot of time and money invested in it. What interested me about it was the combination of technology within a street sport to record a score which is based on physical movements. It's pretty gimmicky though and I don't think it could easily be transferred to a external skate park due to maintenance issues. What I would like to take from it, however, is how the sensors have been used to measure movement and then to try and consider this within a more subtle context.


MOUNTAIN DEW SKATE PINBALL from Jae Morrison on Vimeo.

Saturday 20 August 2011

Tactile Software

Post from Autodesk Labs looking at the application of surface interfaces within design software that may be of interest.


Wonder if they'll accept payment in Kidneys?


Thursday 18 August 2011

Arduino Cencership


It is hard to find the point of this project but it made me think about some of the censorship and anonymity subjects that Hannah has been talking about. Also, its a little fun project that has been done with an Arduino so I though I would share it.

Wednesday 17 August 2011

The Importance of Location

When conducting research into location based technologies and their place within society, I came across The Mobile City, who are a group interested in the interaction between digital media technologies and urban design. In particular Michiel de Lange's paper on Moving Circles:Mobile Media and Playful Identities caught my attention. I think his explanation of the five typologies of Locative Media clearly breaks down the categories of current location based technologies:


  1. Wayfinding: Cartography - e.g. Google Maps, etc.
  2. Sensing & Visualization: Non-visual information displayed cartographically - e.g. Air Traffic Movements, Travel Patterns, etc.
  3. Annotation: e.g. Geotagging, Augmented Reality
  4. Social Networking: Locative media for social purposes - e.g. Foursquare
  5. Pervasive Gaming: Locative media for gaming purposes - e.g. GPS based game Tourality

It strikes me that these types can then be translated through to the mapping of Parkour.


  1. Wayfinding can map (generally only in 2D) the route of a Traceur; 
  2. Sensing & Visualisation could add information to this mapping (who is it, their vertical height, etc.); 
  3. Annotation could add verbal/visual geotags of the movements the Traceur is making; 
  4. Social Networking could highlight the Traceurs activities to a specified social audience; and 
  5. Pervasive Gaming increases the 'challenge' nature and the story of the mapping.


I would like to find out the following:
Which locative media type is used the most at present?
How can each locative media type be translated into an interaction relative to Parkour?
Is there a desire, from the Traceurs, for links to be made between their practice, digital location technologies and the urban environment?

Dirty Little Online Secrets.

In the past 2 weeks I have been practicing my probes on shoppers in London. From one of my studies I discussed window shopping with Charlotte Web. Charlotte is a 24 year old young professional who is very much into her fashion and is not shy of shopping. She told me that she does not window shop when she doesn’t have money because she finds it frustrating but does browse online. She continued telling me she had online wish lists full with thousands of pounds worth of clothes and accessories on various websites!

I found this so interesting and it got me thinking about the difference between window shopping on-line and in real life. The ease of being able to virtually visit top designers some people would never have the guts to visit in person or may not even be allowed in! The ability to add a ridiculously expensive dress into you ‘basket’ without clicking and committing to buy.

What other secret shopping habits do people have online that they are reluctant to advertise to the rest of the world?

Anonymity and online community by John M Grohol discusses the ramifications of being able to sit at a computer and avoid face to face communication. We feel free and uninhibited when we are online.

My thoughts turned to this future digital high street where shop fronts would know, from your smart phones, your buying behaviour and would invite you in if they had what you want! But how would they distinguish between what is and isn't your secret behaviour you don’t want people knowing about? What if everything didn't stay so anonymous?


A trip to the high street could become a real life nightmare!

Monday 15 August 2011

Probes: A Critique

The idea of a ’Cultural Probe’ was initially coined by William Gaver as part of an EU research project investigating how elderly people can increase their presence in a community (i). I have chosen to adopt the probe methodology and when doing so I have understood that the method does not transfer straight away to my project and in fact this raises some questions.

One:

The participants in the Gaver study were provided by the Presence Project. Therefore, one of two assumptions can be made. First of all, the participants were being paid to do the study. Or (and most likely) they volunteered to take part in the probe study due to a strong personal interest. In my case, the participants in my probe study are people who I have selected. With people who are volunteers, there is an essence of self-motivation which I do not have in my participants. This problem also made me think of other probe work that I have seen. Jane Wallis has frequently adopted probes and again, it is in her clients best interests to complete the probes. So this brings me to my first challenge. How can I engage people to complete my probe tasks. My probe needs to be short and engaging. Not too difficult so that no answer or just a generic one is produced. Finally, in Jane Wallis’ probe “dress pattern” the participant spent a whole afternoon looking through old dress fabrics that she used to wear. The reason for this commitment to the task was because of the great willingness of the participant due to the gain that they were going to get from the project.

Two:

The context of Gaver’s original probe was Amsterdam which is both a known location and in the context of an individual, is something quite impersonal. This made it easy for Gaver to produce mapping tasks and make comparisons with (such as the ‘if Amsterdam was New York’ task). However, my probe is going to be deployed into an unknown, personal research space which immediately raises too problems.

1. It will be difficult to come up with something that all the researches can compare their rooms too as they are all going to be unique and individual.

2. I have no real idea what each of the participants rooms are like so I can’t provide maps to each participant to ask them to draw on. A solution to this would be for them to draw maps of their won rooms however this can be time consuming and may limit the quality of the results gained from the study.

Challenges

1. What can I provide to people to motivate them and make them want to complete the probe tasks?

2. How can you capture peoples spatial environment in ways other than drawing?

3. What do you need to know about an unknown environment to create a full picture?

4. How can you map something in an abstract way?


i. Gaver, B. Dunne, T. and Pacenti, E. 1999. Design: Cultural probes. Interactions 6(1). ACM, 21-29.



Saturday 13 August 2011

Dear Diary

Today's post is a follow up to my previous partial literature review of "Reflecting on Reflection: Framing a Design Landscape". Following up some of the references cited by Fleck and Fitzpatrick, I came across two books by Jennifer Moon, "Reflection in Learning and Professional Development" (1999) and "Learning Journals: A Handbook for Reflective Practice and Professional Development" (2006).

To reiterate, as it stands my project has two faces. The first as is to encourage greater reflection on experiences within the school of architecture, as and for reasons covered in my previous post "A Question of Sorts". The second objective is in part a means of accomplishing the first, by creating spontaneous interactions between students, that also precipitate a greater sharing of knowledge and expertise between students, encouraging what I currently refer as peer to peer or community learning. How ideas, work and knowledge are to be shared is a design challenge for an installation or system working towards this aim.

Working towards these goals, the latter of Moon's works in particular strikes me as useful. Whilst taking its initial focus on the keeping of "journals", this is not meant to be a restrictive term and is interchangeable with diary, log, scrapbook, notebook or portfolio.

Whatever form the "journal" tales, the important point is that the creator ultimately intends to learn from it. Moon breaks down the study into two parts, dealing with broad issues of how students learn in a formal environment, and subsequently how the keeping of journals creates favourable conditions for both this and additional learning.

Of particular importance in the early pages is the ability of learners to change their cogitative structure in response to new knowledge or experiences. However, in most cases this requires a highly dedicated learner, and complete trust in the material being delivered to them. The majority of students only learn effectively when education is in line with their expectations.

I would posit that this is particularly true within the school of architecture. There is a tendency for students to (understandably) become defensive to criticism of their projects, especially if they consider a criticism to be based on a subjective point or issue of taste. Moon's ultimate assertion is that journals are a mechanism for students to reconsider issues such as these, as a tool for sense making.

As a tool, journals allow students to slow the pace of learning, increasing a students of ownership of said learning, (my own initial research has called for just these things), but also promoting a greater understanding of their own processes. Moon goes onto discuss the method in a specific different circumstances, and offers a range of precedents.

Exploring these, a sort of journal as a driver for my reflective exercise, and as a means of provoking my spontaneous interactions, sounds increasingly plausible.

To be continued...

References;

Moon, J. A. "Learning Journals: A Handbook for Reflective Practice and Professional Development", Second edition, (2006), Routledge, London and New York

Moon J. A., "Reflection in Learning and Professional Development", (1999), Kogan Page Limited, London


Tuesday 9 August 2011

The Researchers Archive

As my research has evolved over the summer, I have re-written my expression of interest to focus my ideas and concepts. An extract of this can be found below and if you would like to read on then download the full expression of interest here.

The purpose of ‘The Researchers Archive’ is to create a community platform through which individual narrative can be expressed in the transition towards digital technologies. The project will be realised through the creation of a tangible prototype and digital community to connect the research community of the School of Architecture, planning and Landscape, Newcastle University (SAPL) together.

“While static worlds are about objects and interactions, adaptive worlds are about flow and emergence” (ix)

The way we digest information is rapidly changing and is arguably more and more in flux as technologies like blogging and social networks allow information to be quickly and easily published, creating a more temporal nature towards the information around us. Advances in digital technologies have also brought a shift from ‘physical’ books to ‘digital’ books which has most recently been marked by Amazon who, on 1st April 2011 (xxi) sold more Kindle copies of books than ‘physical books’. Reacting to this shift in format, libraries such as the Robinson Library at Newcastle University are now offering more and more ‘e-services’ to the community…..

Monday 8 August 2011

A Question of Sorts

A few weeks ago I came across what I think may be a really influential paper for my project, but "lying to myself that I have freedom in my own schedule", resolved to write a literature review that never happened. I have now started this task, so I would though like to share some of my initial thoughts.

The paper is from OZCHI 2010, entitled "Reflecting on Reflection: Framing a Design Landscape", and deals with reflection as a tool for learning, or to quote a practice where "individuals... explore their experiences in order to lead to new understandings and appreciations". I was drawn to it having touched on the "myth of business" in earlier posts, feeling there is a need for greater reflection within architectural education, and having gathered some evidence to support this in my own preliminary research.

The paper constructs a theoretical framework for the practice of reflection, posing questions I have asked myself.

What is the purpose for which I am going to ask people to reflect upon their work as architecture students? Is it a learning process to inform future action? Or a process of empowerment or emancipation from past mistakes? Or is it about seeing from a removed perspective, what you missed at the time? The lessons that were unrealised and outcomes that were unexpected?

There are conditions that are conducive to reflective practice; there must be time. What am I going to do to create and allow time for reflection? Reflection is a developmental progress which people can learn, indeed people may find it unnatural and may need encouragement or support. What am I going to do to create these supporting interactions? How can I help students to review their work from more than their own perspective?

A reflective experience need not be an epiphany, but is an opportunity to reorganise ideas, whether they're ongoing design challenges, or a theoretical framework grappled with over years of study.

Really I need to read whole article a few more times and am keen to follow up on some of the citations. There is much discussion of levels of reflection, which feels important to at least consider in the design of any system that I put forward.

Reference:

Fleck, R., Fitzpatrick, G., “Reflecting on Reflection: Framing a Design Landscape”, (OZCHI 2010, 22nd - 26th November), ACM




COME AND SEE MY HIGH STREET.

I have just returned from a trip to my local high street which is in Wood Green in North London.

I am writing about this because I think I re-illiterates up my point that high streets are not just about shopping. As well as being about self expression (what I am concentrating on), they are a place that communities can come together as well as completely implode.

After walking away from the high street I have grown up shopping on, I came over with an overwhelming feeling of pride for my government.

You should definitely keep cutting education budgets, we are clearly producing a clever bunch as it is. You should definitely hit ‘the arts’ the hardest, because people here who don’t have conservative academic potential are doing a great job of focusing their energy positively.

You keep closing those youth centres (8 of 13 closed last week in Haringey)! Youths here are very good at keeping themselves entertained.

Police cuts? YES PLEASE, we’ve got this all under control. Make those service men and women work harder and longer for less, its not like they get bricks and petrol bombs thrown at them for doing there job!...I could go on….

All in all I think you are doing a great job and if you doubt yourself and your ingenious decision making Mr Cameron, for even one second ………………… COME AND SEE MY HIGH STREET.








You could check out the rest of the high streets of the poorer parts of North London whilst you at it! They tell a story you are not listening to.

Tuesday 2 August 2011

Urban Screening

An interesting use of video projection, which shows Traceurs (practitioners of Parkour) moving around a scale model of the building. It's a shame that the projection wasn't a real time translation, however, as that would've made the installation more interactive and inviting.

JUMP | media facade | urban screening from urbanscreen on Vimeo.


Today, I also found out that there is a profound difference between Parkour and Freerunning, explained quite nicely here:

"Although, both parkour and free running do incorporate similar techniques, they apply different philosophies. Parkour exploits the A-B concept (see “The A to B Concept” article). It entails going to a destination by the quickest means. A man named David Belle (see “David Belle: Airspeed Man” article) founded parkour. Younger generations of traceurs have recently become engulfed and sucked into the vivid emancipating world of free running. The phrase “free running” was used to translate parkour from French to English. Free running was founded by a man named Sebastien Foucan. It is a branch off of parkour. It is used to preform tricks and stunts. An individual may express himself/herself in free running. He or she may practice the sport to any degree using any style. Unlike parkour, free running is not used for travel or going from one place to another. Free running holds many competitions and events while parkour does not. Using a metaphor to further analyze these two arts: free running is to freestyle skateboarding or BMX as parkour is to speed skateboarding or street cycling."