A very interesting 52 minutes 1972 BBC documentary (directed by Julian Cooper) staring Reyner Banham (1922-1988), architecture theorist, member of the Independent Group, who also had contacts with Archigram.

We learn in Encyclopedia Britannica…

[…] The automobile so dominates life in this uniquely mobile community [Los Angeles] that Reyner Banham, an English observer who took his cue from scholars who study Italian in order to read Dante, is said to have learned to drive a car so he could “read Los Angeles in the original.”

Reyner Banham is according to Nigel Whiteley the Historian of the Immediate Future!

To read as well: The kinetic icon: Reyner Banham on Los Angeles as mobile metropolis.

Bill Thompson, an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet wrote Monday 19 March, 2007 an article entitled: In search of the neo-nomad. He writes:

As one of the millions of people who work wherever they happen to find themselves, relying on a laptop and a wireless connection for all their computing needs, I certainly live a nomadic lifestyle, pitching my virtual camp wherever I happen to find myself.

And I’d rather be a neo-nomad than a laptop warrior, a term which was clearly designed to make corporate executives feel that the evenings spent in dull business hotels in Utrecht preparing the monthly sales figures had some heroic aspect.

Nomads certainly have lots of places to settle for an hour or two of work.

And later (I am flattered):

The term neo-nomad has actually been around for a while. Researcher Yasmine Abbas calls her blog neo-nomad, and she has been writing about what she calls “digitally geared people on the move” since 2005.

Abbas is especially interested in how people who work on the move retain a sense of belonging to places and organisations, and at the way new technologies open up new ways of belonging to groups and even companies.

My good friend Simon runs an online recruitment company and it has operated as a hybrid business since it started.

There is a real office, and meetings take place there, but in general the team work remotely from wherever they happen to find themselves, whether that’s in Brighton, Suffolk or Australia.

Here below is an observation that I would like to discuss for that it is often a question that comes up when I make a presentation:

Neo-nomads and digital bedouins sound very exciting, but we mustn’t forget that this will only ever be a viable way of working for a small, skilled and privileged minority of people.

Will be back soon…

Great findings on PingMag! I really like the ethnographic quality of the articles which balance well visuals and texts. The everyday as a source of inspiration…:

PingMag is an online design magazine based in Tokyo. Defining the term design as broadly as we can, PingMag writes about ideas and inspiration coming from both world class designers, and from the little store on the corner.

My favorites:

1. Top 10 ad-tricks in Tokyo’s train stations

Field work? Here is an interesting example: (screen shot from website)

2. Systemdesign: creating products, services and environments

In his interview, Stefan Rötzel elaborates on bridging physical and digital environments. He says:

But to point out a more simple example for a new problem in everyday life, let’s look at online shopping. For the global electronic commerce all goods require a digital representation. When people browse a web shop, they perceive this digital representation of an artefact, for example an image of a lamp. The new problem is now that the image does not communicate the true, real dimensions. (Would that lamp fit on my table? Is it too big or too small?) Online-shopping often ends with a surprise: the artefact is either better or worse than expected.

That is actually a similar problem designers and engineers face when working with CAD. CAD workers need a forced sense for spatial perception. They can scale and rotate the digital object, but often lose the feeling for the true measures of the object. There is a need for perceiving a CAD-object in relation to the real room.

I introduced a concept for displaying a digital object in the context of the real surrounding. It works by overlaying the digital representation in context to the real surrounding. This could be translucent display someday, or it could be a mobile phone with a photo-camera as well.

3. Accessibility for blind people

That is because of our culture, visual at the extreme… I had mentioned that conundrum when elaborating on 2D codes and tagging.

blurred
replicant
but Wii?

Sensuous Gear
Kinetic Elite
Guilt
Ergonomics

I am addressing the topic of Second Life + Architecture in my seminar… so thank you A.W. for bringing this up: Archinect which goal “is to make architecture more connected and open-minded, and bring together designers from around the world to introduce new ideas from all disciplines” presents an interesting article on architecture and Second Life: Architecture’s Second Life… (Screenshot)

Une peau artificielle pour rendre les robots sensibles
LE MONDE | 13.01.07 | 13h35 • Mis à jour le 13.01.07 | 13h35

A Nagoya, au Centre de recherche sur le contrôle biométrique, dépendant de l’Institut Riken, des scientifiques travaillent à la mise au point d’une peau artificielle à appliquer sur une machine afin d’”établir le contact”, précise le professeur Toshiharu Mukai.

Ces scientifiques se sont inspirés de l’architecture de la peau des mammifères. La première peau prototype est constituée de deux couches, l’une dure, en plastique, l’autre souple, en éponge. Entre ces deux épaisseurs, une multitude de capteurs tactiles enregistrent les variations de pression à la surface.

NB: maybe there is an application for spaces | When the digital meets the ~bio | Informs my work with Cati on the Touch·Sensitive apparel:
Low-fidelity prototype #2

Watch the movie mentionned in the article: RI-MAN soft carebot. More about RI-MAN… (.jpg below from website)

The robot has 9 features:

• Feedback of force using tactile information
• Human-friendly soft body
• Small but powerful arms using coupled drive
• Motion simulation using an immersion-type 3D environment
• Decentralized control using small general-purpose controllers
• Sound localization using ‘ears’
• Tracking of a human face by integrating auditory and visual information
• Smell discernment by semiconductor gas sensor
• Computational architecture based on QoS

Il faudrait dire “hypersonnalisée” ! A lire dans Libé: Rencontre . Le consommateur est devenu critique et conscient de ses droits par François MUSSEAU | QUOTIDIEN : samedi 6 janvier 2007

Vicente Verdú économiste et journaliste espagnol, analyse notre société occidentale hyperpersonnalisée, consommatrice immédiate de marques et de multimédia, puérile et capricieuse. Sans pour cela porter un regard sévère sur cette culture contemporaine porteuse d’avenir.

Dans Moi et toi, objets de luxe, vous inventez la notion de «personnisme» pour désigner une révolution culturelle en marche en ce début de siècle. Qu’entendez-vous par là ?

Il s’agit d’une nouvelle étape qui fait suite à l’hyperindividualisme à tous crins de la fin des années 90. Le terme fait référence à une communication avec autrui plus extensive et superficielle. On y est arrivé, parce que l’accumulation d’objets a conduit l’hyperindividualiste à une impasse, puis à une recherche de «dégustation» des autres sujets, non pas en profondeur, mais en superficie. Comme l’illustre bien l’Internet, on a désormais une grande expérience de contact avec autrui, parcellaire et sans engagements.

Neo-nomad had 142.810 visits the past year! [1]

Neo-nomad is a research blog enabling the collection and organization of thoughts and findings, and the connection with researchers investigating the relationship between people, object and space, the digital, and mobility. In scrutinizing the neo-nomad ecology, the goal is to understand and develop theoretical frameworks, propose scenario of usages and work on implementing meaningful spaces and projects related to our contemporary sociality.

In 007, neo-nomad will initiate the NID, “Neo-nomad’s ID” tags, insightful dialogues with researchers and practitioners who experiment with and explore the production of spaces in the age of multiple mobilities!

Forthcoming event, the 4th Monday of January, video-conference discussion on the impact of mobility Between Dr. Ben Croxford, Lecturer MSc Environmental Design and Engineering, and me; intended to students enrolled in the Master of Science Adaptive Architecture and Computation program, Digital Space and Society module taught by Ava Fatah gen. Schieck, The Bartlett, London, UK. The event is hosted by Critical Digital at Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

I look forward to a fantastic year!

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See below what happened in 006, the milestones and achievements:

March. I invite Adam Greenfield to give a talk and present his book Everyware, the Dawn of Ubiquitous Computing at Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

I have met Adam Greenfield at the Digital Civilization Forum 2005; the Digital Civilization Forum was “dedicated to the future of the digital revolution and designed to evaluate its social, cultural, and economic impacts”. We were both invited experts at Ci’Num 2005.

April. I write a short essay, via Chronos, for JCDecaux, Mobilités: la Clé des Villes (St-Amand-Montrond, Clerc: 2006) p. 98-99

May. I am now a Doctor of Design, Graduated from Harvard University Graduate School of Design (DDes 2006).

At Harvard, I have researched the identity of contemporary spaces in the Digital Age. I focused on how these neo-nomads, digitally geared people on the move, reclaim a sense of belonging to places in the age of multiple mobilities, mental, physical and digital.

July. I team up with Cati Vaucelle, PhD student at the MIT Media Lab, Tangible Media group, to work on a touch-sensitive wearable for massage and sensory therapy.

September. I teach a Design Studio at Wentworth Institute of Technology (Sophomore, first studio) and a World Architecture History class at Northeastern University (Freshmen, Honors students).

I invite Carlos Cardenas, DDes candidate at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and Sotirios Kotsopoulos, PhD, MIT Design and Computation, Professor at the Boston Architectural College for the Design Studio reviews.

For the first project of the semester, students abstracted design principles from a quilt and produced a model exploring a ‘dynamic’ aperture. Here is an example: (student: Tony Nguyen)

For the second project students produce an interactive site analysis of Chinatown and a Performance Space. Below is Sara kanoo’s proposal for the third project of the semester, a Sacred Space on the Wentworth Institute of Technology campus:

For the World Architecture History class, at Northeastern University, I give students hands-on projects to augment their learning experience. One project concentrates on the making of a set of flash cards around the theme and material of their choice. Below is the set of flash cards that Christa Heffron produced. The theme is “light”:

Dankwa Osseo-Assare, March I at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design gives a presentation on Earth Architecture. Dankwa has build a “mud house” in Ghana and traveled extensively in India. Professor Robert Cowherd, PhD, MIT, currently faculty at Wentworth Institute of Technology offers an insightful lecture on Critical Regionalism. Prof. Cowherd has spent 4 years in Java studying architectural hybridism.

September. Women in Mobile # 16. Interviewed by Rudy De Waele for m-trend
I owe Rudy the inspiration for the NID (Thank you Rudy!)

October. I team up with Miranda McGill, User Experience Designer at Oracle to work on the HOmeTEL project.

November. I give a presentation to students enrolled in Digital, a class taught by Michael MacPhail: at Wentworth Institute of Technology.

November. Not yet in its finalized form, neo-nomad.net goes live…

December. I am writing an article for a European journal. The title in French is: Environnements néo-nomades, système écologique?

[1] webalizer: “log file analysis program,” I note that “Visits occur when some remote site makes a request for a page on your server for the first time. As long as the same site keeps making requests within a given timeout period, they will all be considered part of the same Visit. If the site makes a request to your server, and the length of time since the last request is greater than the specified timeout period (default is 30 minutes), a new Visit is started and counted, and the sequence repeats. Since only pages will trigger a visit, remote sites that link to graphic and other non-page URLs will not be counted in the visit totals, reducing the number of false visits.” Summary Period: Last 12 Months Generated 31-Dec-2006 21:18 CET

I am a pacifist. If humans were capable of living together, we wouldn’t need this… Anyway… This piece of information feeds my reflection on cyborgs: read the article by Wendy Y. Lawton for the George Street Journal (now Inside Brown journal): The Research group exploring limb loss hopes biohybrid will bridge gap between human and machine. Scientists based at Brown and MIT receive $7.2 million from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Dec. 10, 2004!

Now, through $7.2 million from the Department of Veterans Affairs, a team of researchers is working to restore natural movement to amputees - particularly Iraq veterans. Within five years, scientists based at Brown and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hope to have created “biohybrid” limbs that will use regenerated tissue, lengthened bone, titanium prosthetics and implantable sensors that allow an amputee to use nerves and brain signals to move an arm or leg. WL