Thank you Amir Rozenberg from ConnexTo, and Kostas Terzidis for your input during DiMo’s final review! The DiMo project website is nearly complete! If you haven’t done so, engage with the DiMo blog…
Via networked _performance, Handheld Histories as Hyper-Monuments. Happens in Boston, MA on 130 Newbury Street, April 21-28, 2007, Tues-Sat 10am-6pm.
Uses GPS and mobile technologies to address historic bias in Boston’s public monuments. The artwork gathers non-official stories to socially construct hyper-monuments that exist as digital doubles, augmenting specific historic monuments. For example, imagine you are near the Old South Church in Boston, MA, USA. The smartphone sounds church bells to get your attention. It then displays an easily identifiable image of the Old South Church circa 2007, followed by images of the church that take you back in time. Finally you see the location as it was in its natural, wild state. You can send text, image and audio content to the website from the monument location via any internet enabled device. Or use any internet browser to view and add histories to the hyper-monuments.
The Digital + Mobilities class has opted for DiMo as the general title of the Freedom Trail inquiries :) Here is project DiMo’s blog!
It is about time… now it is Spring Break, to present the work in progress of the Digital + Mobilities seminar that I am teaching at Wentworth Institute of Technology.
I have assigned students to ‘reload’ the Freedom Trail, Boston’s chief touristic attraction. The site of the Freedom Trail Foundation says that:
The Freedom Trail is a 2.5 mile red-brick walking trail that leads you to 16 nationally significant historic sites, every one an authentic American treasure.
The aim was to give students the opportunity to think the relationship between technology and the urban environment, and tangibly engage it. Students will produce an ethNOMOgraphy (an ethnography on the move, adapted to the world of mobility) of the Freedom Trail by taking pictures, interviewing users, and research the history of the Freedom Trail so to find important moments in time and space. They will examine the Freedom Trail, map it, find a real estate for the 2D code, examine reactions, propose a design involving POP(s), People, Objects and Places altogether…
A good start to tackle the assignment was to dwell into the idea of mapping. What does mapping mean in the age of the gaming industry (D.S. mentioned the adventure book)? Conversations about paths, and trails, sparkled some thinking about walking in a field of hypertexts… So what are the ways, past and contemporary, to circulate in the city? Already A.W. discovered that:
The Freedom Trail isn’t Paul Revere’s ride. It’s just a collection of places that placed a role in the American Revolution.
To open students to different methodologies, I have invited Jie-Eun Hwang, currently finishing her Doctor of Design thesis (Harvard University Graduate School of Design 2007) to speak about her research, the Heuristic Nolli Map, and the e-Lens project she collaborated to, a project that has fully been implemented in Barcelona.
Introducing the Heuristic Nolli Map project, Jie-Eun writes:
This research explored the computational way representing perception of an urban setting to address communicative rationality in the urban design process. The complex nature of an urban project provokes huge demands on common understandings between diverse actors and disciplines. One of the key problems is the lack of common representation caused by the different process and skill interpreting an urban space.
The Digital + Mobilities class has opted for DiMo as the general title of the Freedom Trail inquiries :) Here is project DiMo’s blog!
I have organized the links in my blog roll column under the title of the seminar: Digital + Mobilities. Below is an example of a map, produced by Terry, showing the overlap between the bike trail and the Freedom Trail:
A meeting with Matt Gross from ulocate, and Amir Rosenberg from connexto played a role in framing the deliverable: students will create a website and post their design concept and proposal, some of it will be consultable though mobile phones with an Internet connection. Amir gave a demo of his 2D codes to the students.
I am rather familiar with 2D codes. The post My Body is a Hypertext fostered a rather interesting comments-based dialogue between Jerôme Chevillat from smoothplanet and Dennis Hettema, from shotcode. It is always useful to understand the difference between codes. As Jerôme then said:
There are some differences between a shotcode and a semacode, one of them is the business model. While shotcode people charged on a per click basis, semacode will be (or is) licensed for commercial use. This makes the second one a favorite on the market .
In a recent conversation I had with Jerôme, he added that:
Solutions like connexto are too proprietor; the algorithms of coding and decoding are known of them only; they close the market when distributing their solutions. QR (Quick Response) codes are on the contrary public domain.
In terms of what to choose however, some images can be very convincing. For ample information, read Rudy’s posts: Denim-code: Tag My Jeans and Proximity Marketing.
From an academic and applied research point of view, all 2D codes have an impact on space and foster inspiring investigations of territoriality, virtual or physical.
A student had added a layer of information to the panel that identifies the space beyond the entrance door of the Wentworth Institute of Technology Architecture Department. Clever. Something else struck me: the fact that the 2D code was added below the Braille code (“another way to write”) intended for the blind. It made me think about how visual our culture is. Could we make a code for the blind?
Timely enough, I receive a copy of the MIT Technology Review magazine, courtesy of MIT when you graduate from the institution (I should go digital!) to read about the work of David Murphy and Markus Kähäri, one of the 10 emerging technologies of 2007. Read the article online: Hyperlinking Reality via Phones…
A Nokia research project could one day make it easier to navigate the real world by superimposing virtual information on an image of your surroundings. The new software, called Mobile Augmented Reality Applications (MARA), is designed to identify objects viewed on the screen of a camera phone.
Students (architecture department) at Wentworth Institute of Technology taking an online test…
There was a test run previous to the day of the actual test: students had to log in, answer a question that read more or less like this: “Do you think you are the best student at Wenworth?” They score 100 points when answering “Yes”. No comment.
The trial tested if students could log in… but it did not go further than that: on the day of the test, many had problems seeing the images that were complementing the questions, a problem which could have been prevented.
The cool thing though is that students would get a random questionnaire… questions were shuffled or different, so none had the exact same test. Maybe this did prevent cheating. Someone had to check that they closed IM and iTunes (though the computer is theirs… even when standing behind them, which I remember it being rather uncomfortable, professors cannot see every click) and had to stay in the room while students were taking the test.
The test was 1 hour and 20 minutes long. Students could take it as many time as they wanted to, though only the first finished test counted. They received their grade right after completing the test. Automation greatly cuts down on the time professors spend grading, though preparing the test takes a little bit longer… and failing technologies, or panicking students not seing an image can greatly augment their involvement.
This collaborative lecture is a joint effort between Critical Digital, Harvard GSD and the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, UCL London:
Who? Yasmine Abbas, DDes 2006, Harvard University Graduate School of Design + Ava Fatah gen. Schieck, Master of Science in Virtual Environments 2001, Bartlett, UCL + Ben Croxford, Senior Lecturer on the MSc in Environmental Design and Engineering, Bartlett
Where? Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Room 109
When? Monday January 22, 2007, 9am •
Ava Fatah gen. Schieck is a Registered Architect in Germany with years of experience in practice. She holds a Master of Science in Virtual Environments (2001) from the Bartlett, UCL. She is primarily interested in exploring the relation between new technology and architecture in particular within the historic context. Ava is a Senior Research Fellow, Bartlett, UCL. She has worked on several research projects at the Bartlett investigating the relation between the physical, the digital, and the social. Currently she is involved in the research into the use of location-based computing in an urban context in the historic city of Bath as part of the Cityware project. Previous research include interface design for Augment Reality collaborative environments and the impact on the design process, information spaces and automotive design.
Ben Croxford has been responsible for developing the Bartlett’s research into air quality. This has involved developing novel pollution monitors through to leading on cross-disciplinary research linking air quality to health and spatial layout. He has extensive experience in the monitoring and modeling of various environmental factors in and around buildings especially temperature, humidity and air pollution. He has worked on several research projects at the Bartlett, investigating distribution of carbon monoxide in streets, air quality in offices and also air quality in dwellings with gas cookers. He has designed and developed the StreetBox instrument for measuring carbon monoxide that is being commercially produced by Learian Ltd. This has since been further developed with Learian into a new, smaller much more affordable product, the ICOM. A large number of these are being used on various research projects including personally supervised MSc projects. Ben Croxford is a senior lecturer on the MSc in Environmental Design and Engineering. He has successfully developed and managed the dissertation part of the course for the last 5 years, directly supervising around 80 students. He also supervises 5 PhD students with topics ranging from sustainability analysis of solar cookers in Sudan to air conditioning use in Malaysia.
I would like to particularly thank Jan, Jie-Eun, Doug, and Marc for the support/technical/preparation on this side of the Atlantic, and Ava, Jason, Patrick on the UK side ;)
Today Thursday, October 19, Room 34-101, 6:30pm
Nicholas Negroponte, Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT presents: “One Laptop per Child”
“Nicholas is founder and chairman of the One Laptop per Child non-profit association. He is currently on leave from MIT, where he was co-founder and director of the MIT Media Laboratory, and the Jerome B. Wiesner Professor Media Technology. A graduate of MIT, Nicholas was a pioneer in the field of computer-aided design, and has been a member of the MIT faculty since 1966. Conceived in 1980, the Media Laboratory opened its doors in 1985. He is also author of the 1995 best seller, “Being Digital”, which has been translated into more than 40 languages. In the private sector, Nicholas serves on the board of directors for Motorola, Inc. and as general partner in a venture capital firm specializing in digital technologies for information and entertainment. He has provided start-up funds for more than 40 companies, including Wired magazine.”
Concerning this endeavor, I wrote in my thesis (p. 29) that the “aim of reducing the digital divide certainly speaks in favor of a consistent belief in technology and its inexorable spread.” I am also convinced the one laptop per child is a fantastic pedagogical tool. (Image from the website)
I had accepted a Full Time Assistant Professor position at the American University of Beirut, Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, for teaching an elective, a Mobilities seminar, + a design studio (space + culture + digital) and was preparing my move. I am really sorry about the unfolding appalling tragedy and I am hoping this will end soon (I can’t complain, I am not there).
I was thinking of ways to work this out… These events triggered the idea of teaching the mobilities seminar and the design studio remotely using video conference technologies. I have already participated in a similar experiment during my time at MIT when I took a charrette taught by Charles Correa in collaboration with METU, a Turkish University. It was such an amazing experience, that I am convinced of its feasibility. Furthermore, a Doctor of Design, Janine Clifford became famous among our community of Doctoral students and candidates because she did her entire thesis remotely and taught distant classes and studios. Beyond the fear factor, it became clear that it is a fantastic opportunity to teach design and convey knowledge of the design process (what drawing to select, collaboration, time management…) at the time of digital technologies.
I am now even more convinced that this idea has tremendous pedagogical values and will promote further thinking in terms of technology, space and culture including notion of territoriality (what is a territory at the time of Internet?), physical, mental and digital mobilities, the social context, and policies which we all know now challenges the profession or architecture and design. This is the class that was missing to the curriculum.
Students could learn about technology by practicing. The school could still operate at a normal pace, even if I am not physically present. Showing that the school can operate no matter what could become an example to follow and trigger some thinking about the digital transgression of boundaries as it is a response to a time when mobilities are reduced. The experiment will interest different disciplines, which will enable students to familiarize with the idea of collaboration…
Anyway, I have been told that “Video conferencing could work if we have someone like you here to supervise the courses with someone in another university. And we don’t have someone like you at this end.” I am not so sure of the need of two people. It doesn’t look like it is going to happen.
Friday December 16, 2005: presentation of my neo-nomad research to the Kinetic Architecture class taught by Kostas Terzidis (Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Fall Semester 2005)
