Archive for the 'Applications of Interactive Technologies' Category

Journey on the M5 Bus Route

Take the M5 bus on a weekend at Houston and La Guardia Place to the last stop - george Washington Bridge- and return. The trip should take about 1 and 1/2 hours.

make notes of what you find surprising- e.g. changing neighborhoods, changing people, changing architecture, or none of these- and write your own personal experience of the trip- observing, imagining, and reacting to New York, or you can imagine a story about the people you see.

The assignment is a short 5 page personal story of your experience. If you choose to create media, a short written piece is required as well.

Download file

Andy Carvin

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Participatory Media/”We Media”

- Considering the marginalized population; no print material limits access
- Associated Press hosts the annual We Media Conference
- Putting the power of technology into the hands of marginalized population
- Power of technologies, such as radio, to connect to the community
- Who gets counted? Who is picked up on the radar?
- In America, fewer engineers have graduated in recent years than sports managers

www.globalvolicesonline.com

Mobcasting/
A working group of volunteers interested in developing a low-cost, open source system for publishing and hearing podcasts over a mobile phone.

- enter into the “blogosphere”
- self-sustaining media
- Howard Rheingold: internet theorist, role of internet in creating social change

www.digitaldivide.net
www.andycarvin.com

Ze Frank

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www.zefrank.com

- gaining audience & keeping and audience are two separate things
- people who write haikus together

- what is the minimal criteria necessary to get people involved
- how much narrative can you strip away

“every second counts, how long can you play”

- intimate exploration of narrative space
- What are the rules that define whol writes safety guidelines?
- no text; part of the problem of interpretation

We need a certain bit of denial to get out of bed every morning.

Age of Authorship has changed the way we think of creativity.

- Doug Rushkoff
- glorified research project

“Where do you get your motivation?/ What di you do with it?”

Facets of Authorship:
a. approach to different things, notion of expertise
b. how speed affects us (rapid ptototype > rapid release)
- flexibility in learning
- rapidity in which we are learning

Notion of Creativity (Middle of 1600s)
- post enlightenment concept/ modern concept

primary creatives > artist
secondary creatives > producer

- everyone is participating in authorship
- choice brings you closer

Are there values we are not learning right now that we do not have acess to in our education?

pedagogy:

How do we gain confidence in our ideas?

How do you get to the core language of an activity?

- disciplines involved in real-time engagement
- Stanislavsky or Misor, concepts of character- building
- practive becoming infused in this technology space
- the extent to which you realize what decisions are being made for you

What part of creativity is learnable/ malleable?

study of “.. criticality,” networked systems, earthquake magnitude, epilepsy, distribution

Mark Hearst

Clay’s course at ITP

Disposable Culture: based upon old notion of relationship to a product

viral marketing: specific mode of infiltration

- social computing
- emphasis on polish and packaging, study improvisation

Steven Johnson

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www.stevenberlinjohnson.com

Editor of FEED, first electric publication, author of “Emergence” & “Everything Bad is Good for You”

- concerned with the state of today’s culture

* watch movie “Sleeper”

- The Sleeper Curve: all that used to be bad is now good
- George Will- against entertainment
- Dr. Spock on video games (from baby book)
- develop a new way to critique a new form
- More children choose to manage a team on a video game than just watch a game

“What Video Games Can Teach Us About Learning and Literacy” by Gee

“Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neal Postman

- Mapping social networks- most successful people are good at this

Technology of Repetition:
- VCR, Tivo, DVD
- economics reward content that can sustain multiple viewings

Meta Commentary:
- para-sites
- blogs, FAQs, fan sites, walk-throughs, commentary tracks

The Regime of Competence (We learn best in environments that are not too hard yet are not too easy)
- in game learning
- proliferation of interfaces
- the myth of the slacker mind

“Screenagers”- Douglas Rushkoff

Humans respond to REWARD and EXPLORATION

Jeff Jarvis created a following with his blog based on the saga between him and the Dell company. Eventually, it got a lot of attention from others, including Business Week Magazine. Dell has yet to respond.

Vito Acconci

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Seedbed
Vito Acconci
1972, 10 min, color, silent, Super 8 film

This film features rare documentation of Acconci’s seminal 1972 performance/installation Seedbed. In this famous piece, Acconci lay hidden underneath a ramp installed at the Sonnabend Gallery, masturbating. The artist’s spoken fantasies about the visitors walking above him were heard through loudspeakers in the gallery.

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- Experimental poet, pioneer of conceptual & video art, dedicated to architecture
- How to travel over a page vs. how to travel within a city
- Concentrating on self/ body changes, adapts to stress

“a public space is occupied by private bodies… public space is the last gasp of the civilized world”

- Art as a kind of exchange between people
- Viewers have to struggle to “get” art
- Question habvits/ conventions
- Gallery/ Museum- always a private place; never public?
- Re-invent architecture/ body as a cause of architecture

“studio works bext when people argue a lot”

- If something starts out private, can it later become public?
- Viewer adapting to art, rather than art adapting to you
- How do we attach to a specific building?
- Architecture from the bottom up; inside out

“People’s lives don’t change by standing in front of art.”

Writer > Performance Artist > Architect

Architecture as Operation:
Operation I: push & pull
Operation II: split/ separate (an architecture of strips and strands)
Operation III: stretch (architecture of landscape)
Operation IV: twist/ warp/ morph

Art as:
a.) verb
b.) noun

Tradition of art as “do not touch”

Art as isolation

Notion of things being available to everyone

When you’re designing a space, you’re inherently designing people’s interactions within a space.

Heather Greer

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Heather Greer is interested in bringing technology to people who would not typically have access to it. She has traveled to many third-world countries with her video equipment and computers, enabling people to create their own work and present it around the world. She is slowly increasing access to motion capture.

Greer is known for her projects in collaboration with Save the Children in African countries, such as Malawi. In addition, she has contributed to the many individual projects including a Holocaust Memorial and a politically-driven film project called, “The F-Word.” the Holocaust Memorial was made up of two walls of touch-screens. When a person touched the screen, a story would appear and remain only as long as the viewer’s hand was on the screen. Greer wondered out loud,” What makes people survive, despite difficult ciurcumstances?”

She organized a Greek Tragedy play that combined the actors with the images of Cy Twombly in the background. This helped to focus the audience’s attention throughout the play, as the lack of scenery is typical for this kind of play. The images also mirrored the emotions of the characters, building a strong connection between the two.

One important point that was mentioned dealt with the use of technology. Heather Greer said she first thinks of the project.. what is the idea? Then after the idea is formed, what is the technology appropriate for that idea?