I just want to make note of Robert Lang's amazing origami talk at TED. I wrote him today to say that someday I would like to build a canopy bed that folds and unfolds.
What if you would sleep inside a piece of origami, wouldn't that be beautiful?
seth
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
NOTES FROM Lucy Shuman- Agents of Interface
Lucy Shuman is
What resources are available to humans that are not available to machines? Xerox park began to bring these questions into light 20 years.
Automata - A device for washing Hands, by Inb l-Rassa alJuzari, syria, 1206.
Reconfiguration - what kinds of functions are enabled by particular associations between people and things? It's our relationship to things that enables their function.
Redistribution of agency - anesthesiologist represents a transfer of agency from human to the infrastructure - machines act as extensions of the surgeons body - the complex relationship does not act to mediate, but increases the intimacy between the patient and the doctor.
The interface provides a deeper source of understanding where we interiorize the models into our understanding.
The zone - a disassociated state where the boundery of the machine and the user dissolves. (I live in this state all the time it seems)
Interface is not a place where two things come together - but a contextual point where many different perspectives of agency come together.
Alphred Gale - Art as Agency - at what point do machines appear to have human-like qualities?
Mix of alignment and slippage is the nature of our interactions with machines. Sherry Turkle calls machines "evocative objects" - what about evocotative relational interfaces?
Sha Xin Wei - Responsive environments like TGarden - software tracks gesture - by providing tand even thickening the senuous response, we make fertile the substrate for agency. The responsive system does not need to know what the human is doing - it continuously synthesizes responses to the gestures...
We need to locate our interfaces in a more extended network of relations - we draw bounderies in a way that make unavailable - she is advocating expanding the frame by which we consider the interactions.
If we recognize the agency of things - we can bring the human back out - by demystifying we encourage a re-enchantment in our relationships with artifacts.
"Agency is not an attribute but the ongoing reconfigurings of the world" - Karen Barad, 2007, Meeting the Universe Halfway..
Gesture is the analogue interface - we have come to think of responsiveness as having a congnitive model - but if we shift back - lets let machines be machines - lets see what the possibilities are for forms of responsiveness that doen't have this cognitive modeling.
Mutual constitution - the agency is in the "unit person-gun" - we cannot reduce thing to person or artifact - the responsibility lies in both things.
Transparancy is seen in terms of familiarity - what we see as obvious is a statement about our relationship to them. Thats what makes them transparent - this also points to the degree to which things are black-boxed - and the degree to which they are open.
Memory is a metaphor it's part the figural - aiding in the configuring of the device. Is memory a function of the brain, memorializing, socializing, and interaction. There is a kind of linkage and generative tethering between memory as it operates - it's very helpful to think about it as linked to human memory and other times its important to recognize it's differences.
What about agency as a moment in time to a particualar configuration whose elements are in flux? Agency is performative, dynamic, temporal - some things are pretty well established - and other things are more in flux -
Agency depends on context...
Exiting reconceptualization of relationships between humans and machines - it's about moving away from AI - and these trandtional narratives about the human - moving towards more human understandings the narratives - what are these new media? What are their dynamics that are distinctive, for creating material environments in which humans can engage in new ways. Participatory design projects, ongoing processes of reconfiguration - her agenda is to celbrate those ways of doing design...
If everyone is a designer - what is the role of the professional? It's create the realm of possibilities for people to design... you just have to keep telling stories... always looking at your audience and ajusting and elaborating multiple stories in industry. (she calles this recipient design)
We live in worlds where the thing that is valued is the fetishized object - a story about long term relationships and gradual transformation goes against the grain of the present discourse. We just have to keep domonstrating what the alternatives are
What resources are available to humans that are not available to machines? Xerox park began to bring these questions into light 20 years.
Automata - A device for washing Hands, by Inb l-Rassa alJuzari, syria, 1206.
Reconfiguration - what kinds of functions are enabled by particular associations between people and things? It's our relationship to things that enables their function.
Redistribution of agency - anesthesiologist represents a transfer of agency from human to the infrastructure - machines act as extensions of the surgeons body - the complex relationship does not act to mediate, but increases the intimacy between the patient and the doctor.
The interface provides a deeper source of understanding where we interiorize the models into our understanding.
The zone - a disassociated state where the boundery of the machine and the user dissolves. (I live in this state all the time it seems)
Interface is not a place where two things come together - but a contextual point where many different perspectives of agency come together.
Alphred Gale - Art as Agency - at what point do machines appear to have human-like qualities?
Mix of alignment and slippage is the nature of our interactions with machines. Sherry Turkle calls machines "evocative objects" - what about evocotative relational interfaces?
Sha Xin Wei - Responsive environments like TGarden - software tracks gesture - by providing tand even thickening the senuous response, we make fertile the substrate for agency. The responsive system does not need to know what the human is doing - it continuously synthesizes responses to the gestures...
We need to locate our interfaces in a more extended network of relations - we draw bounderies in a way that make unavailable - she is advocating expanding the frame by which we consider the interactions.
If we recognize the agency of things - we can bring the human back out - by demystifying we encourage a re-enchantment in our relationships with artifacts.
"Agency is not an attribute but the ongoing reconfigurings of the world" - Karen Barad, 2007, Meeting the Universe Halfway..
Gesture is the analogue interface - we have come to think of responsiveness as having a congnitive model - but if we shift back - lets let machines be machines - lets see what the possibilities are for forms of responsiveness that doen't have this cognitive modeling.
Mutual constitution - the agency is in the "unit person-gun" - we cannot reduce thing to person or artifact - the responsibility lies in both things.
Transparancy is seen in terms of familiarity - what we see as obvious is a statement about our relationship to them. Thats what makes them transparent - this also points to the degree to which things are black-boxed - and the degree to which they are open.
Memory is a metaphor it's part the figural - aiding in the configuring of the device. Is memory a function of the brain, memorializing, socializing, and interaction. There is a kind of linkage and generative tethering between memory as it operates - it's very helpful to think about it as linked to human memory and other times its important to recognize it's differences.
What about agency as a moment in time to a particualar configuration whose elements are in flux? Agency is performative, dynamic, temporal - some things are pretty well established - and other things are more in flux -
Agency depends on context...
Exiting reconceptualization of relationships between humans and machines - it's about moving away from AI - and these trandtional narratives about the human - moving towards more human understandings the narratives - what are these new media? What are their dynamics that are distinctive, for creating material environments in which humans can engage in new ways. Participatory design projects, ongoing processes of reconfiguration - her agenda is to celbrate those ways of doing design...
If everyone is a designer - what is the role of the professional? It's create the realm of possibilities for people to design... you just have to keep telling stories... always looking at your audience and ajusting and elaborating multiple stories in industry. (she calles this recipient design)
We live in worlds where the thing that is valued is the fetishized object - a story about long term relationships and gradual transformation goes against the grain of the present discourse. We just have to keep domonstrating what the alternatives are
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Relational Interfaces Brainstorm with Dan
I met with Dan Paluska today to discuss relational interfaces, things which require the participation of 2 or more people, and this quickly led to a discussion with many forks. Most of them relate tangentially to developing a socially oriented aesthetic which tries to engender face to face interactions.
FORKS:
Group Organization
Giant Wheel Idea - the notion that if you get a critical mass of people to do something every once in a while (like turning a giant wheel) it brings the community together...
Along these lines groups like "Improv Everywhere", Flash Mob use the internet to organize large groups of people to participate in the SAME activity. There is great power in numbers, despite what the activity the people are participating in is..
(see also "Here Comes Everybody" by Clay Shirky for further reading)
Also mentioned the article "Hellhole" in the New Yorker, about the consequences of solitary confinement, our ideas are not real until shared or validated within a community.
Imitation and Synchrony:
Mirror Neurons - Both of us have researched the notion of imitation and synchrony in terms of shared experiences.
Normalized Synchrony Interface: Another way to explore this notion of seeing other people do the same thing as you is to create a series of Digital recording that are normalized to match your motion.
Interfaces which only work by Stillness can engender social awareness - how can we encourage or require stillness through an interaction?
Transforming Mirror - Dan mentioned that we have a "mirror face" and there is something about computational delay which gives us a more authentic view of our face. What kind of a mirror would tell us something about someone else - (as an aside, what if you made a transforming mirror that becomes someone else by using facial matching algorithms?)
I, Thou, It:
Culturally and contextually in our relationships it's helpful to have something to focus on outside of the people. An activity, context, thing, game - IT are the rituals and inventions - the food and landscapes that we wander through together. IT is the medium of a relational interface.
IT is Gemba: the "actual place" or "real place" of value in the interactions between people. Doing so in a "Kaizen" way - that which is always improving or holistically improving all aspects of our relations is one goal of a relational interface.
Open Software, Open Practice
Keeping secrets is killing us. One approach to work is to be open and fuck whatever people appropriate, and better if they do if your ideas are about making things. Tools and Ideas.
FORKS:
Group Organization
Giant Wheel Idea - the notion that if you get a critical mass of people to do something every once in a while (like turning a giant wheel) it brings the community together...
Along these lines groups like "Improv Everywhere", Flash Mob use the internet to organize large groups of people to participate in the SAME activity. There is great power in numbers, despite what the activity the people are participating in is..
(see also "Here Comes Everybody" by Clay Shirky for further reading)
Also mentioned the article "Hellhole" in the New Yorker, about the consequences of solitary confinement, our ideas are not real until shared or validated within a community.
Imitation and Synchrony:
Mirror Neurons - Both of us have researched the notion of imitation and synchrony in terms of shared experiences.
Normalized Synchrony Interface: Another way to explore this notion of seeing other people do the same thing as you is to create a series of Digital recording that are normalized to match your motion.
Interfaces which only work by Stillness can engender social awareness - how can we encourage or require stillness through an interaction?
Transforming Mirror - Dan mentioned that we have a "mirror face" and there is something about computational delay which gives us a more authentic view of our face. What kind of a mirror would tell us something about someone else - (as an aside, what if you made a transforming mirror that becomes someone else by using facial matching algorithms?)
I, Thou, It:
Culturally and contextually in our relationships it's helpful to have something to focus on outside of the people. An activity, context, thing, game - IT are the rituals and inventions - the food and landscapes that we wander through together. IT is the medium of a relational interface.
IT is Gemba: the "actual place" or "real place" of value in the interactions between people. Doing so in a "Kaizen" way - that which is always improving or holistically improving all aspects of our relations is one goal of a relational interface.
Open Software, Open Practice
Keeping secrets is killing us. One approach to work is to be open and fuck whatever people appropriate, and better if they do if your ideas are about making things. Tools and Ideas.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Venn Diagrams
Venn diagrams seem like a rich area to explore in terms of relational aesthetics. :)
seth
seth
Interfaces for relationships
Pattie mentioned that there might be interfaces for reflection during a relationship to help people make better choices and to give families a way to contribute their thoughts to the framework. I suggested a kind of Life journal - which someone gets when they are born and have throughout their life - and cannot delete - it's always there, but somehow just for them - perhaps the password is your body in some sense, as a key to opening this repository. It could be something like an ongoing biography of your life. (very interesting note)
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Recent Ideas I'd Prefer not to forget but never have time to follow up on.
harmonograph for two people - the forms generated result from subtle collaboration and translate into sound as well.
Has anyone made an iphone app that recognizes bird calls?
Jaques Dudon's artworks were very inpsiring: http://aeh.free.fr/
I'd like to make a two person version of this.
Hallmark - 12 season cards (panoramic) - going there in January
Tappers that sync to your own music! (people would love these)
Cards as a key or token into digital worlds...
Collaboration for time based portion of the MemTable. Mark Watabe Jan 6
EndLighten Sheet - ordering visible Leds for an artwork printed on transparency
A utility surge protector built into the AC adaptor of a Mac Laptop? Has anyone done this?
Fiber Optic Textile weavings as feedback systems between people.
Tufts university proposal 2010 engendering community.
My other Blog: http://designingsociablemedia.blogspot.com/
Has anyone made an iphone app that recognizes bird calls?
Jaques Dudon's artworks were very inpsiring: http://aeh.free.fr/
I'd like to make a two person version of this.
Hallmark - 12 season cards (panoramic) - going there in January
Tappers that sync to your own music! (people would love these)
Cards as a key or token into digital worlds...
Collaboration for time based portion of the MemTable. Mark Watabe Jan 6
EndLighten Sheet - ordering visible Leds for an artwork printed on transparency
A utility surge protector built into the AC adaptor of a Mac Laptop? Has anyone done this?
Fiber Optic Textile weavings as feedback systems between people.
Tufts university proposal 2010 engendering community.
My other Blog: http://designingsociablemedia.blogspot.com/
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