November 2003 Archives

Overview
TagandScan is a service for your mobile phone that enables you to mark real physical locations with an electronic tag. 

Scans
You can scan for tags by proximity and keyword and can display them on a map.

I find TagAndScan pretty exciting for one reason: it's a commercial service on the phone. There are other applications that do stuff like this - it's not a mindblowingly new concept in this geo-everything moment - but it's nice to see the "let's leave virtual location-tagged notes" concept in a usable form that doesn't require technical oomph and a PDA. Not that there's anything wrong with technical oomph and a PDA, but I'm interested in how - and whether - non-techies approach this application.

Like my other big favorite, Shazam, it's only available in the UK.

Plus, I have this small-medium-large theory about people and their personal devices. Anyone addicted to the permanet has to carry around either one small and one large device (ie, a phone and a laptop) or one medium device (ie, a PDA or palmtop). Me, I am a small-large person. There are incredible PDA projects -- but I'm kind of prejudiced towards applications for devices I actually use.

Via telecom-cities mailing list and, any time now, numerous blogs.

Just looked at Matthew Mankin's work on 'Location Linked Information,' his Master's thesis. His Smart Cities Overview is a detailed look at "space-based computing" and the addition of an overlay of communications technology to physical space. For him, building the technologically-augmented city requires a kind of "agar" - "a contained space in which digital life can flourish, yet be controlled and contained." (7). It's a reference to the idea of ICTs as a kind of invisible "goo" that bridges the physical gaps between places, and the social gaps between people. So far so good.

Though the two words are not etymologically related, I can't help but think of the old concept of the agora, the marketplace of ancient Greece. (Agar is actually of Malaysian derivation.) Agar and agora are two metaphors for connectedness: the dish of jelly within which bacteria thrive and the gathering space for human endeavor. The agora is an empty space bounded by buildings; agar is a substance that flows to fill up empty space.

45.509327-122.647966

Design Observer is a new blog written by Michael Beirut, Jessica Helfand and William Drenttel, and Rick Poynor - all influential critics and practioners of graphic design.

My undergrad degree is in graphic design, and the idea that Design Observer gives daily access to my college heroes is a shivery nineteen-year-old thrill. In fact, it's the sortof thrill that make blogs exciting in the long run. Rick Poynor, up close and personal...Rick Poynor...unplugged. Well, actually it's Rick Poynor plugged in, but you get the point.

It's a thrill that's entirely unrelated to the life I lead now, because I actually haven't read eye magazine, which Poynor founded, since late 2000. I can date it so precisely because 2000 was when I started doing so much freelance theater design and interaction design that there just weren't hours enough in the day. Instead of consuming my days, graphic design has become a useful sideline. My presentations look nicer, my business cards are more personal, and my charts are clearer than they would otherwise be. Now out of grad school, there are enough hours in the day to read eye, but I tend to forget that it even exists -- just as I tend to forget that theater magazine exists as well. The world of "design" is so large that from any one perspective, the other continents are beyond the horizon.

So it's a bit alienating to return to graphic design criticism. I vaguely remember the country. I still even speak the language, just with the vocabulary of a much younger woman. Everything is less smaller than I remembered, though, and the leaders are less god-like and more fallible.

In a post on the AIGA's Power of Design conference in Vancouver, Michael Beirut writes about a presentation on the environmental damage caused by Pantone print inks:

And what greater power than to discover forensic proof that even this seemingly harmless profession has the capacity to inflict damage, as well as to do good?

For Beirut, this is a "new certainty" for designers, following a succession of old certainties about the purpose of graphic design:

• that the role of design is to save the world through Swiss modernism
• that the role of design is self-expression for the designer
• that the role of design is to "change the world by subverting the goals of its corporate patrons"
• that the role of design is to allow designers to act as "authors" (I don't really understand how this differs from "self-expression," but perhaps the point becomes about changing the external environment, not just representing an internal one.)

Perhaps, writes Beirut, this certainty of ecological damage caused by a "seemingly harmless" profession is the "ultimate" certainty.

I have one word for Beirut: well, duh. Sorry. That was two.

Last week I gave a talk that seemed, well, notably unsuccessful. It's not the project's fault; the talk just wasn't one of my more shining moments as a communicator. During the question session afterwards, I felt like my head was wrapped in cotton wool. I could not manage to explain the importance of methods and processes that I use and believe in, or even explain the importance of "design" as a response to the world. In the wake of the talk, I've been spending a lot of time reconsidering, rethinking, and re-explaining to myself what it is I do believe in, and how to articulate it.

Via Brian Parkinson comes this quote from "People-centered design: complexities and uncertainties," in Design and the Social Sciences:

"We have to stop thinking of design as the construction of graphics, products, services, systems and environments, and think about those as means for people to act, to realize their wishes and satisfy their needs. It is the needs and the wishes of people that we have to serve: the objects of design must be seen only as means."

Okay. I believe in this.

Another essay in the collection, by Jorge Frascara, can be found here. I haven't read it yet, though.

Just checked out the info on Olafur Eliasson's Weather Project currently at the Tate Modern. The transformation of the Tate looks magical:

The Tate has also neatly merchandized the installation by including a list of weather-related products by Eliasson, including:

this umbrella which, when with rain, reveals a line of text written by Eliasson. It's a lovely idea, actually - I'd like one for myself but don't want to think about the shipping charges from the UK. I think there's a lot of interesting work right now on clothing that reacts to environmental variables (pollution being the most common factor), but Eliasson's umbrella idea is so simple and so elegant I couldn't help imagining, say, a raincoat that would do the same. So far, I've found this one, by Prada

that starts out transparent and becomes opaque when wet. Via Wired.

INSIDE/OUTSIDE is a represents air pollution levels on a handbag; Fashion Victims represents EMF radiation levels on a variety of clothing, including t-shirts and hats. Both use embedded circuitry to sense environmental variables and translate changing conditions into a visual display. On the other hand, the raincoat I'm imagining (which, I suppose, if I had the ca$h money I could buy) is both sensor and actuator. It's a rainy day in Portland and looking out the window, I can't help but want a blue raincoat that is dappled hot pink with rain.

I just spent two very exhausting weeks with my little sister, who is 11. Omigod. She lives in Kitsap, near Seattle, literally 10 feet away from the Puget Sound. It's unbelievably beautiful, and I find myself already missing the sound of birds calling across the water in the morning, the small boats sailing by in the afternoon, the way the Sound turns silver in the early evening.

But I spent most of my visit dealing with electronics: setting up a DSL modem for her mother, a poet, pricing and buying a wireless router and some cable, installing an Airport card in the poet's iBook, and looking for a mysteriously missing USB cable for the printer, bought three months ago and never fully plugged in. Not to mention troubleshooting the digital camera and resetting the poet's watch, which had started beeping every hour on the hour.

It was especially urgent to get the house (un)wired so that my little sister could go online. I mean, every hour on the hour, the fricking watch would go beepity-beep and my little sister would run in and say, "is the computer fixed?" And I'd say, "not yet," and she'd say, "Well, can I play a game on your phone?" Or, "Why can't I IM on your phone?"

And I know this is a commonplace observation, but it's really true that for my little sister, a computer (and in some ways, cell phone) is an IM and game machine. Without an Internet connection, she didn't even bother fully installing the printer.

> Ideo's SMS-driven window installation for BBC Interactive:
> http://www.ideo.com/portfolio/re.asp?x=50186

> Blogs on your mobile phone:
> http://sync.wokup.com:8082/admin/about_en.jsp
>
> SMS Micro Poetry:
> http://www.poettext.com/poems_micro.php
>
> More place annotation:
> http://www.annotatespace.com (my project site)
> http://www.touchtonetours.com (ITPer Steve Bull)
>
> Another game, :
> http://a.parsons.edu/~awhung/thesis/
>
> Participatory journalism:
> http://www.ndn.org/mediacenter/research/wemedia/

> Outdoor soundtrack programming via SMS:
> http://www.intelligentstreet.net/

...thanks, Andrea

I've been thinking a lot recently about designing for citizenship -- for participation in government at an individual level. Thus: ComNET:

ComNET, a program created by the Fund's Center on Municipal Government Performance (CMGP), introduces easily operated hand-held computers to community organizations so that troublesome street level conditions can be recorded and tabulated quickly, easily and accurately. via Purselipsquarejaw via Jonah Brucker-Cohen

I'm also thinking of the BBC's iCan, which is a site designed to help people start organizing public interest campaigns around issues of importance to them -- and help them figure out what those issues might be. Anti-Mega notes on an iCan presentation.

Just heard about a NYU conference (Nov 13-15) on "The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds" that looks faaaaascinating. It's drawing speakers from both the game design side, the social sciences side, and the legal side. I'm especially interested in the legal side, given that it's a perspective that is often notably absent from discussions of emerging technologies. Given that gap, this entry is a reminder to myself to try to check up more regularly on LawMeme, a generally helpful and interesting Yale Law blog on issues of digital media. This week's vocab word: "copynorms". Thanks, LawMeme (and Wikipedia)!

Leges humanae nascuntur, vivunt, moriuntur
Human laws are born, live, and die

Here's a ridiculously complete summary of the research Eric Paulos and I did on strangers, play, and public places during this summer (and part of fall) at Intel Research Berkeley.

And while I'm on the subject of anxiety and comfort in public places (not to mention inflatables), how about Karen Lancel's Agora Phobia (digitalis), which was apparently at Eyebeam this September? The artist describes it as an "Isolation Pillar / Free Zone" and invites participants (who sit inside an inflatable structure only large enough for one person and a computer) to have an online dialogue with:
someone living in prison,
someone who lives in a cloister,
a digipersona, a pilgrim,
a 'prisoner of war' (POW),
somebody dealing with agora phobia.

In reference to the discussions about vulnerability and intimacy at Ubicomp, it's interesting to see Lancel ask questions like, "What is it about a space that makes you feel vulnerable?"

Carlos Gomez de Llarena, of Noderunner fame (or pseudo-fame, or obscurity, depending on your acquaintance with interactive art) has a new project through Eyebeam, in glorious NYC-o-vision. Urballoon:

Urballoon is an interactive communication balloon. It is a wireless project for that exists in digital and physical dimensions embodied by a levitating globe. Urbaloon works by letting people explore and express themselves in public spaces through the use of wireless networks. Attached to the balloon is a rig containing a video projector, a wi-fi laptop and a webcam. By accessing www.urballoon.com people can type, draw or submit files that will be projected by the balloon wherever it is. They can also watch a live bird's eye view webcast from the balloon's camera.

It sounds like the project is in the initial stages; there's a blog (of course) to keep everyone up to date on its progress. Reminds me a little of Mark and Ahmi's Bass-Station. Also, Eric's PRoPs. Since I spent part of this summer looking at integrating online and offline social spaces, this looks pretty interesting. Plus, I like all things inflatable. Especially balloons. Balloons! The bigger the better! Whee!