Virtual architecture idea of the day.

Virtual architecture idea of the day.

1. Get two cameras to view scene in a remote location - in real time.
2. Using something like a Kinect find out where people are walking past a large display. 
3. Warp the two images so that the moving person sees the virtual location change perspective as they might expect to do so when walking past a 'hole in the wall'. 
4. does this give the impression of hole or is it seen as some kind of visual break down?
5. Does this make you feel like the other place is more there than the flat case ? 

Wallboards information radiators | Atlassian

Wallboards | Atlassian

You can tell I have a deadline by the number of things I'm coming across while looking for the real stuff. These 'wall boards' or 'information radiators' are ambient displays focused on specific team information.

The would make a good focus of study.

Spatial Cognition 2012 paper in

http://sc2012.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/

Its been a busy weekend but I/we got the Spatial Cognition 2012 paper in. 20 pages pa!

Place-Specific Computing: A Place-centric Perspective for Digital Designs

Jörn Messeter

• In her influential book Plans and Situated Action, Lucy Suchman (1987) argues for an understanding of social conduct as emerging from a direct response to the immediate circumstances of interaction–a perspective labelled “situated action.”
• In a frequently cited article, Harrison and Dourish (1996) critically explore the use of space as a basis for design. According to them, the way we manage collaborative activity is not rooted in space at all, but in a mutual cultural understanding of behavior and action. Place is space with invested understandings of behavioral appropriateness and cultural expectations: “space is the opportunity; place is the understood reality” (Harrison & Dourish, 1996, p. 67). 
• The architect Malcolm McCullough (2004) goes further, dismissing the notion of the Internet as a place for immersive inhabitance altogether and seeing it as a “societally enacted myth.”
• In essence, the world would become the interface. 
• In addition, it has been suggested from an architectural perspective that the spatial structures of urban environments embody cultural patterns of interaction that form the basis for socially intelligible conduct (McCullough - Digital Ground, 2004)
• One stream of current research that, implicitly or explicitly, refers to place from a broadened view of use context islocation-aware systems.
• Ciolfi (2004) has successfully applied a perspective of place drawn from the phenomenological vein in human geography to the design of augmentations of physical environments in the form of interactive museum installations. 
• For example, Dourish (2001b) as well as Ciolfi (2004) define space as the physical and mechanical elements of the world that are devoid of meaning. Björgvinsson resists this view of physical artifacts and environmental elements as discrete and separate, and claims that a physical environment without meaning is inconceivable.
• The bottom line here is that the construction of meaning is neither located in the technology nor in the social, but in the interaction between humans and non-human elements, or what he terms socio-material assemblages.
• This is a position against social constructionism on the one hand and technological determinism on the other, and places Björgvinsson’s argument in line with human geographers like Malpas who claim that place is primary to the construction of meaning.
• See for example Ciolfi (2004) for a summary of how the concept of place has been understood in environmental psychology 
• Ciolfi, L., & Bannon, L. (2003, December 12-13). Space, place and the design of technologically enhanced physical environments. Paper presented at the Workshop on Space, Spatiality and Technologies. Edinburgh, UK.
• Another observation [ of Dourish] is that meaning arises in the course of action. This is to say that meaning is not inherent in the technology, and therefore not determined by the designer Rather, meaning emerges through the encounter with technology, making it open for various appropriations and adaptations as it is incorporated into a community of practice.
• David Seamon regards bodily mobility as the key component to understanding place. Repeated movements such as walking to the mailbox or reaching for a pair of scissors in a drawer are established as time-space routines (Cresswell, 2004, pp. 33-34). Seamon uses a dance metaphor, describing these habitual movements as “body ballet.” From the collective effort of many time-space routines performed within a certain location, a “place-ballet” emerges that, according to Seamon, provides a strong sense of place.
•  Furthermore, for this position to be able to constructively contribute to informing design practice, we also need ways of constructing an account of the place-specific that avoids being caught in generalizations and vague typologies, and at the same time enables transcending the specific design situation to support the development of place-specific computing as a genre of interaction design
• A source particularly relevant for understanding practice in relation to space and place is Michel de Certeau’s (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life, in which language is used as a guiding metaphor to describe our practices around place. 
• In short, to de Certeau space is a practiced place. Place is pre-structured and we follow its rules of grammar, i.e., we cannot walk through walls and we do not walk down the middle of a street. But our possibilities of operating within these structures are still as infinite as the expressive power of language.  [ sounds like space syntax ] 
• To conclude, two important issues for place-specific computing thus become: (1) to develop an understanding of practice as developed under the specific structuring conditions of (a particular) place; and (2) to understand what roles applications of place-specific computing can play as part of such practices, and consequently as part of a larger social process of place construction.
• The philosophically oriented geographer Yi-Fu Tuan (1977) has defined place through a comparison with space that suggests a wide range of scales for place. Place is about stopping, becoming involved and developing emotional attachment, whereas space is about openness, freedom and movement
• Consequently, place is something that exists on many scales, according to Tuan – from the corner of a room to the whole of the earth. However, such an unbounded definition of place becomes problematic in the case of place-specific computing.

Makes we wonder about things like ecological validity and Living labs... 

Space Syntax video

My original work was on what is in a field known as 'space syntax'

I'm often asked about space syntax, its hard to track down a good overview, but this is quite a good video giving the urban version of space syntax. You can see some of my software ( and results of my analytic software ) in this video.

This is Alan's talk - its more building centric.

Space syntax and information communication

I thought I would make some good work on communication in buildings . 

This is Alan's talk on IKEA 

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lhl/lhlpub_spring11/01-18012011

http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=b260193

The space of innovation: interaction and communication in the work environment

A Penn, J Desyllas, L Vaughan

Peponis naturally - 

http://sss7.org/Proceedings/Seminars/Peponis%20et%20al%20-%20Designing%20Space%20to%20Support%20Knowledge%20Work.pdf

Gordon Brown ( another one ) good work. 

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1728148&show=abstractf

10.1108/14630010810881630

Attrium meeting.

Floor stuff

To-do

take carpet tile to CHI.

Order carpet tiles.

Clouds

White stairs. Red lifts.

Higher up more , lower down less.

each little motor changes slightly random

Ideal - individual movement of lights.

short cut - frame with balls hanging down.

Sheep to email drawing of idea to Richie

Sussana to make some animations of carpet patterns + cloud patterns.

some carpet tiles with LEDs in nice.

http://picocool.com/architecture/lama-concepts-cell--led-carpet-1/

Goal

Well I spoke to Yvonne and said I could have functioned with 15 and prefered 20. Paul said he would like 30 so I put up 4 posters and sent out another begging email.

As of this afternoon we have 31 responses (yes!).
I'll keep posters up and process all the data for Monday next week.

ON the bad news front the floor pads have not been delivered and I need to reorder them ( DHL failed to deliver they had the wrong number ).

Papers on interaction in buildings

Might be useful to check out for spaces paper

http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/931/1/penn-etal-1999-spaceinnovation.pdf

http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/3499/1/3499.pdf

good intro to syntax. 

http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/1678/1/hillier05-artofspace-english.pdf

Interesting talk.

Managed to get 

http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/CallsForProposals/DesignInTheDigitalWorld.htm

in the system. 

Yvonne and the rest OKed the visualisation with a couple of changes ( display fades to much ). The room I need to install in is not being used and I need to get the adunio on the stairs to start talking to the central server. 

Netiom sensor

Well I managed to find the 7805 Voltage regulator and today (despite terrible headache) managed to get the electronics for the third sensor working. 

For some strange reason I'm getting strange signals popping out from the sensor (not timed not triggered not sure why.

 

With the PC from home and more wire I should get the server working in the meeting room on the far side of the building. With this I can begin upgrading the network to start talking directly to the main machine and so get the visualisations working

Machines under the floor

I've switched to adunios and despite having problems getting the aduino to talk to Processing via Firmata on the old iBook I think I have something collecting enough data. Do I have enough for the making off paper for processing. I'm not sure. 

I need to talk to Paul about experimental procedure.  

Odd whole body experiment.

I was wondering what would happen if you let children loose on a floor based calculator. If you got them to play with the calculator - adding multiplying, subtracting etc but using buttons as big as they were would this be any different or memorable than using a normal calculator? 

Choices

The old PC is behaving weirdly ( strange things happen when screen closes). I'm thinking I would like to get some form of Linux working on it. But then do I use an audio to do the data collection?

I want to get something working quickly so I can work on another method to get the floor sensor working. I'm  tempted to get the MacMini started then think about getting another box (Eze-PC I've borrowed) going.

A methodology begins

Had one of those excellent chats with Ruth 

Ruth thinks that doing the persuasive technology front could form a good basis for a grant application to either ESRC (Economic/Social Science Research council) or the MRC (Medical research council). Medical research is interesting, they have lots of money but they have lots of very top notch people applying for it too. Still the point was I got quite excited. 

Then I had an inspired chat with Paul. 

Clearly I want to play to my syntactical strengths so the most natural response here is where to put the display to have most effect. Paul suggested that I pick four locations  (A,B,C,D) with 2 equal or identical isovist properties ( A,C) and (B,D). Run the experiment and check to see if the response ( what people do ) goes up and down in pairs.  (up A,C, down B,D). Clearly there will be some learning effect ( but how much), but the return to previous state should be obvious if people are responding to the technology. 

This would both establish the utility of a syntactical analysis while also doing some persuasive info. Also leaves some legitimacy for doing a grant application (making this the pilot) later on. Thinking about two weeks per state ( 8 weeks in total + 2 weeks for without action comparison). Paul suggested doing  8 + different locations and trying to correlate results against syntactical factors.