title: Pervasive and Locative Arts Network date: 01-02-205 location: london notes taken by nicolas.nova@epfl.ch, drew hamment and steve benford -- real-time notes - DAY 1 - steve benford: common interest at PLAN -> the use of mobile/wearable tech top create new kinds of experiences at least 2 communities: tech research community (ubiqitous/pervasive computing) + locative media artists computer science researcher, interesting into making new tech, interweaving physical and digital interaction (for instance mobile participants with online players) ; studying emerging tech in the wild (ethnographic methods) + generating outcomes: design frameworks, toolkits and distributed platforms. can you see me now? uncle roy all around you his issues: dealing with uncertainty and designing the spectator experience (hide or show information to them) + development of platforms, tools for recording and reusing (review/modify) - mathew chalmers (uni glasgow) focus: seamless games "seams in pervasive and locative media" mobile computing assumes a seamless use part of EQUATOR network, a six-year Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC) supported by EPSRC http://www.equator.ac.uk/Home/ABOUT.HTM BUT: tech limits -> how people can reveal those seams/limits/gaps so that people can find their own way to deal with them, seamful design -> mobile multiplayer games to explore this in CYSMN: runners experienced the seams between GPS and city streets (precise positioning in open areas, jittery positioning in the 'shadow' of buildings), then runners developed their own tactics to taje advantage of system errors! Players wait in areas of poor GPS and lure online players into the open areas. - People not only accommodate this, but exploit it. taking account of this: first reveal this phenomenon: showing the seams in WiFi network what kind of applications? -> GAMES: BILL (a treasure hunt= people have to pickup coins often outside the network; players get close, pickup coins, get back into network, upload and get points. Pickpocket: steal another player's coins (only in network area) -> players' movement build 'seamful maps' turn it into a team game, location awareness of others was important What can we learn about collaborative gaming? variations in wifi and in players' interpretations of it: 'the one tru net location' versus a big wide field of patchy green/ map as approximation not truth / wifi can vary with... a lot of things they did not expect. The raw material (wi-fi) varied widely - the project sought to reveal that. use of a replay in BILL: name + position + paths (in covered areas) The raw material (wi-fi) varied widely - the project sought to reveal that. use of a replay in BILL: name + position + paths (in covered areas) The computer uses the wi fi without updating the server - often find discrepancies/asymmetries. Variants: Rain Large objects - trucks Leaves on trees - found wi fi doesnt go so far. 2. Dark Bill a variant of BILL played at night electrolumiscent panels on jacket sleeve (should show how many coins you're carrying). Part of research in technical textiles. 3. Monopoly WiFi hotspots in the city are used as 'properties'; first players to find a property can buy it Parallel drawn between the spread of diseases and the spread of (often inconsistent) information around peer to peer networks. 4. Yoshii Feeding interweaving mobile + online players 5. community displays ambient screens for domestic interiors show how your home network is being used -> seams show through in the use of pervasive/locative systems: positioning accuracy, communication availability, information consistency... you can ignore them OR 'seamfully design' to reveal or take advantage of them! - not seen as something negative. The way people use it is not consistent either. - eyal weizman (architect) -> analysing the way military tech/thinking is related to urban architecture actually architecure/urban stuff is often made by men in uniforms gps <-> military apps Has investigated Isreali military. Film of: Head of Isreali military architecture school "We have developed a method of thought. We have developed a method of thought similar to architecture that trains generals..." Cultural theory terms have migrated _back_ into military discourse when it tries to understand the Palestinian city. Eg Nomadic terrorist, war machine, difference and repetition Influence of Deleuze on military!!! - they only have a basic understanding of his theory, but we should still be aware of how the influence operates. (ed: cf. Heidegger and the Nazis??) Architectural eduction. The illusion of operating through the air space and free space - satellites and UAVs > the occupation exercised through the sky. Will withdraw from the ground but not from the air - because of the pivotal place that has in the form of control involved (or in their rationalisation of that control). General: "This approach might seem to be a bit exotic" But this approach is not new Network/system thinking runs through (civilian?) thinking Two spatial systems were in competition amongst the Isreali High Command: -Linear (Sharon said a line will never work, as it can be broken by a single point of rupture -Sharon: Spread out through the desert in a way that allowed each node to act independently - fragmentation of linear, coherent military > multiplicity of nodes responding to local contingencies. Hamas activists burnt an architectural model - showing again the place occupied by architecture. General on video: "The moving through walls is what allows us to interpret the space differently" [ed: repetition, sorry - I erased it] "the space of this room is YOUR INTERPRETATION" a general says trick: passsing through walls...like a worm appearing and disappearing The military needed a new interpretation of palestinian space - not accepting existing urban fabric - needed to be able to see and cut a path through it. fractal raiding: isolation/positioning/infiltration/infestation/extrication/observation - Bill Gaver (Royal College of Art) a catalogue of projects they work on technologies can be located without being locative The technologies they use rely critically on location, but they are not locative, Eg. 'E Signs' - Sensor network (networked sensors) on signs in the streets - measuring fluctuating pollution. - Pollution E-sign - The history tablecloth, "The tablecloth doesnt know where it is, but where it is means quite a lot." - GPS city modeling (richard swinford) - Glowing places (megumi fujikawa) How can technology enable people to share distant living spaces - feel each other's presence. - 'Domestic Probes' - Probes are packages of things they give to people to elicit clues/hints/ambiguous evidence that sparks imagination. - weight watchers (tobie kerridge) looked at displaying weather in the home. http://www.interaction.rca.ac.uk/alumni/01-03/tobie/projects/24/media-carriers.pdfCommon thread - seldom bring new content using technology, but use technolo to represent things and so enable you to appreciate them in new ways. - 'Edgetown: Sensor park'. On flight path of passenger jets. Wired mesh enclosure for various sensors picking up infos on incoming aircraft - enble people to "aesthetically appreciate" an incoming jet - new information is displayed about jet as it approaches, until the jet itself/the physical entity arrives and overwhelmes you with its sensory mass. - 'Edgetown: Motorway Home'. Inhabited by a variety of sensors - create a garden of urban information". An open mesh cage for picnics and watching traffic. DISCUSSION - m chalmers: 'slow games' taking advantage of every day occasion (traffic...) - question: public access to those wireless games, is it possible to enter the game for non-registered users? - russell beale: "I bluejack my students phone!" - Look at how people not involved in a game view the participants running around, in Uncle Roy bystanders became involved in the game. (ed: Is this a case of gaming pollution? Gamers = pollutants?) - to eyal: What is the difference between these design led approaches and military approaches. Eyal: many techniques come from the military, so we can look to the military to see future civilian uses What does it mean for the military to make a transparency? Walls being broken down and seen through > a completely different configuration of the city > (Re. Matthew Chalmer's image of GPS shadows): We end up with just grey shadows not black shadows - black shadows (solid mass) are overcome by technology, it is the grey areas from the technology that are left. The military imagination takes away the black areas from Matthew Chalmer's image to leave just the grey (as physical walls are permeable). -- sally jane norman (culture lab newcastle) artistics experimentation to drive the development of mobile/wireless tech? OR developement of mobile/wireless tech to drive artistics experimentation Which comes first: technology or art (chicken and egg situation) Sally is going to talk from an art perspective - is this perspective relevant to these discussions. Look at how these interests (connected spaces etc) get taken up in different contexts. issues: - how do these new parameters impact creativity in performing arts? - what theatrical conventions might be considered obsolete in new performance environments? Unity of Time, Place Author? Status of the Protagonist? Performance grounded in Pervasive and Locative Media: U-chronic? U-topic? Meta --? -- cliff randell (equator) http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/%7Ecliff/index.html shows a selection of wardrobe wearables - Presentation of a range of interfaces they have designed and built: "we don't believe in HMD's " stuff sewn into jackets strongarm gps wifi Annie Lovejoy & Roger Mills too much heat generated by these devices so: E-sleeve: watch computer/on-hand PC <-> database of pubs (say to your arm: "fin pub", speech recognition -> location based service) Ultrasonic Positioning System (installed in a room) -- ad-hoc network of chirping devices which use sound to triangulate objects within the space (www.pyxisdesign.net) - Version in lab with no RF - runs faster, more accurate, much smaller. Plus new object tracking system - transmit from object/person to ceiling rather than from ceiling. Demonstration of devices accelerometers, gyros, detect motion tilt etc - interface with small computers 'the gumstick' - wilfried hou je bek 'face recognition in cloud' - surveillance fun software WILFRIED HOU JE BEK Socialfiction.org Facial recognition in clouds - surveillance-fun software. Psychogeography ------------------- IF ANYONE ELSE IS TAKING NOTES OR BLOGGING I WILL ASK YOU TO EMAIL ME AT END IN FACT I WILL ASK YOU NOW: *PLEASE EMAIL YOUR NOTES TO DH@OPEN-PLAN.ORG* Thanks, Drew ------------------- MATT ADAMS Blast Theory What is relation of place to meaning - especially when you are mobile? What can you make that is meaningful out of that process? Can You See Me Now - very simple model of proximity (between players online and in world) Project for two bus lines - posters with questions and a number to call in to. Interested in how people occupy the semi-public space of the bus - give people a route to consider this, plus how technology mediates this experience. Problem of how to involve gaming within an artistic project? Eg. in Uncle Roy All Around You = Have a gaming element that becomes redundant at a certain point. Lessons from doing Locative Media projects: 'Participants' operate in numerous, fluid modes (player, witness, participant). LM is a highly subjective experience, due to weather, differences in GPS signal etc. Likewise the 'project' can be presented in numerous different frameworks (game, contract, something closer to an art project that has multiple codes, etc). Fictional vs Imaginary. Pervasive games operate at boundary of real and virtual - this boundary becomes even more blurred with locative elements. Makes participants look at the world anew. Long tradition of problematising narrative - games are a solution to non-linearity. Theatrical models lend themselves well to work of this nature - rich potential, whether people know who are players or not. Anxiety about using technology from military-industrial complex. Matt's view is that the artist has a role in taking hold of that technology, reimagine it, engage with in within other agendas. Next project = using Call centre software, which can connect many speakers simultaneously. *Gong* ----------------------- GILES LANE From Urban Tapestries to Social Tapestries Urban Tapestries = A framework for sharing information ... grew out of spatial annotation project. (See slides!) ----------------------- USMAN HAQUE Architecture and 'psuedo' art background. More interested in intangibles - social relationships, electromagnetic waves, smells etc - than hard walls. Started to look at architecture more as an operating system. Project looking at the spatial attributes of smells - 'smells in space' -Slow wind tunnel to limit dispersion. -One example - sought to evoke the sensation of walking through cities, not always pleasant. Smells at different heights etc 'Sky Ear' - Started with a project dealing with mobile phone as an object (that produces noise) These new kinds of architecture condition us like conventional architecture does - eg. you need to go to the window to make a call. Sky Ear became a sensor network where you can affect the variables you are sensing. Physically it was a cloud of helium filled balloons Interested in conceptions of Herzian space Doesnt believe in the UbiComp conception of efficiency and seamlessness - more interested in seamlessness and falling between the gaps. Look at non precious technology and exchange, why dont we loan people our phones. Designing frameworks not experiences - you cannot do this in a productive way. Scalability. -- RICHARD HULL Mobile Bristol See slides+website -- random notes: drew: DH@OPEN-PLAN.ORG http://www.naturalinteraction.org/ -- exyst: architecture as "a media urbanism" as a game Exyst.org urbanisme = french word for city planning Architecture and city planning projects Processing autonomous urban architecture , Some spaces and buildings can be left on the margins of society. They look for spaces that can be instantly occupied. Architecture as open structure - a 'soon as possible' structure for architecture. Le Rab: place/parcel in La Vilette (garden of the cultural/science museum, in Paris). They lived there during one month - several events occured - a 'social exchange platform' -- Constance and Jon Dovey Five seminars - interdisciplinary working - common language & vocab Illustrated through five example experiences Create summary descriptions for non-speciaised audience with keywords Also more specialised descriptions Levels of immersion Magic moments Descriptive dimensions - how to control and guide user levels of immersion (see mobile bristol web site) e.g., social (private, solitary), production values, relation to existing experience, dimensions of space (linearity), of time, data depth (how many levels), immersion, user control, ... Giulio Jacucci Interaction as Performance Copies of PhD available from author Practical interventions and ethnography - large scale events, urban planning, learning Theoretical perspective: anthropology of performance How spectators at events create and share media - group process Relationship to learning - architectural design Performance perspective Annika Waern, Jenny Niemi, Susanna Involving non-players in games Environment - including people - as content BUT this violates the magic circle Frog Race - players tag and race non-players Factors - NPC anonymity and rewards Other game concepts - rush hour, yum yum sheep, fly tag, spyblob - all involve NPCs in different ways. And more intrusive games that violate NPCs - herding cats, cyber stalking, hunk watch, guardian angel? Rob Van Kranenburg Discussing the cultural landscape for cultural industries Emergence of Dutch media labs from more organic networks The most interesting media space currently is the supermarket - RFID Which business models are viable in an age of ubicomp The ubicomp revolution is too fundamental to be viewed as such by most users The future of IP rights We need a design for commoning - we need a vision of the kind of ecomonic world in which our efforts will take place The metaphor of electricity used to describe ubicomp - what does this tell us? Digital Territory EC vision document Julian Priest Regulating the spectrum Why do we see it as a space? Perhaps better as a social process? Discussion of ofcom document - three kinds of regulation Are the tinkerers moving faster than the regulators? Huge growth of hotspots in Wireless London - 20000 - 60% open Q&A Anne Galloway - frog race - distinguish between annoying and unethical It's all about feelings What are you doing - in two weeks 15th Feb is closing date for Ofcom document - Julian Performative social co-production as a common theme - sarah Turning the passive spectator into a more interactive participant - Giulio One bibliographical reference to sum up the political connotations of each of your presentations Open spectrum international Thomas- (you can have complex interactions and simple relations between people and vice versa) how do you improve relations using technologies or is this just about improving interactions? The word interaction not so applicable in a wireless environment - how can you interact if you don't know what you're interacting with? Better resonance? - Rob Thick versus thin interactions - Julian Drew's question Are there fundamental principles that can be violated? russell beale - there have to be otherwise people will reject the technology Rob- issues around RFID need to be negotiated. RFID tags in your underwear with a 9 meter range! Who is involved in this negotiation? Ethics is clearly an important issue here Pojects need to 'play' with these technologies, protocols and issues - rob, miles, annika Rob - BUT we need to have a say in the design of the underlying protocols Making what is invisible visible. Working on a project to make RFID more visible. -- m-cult: centre for media culture, isea2004 organisator -- DAY2 drew hamment: check aboud conrad chase (club rfid) bluetooth against bush aware: http://aware.uiah.fi : mobile blogging platform how to avoid a Windows moment for the internet of things? http://www.drewhemment.com/ s-77ccr.org/ civil counter-surveillance Troia - in manchester wearables, big blinkenlights display, will set it up to display PLAN projects http://www.bbm.de/ - duncan campbell gps (us)... followed by galileo (EU) ... new forms of social control will appear ... LBS could become totalitarian tools... cell phone = most pervasive device www.mobilephonebug.co.uk "M35 employee monitoring" ready-bugged cellphone mobile phone data: who is calling who + location information -> nice charts + through automated analysis -> social diagrams... art www.bangor.ac.uk/is/iss025/osgbfaq.htm "The Ordnance Survey of Britain and Conversion of Latitude and Longitude to/from OS references. by Phil Brady" empirical study of location based services by duncan: - vodafone: 6 miles away outside city bypass - orange: put on the other side of medway - edinburgh: phone left on a desk, 8 different locations in one hour - in the mountains: disappointing (phone was localized in 2 different pubs in the closest cities) [Ed. note: what's the name of this tool that analyses signal data???? runs on nokia, siemens phones... could be TAPIR - did he mention this name? top of window OK ] Way phones behave with base stations depends on interactivity between the phone, antennae and surfaces like vehicles and buildings Software works well in urban areas, in terms of accuracy of location reporting. Works internationally. E-911 & E-112 services - improving system Vehicle tracking systems ECHELON - similar listening stations across europe Microwave interception - capenhirst? cheshire orig echelon report http://duncan.gn.apc.org/echelon-dc.htm try texting "try mapamobile" to 83118 (unless ur on virgin - countryside may not work as well) -- anne galloway she feels like being the only anthropologist/ethnographer is such conferences follows french urban theorist henri lefebvre she wants to figure out the difference between public and common she is more interested into how pervasive will be than what it is (focusing on the sense of becoming) mobilities and flows play in everyday life by definition 'play' is mobile 'pervasive/wearable/ubiquitous computing' -> linked to the academic places, markets... what will it become... Looking at the difference between 'public' and 'common' Looking at the virtual: as a potential rather than actual: it is real, has physical elements to it, it is 'becoming'. Who you are as opposed to who you can be: from a critical perspective there are many more intersections we can look at. From the perspective of sociology/anthropology: lots of things in flow, a mess! Play in everyday life: in urban, collective, dense environments 2 words for play/games: movement, activity to make effective, to bring into being By definition, play is mobile Play was frivolous, wasteful. Some theorists made it more functional: ludic play: mastery and control, pleasure is derived from the pleasure of winning, improvement Another type of play: seductive, pleasure comes from social interaction, open-endedness, uncertainty, collaborative, working in the realm of potential 2 senses of world-building: control model, free play. Neither are total: Why are we distinguishing between all these kinds of different but similar technologies: mobile, ubiquitous, pervasive, wearable, etc? Started mapping a landscape of all these words and practices: research, design, use, networks, processes What is being brought into being? PhD: looking at play in the wireless city Critical potential of pervasive computing Actual development of mobile technologies Sense of potential rather than actual: the 'myth': doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, but looking at what it can be. case studies: mobile bristol, passing glances, sonic city, TEJP, urban tapestries -- jo walsh DIY/community mapping. All NASA-collected sat images etc free because have to be when taxpayer funded in US - but not the case in UK. http://uo.space.frot.org/ http://www.openstreetmap.org/ open guide to london http://london.openguides.org/ evnt beta http://b.evnt.org/ .. "like a deli.cio.us for events" -- ben russell Shops and RFID tags - inventory management - shops and home Inventory your home So can products be designed to be shared - fetishising the social relationships not the products Technologies that can track us allow us to relate differently to other people Creating social relations instead of interactions - as raised yesterday Conducted roughly 30 interviews in the last 6 months with a variety of disciplines Two people on a beach is a different place to one person on a beach People make places Architect caanot make you have fun in a bar - but they can suggest it Someone with a severed limb looking at a graphical simulation that is driven from their nervous system - the pain disappears How people react to immersive CAVE-like systems - physical reactions, fear of public speaking Meaning defined by use. Q&A - panel session Barry Brown - http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~barry/ Were you excited or concerned about the emergence of GPS? Excited by resinstating the body into interactive art Duncan Campbell - uses GPS when running - but chooses to. It's about the social construction of the technology, not the technology itself Jo - glad to have the opportunity to find alternative (inappropriate) uses for technologies Teri - to critique something is not to oppose it Barry - it's not about being for or against, but how you spend your time - critiquing or celebrating How do we bridge the gap between people developing/researching technologies and everyone else? - jon bird and eric harris: blip and interact lab people are important for generating place but also... the interact lab (university of sussex), interested in novel forms of interaction research: explorative user studies + informing design process interactive skipping rope use of rfid, webcom, i/o boards, phidgets, smart_its... - lalya gaye (future applications lab) how ubicomp could foster new type of creativity, focus on mobile media and urban space. "mc-gyver type of ubiquitous computing" interest in physical interaction: using the body to interact in everyday life sonic city (2002-2004): a computing cloth, while walking through the city, you can play with the city as a musical instrument -> to explore how we can spread the practice of music in everyday world/urban surrounding. context photography: explore the limits of digital photography, here a context camea captures the invisible context (e.g noise level) of a scene with sensors (e.g. mic) and translates it visually into a picture, as you are taking it. Done some user-testing, people screamed to the camera to modifiy the pictures. tejp: audio tags whisper to by-passers leaning towards a wall; space of intimacy in public space. Interaction layers in physical space. other projects: smart-its, bricolage, total recall, tap&bass www.mobile-life.org ubicomp: immediate surrounding and physical artefacts as a resource for everyday creativity interfacing media an physical space with a mapping that involves the user's body and senses + stimulates physical effort -> emergent aesthetic practices and improvised creative use of urban space. ask her more about the results!!! - martin rieser: spatialised narratives putting together a book called mobile audience (plus has blog) www.mobileaudience.blogspot.com project called 'hosts': the point is to collect aphorisms in the city (on a pda) - ewen chardronnet (ellipse): infso-structure previously involved in 'the autonomous astronauts' + transmediale with rixc - andrew wilson (blink) messing about with mobile phones... bus stops poems (wap site for thin poems), no location awareness at all, 'except in our heads' cool projects: - expressive use of mobile phones to create identity - use your mobile phone to be in two cities at once - place filtered conversations (www.ablogs.com: anywhereblogs) - lofi solutions to the problem of fixing location using posters, stickers, beer mats, sticks of rock it works because: people know where they are and the name of the palce has a meaning... why not make use of that? it is safe to assume thet very few people reading the poems ar aware of locative media or geo annotation, it's just people who understood how to use the system! -> lofi location awareness! being in places: if places are created btw we act in them phone = the concrete mixer of the 21st century 'blue peter' - sarah kettley Napier There is an assumption in ubiquitous computing that the technology is disappearing/should disappear. Networked jewellery (visible) Interested in the process of craft, esp as design methodology. Subjects in study - have a particular way of wearing jewellery and attaching meaning to objects in general. This is a way of mapping social interaction. - Social distances etc. - JEN SOUTHERN Landlines *Bowling ball* Looking at relationship between spatial experience and the data gained from locative media. - will byrne (on behalf of russell beale Ambient Art use ambient data to impact/define the art - chris hand proposed to have a concrete artefact that can take advantage of the huge quantity of urine we all have to evacuate (because we drink so many coffees) in order to produce electricity to reload our laptops' batteries. -