The goal of this performance was to take on the role of a historian presenting the historical importance that was the prohibition of keyboards as a result of a culture heavily invested in the benefits of copy and paste as a method for creation. The presentation is given after prohibition has been lifted. However, much like the prohibition of alcohol, once the ban was lifted, regulatory measures were put in place to maintain a level of control.

[continued ...]

This set of studies explores the relationship that we as user have with digital devices. Currently, we are forced to be quite delicate with digital devices for a variety of reasons. Mostly, this is due to the fact that the devices are fragile and expensive. But I’m interested in wondering what would happen if this wasn’t the case. What if you could interact with things in an emotional way? What if the physical manifestation of an emotional outburst caused a meaningful response from a device or system? I’ve explored this elimination of the preciousness associated with a device within the 3 studies in the video above and listed below.

1: Punching: Signal from the Noise.

A nostalgic exploration referencing a time when you could punch a television or radio in order to improve reception.

2: Throwing: Force as Instrument

An experiential exploration that looks at the force of throwing as musical instrument.

3: Shaking: Directional Nudge

The most specific of the scenarios, the shaking interface uses a mobile phone to look at ways in which provocative messages could be sent directly (and anonymously) from one device to another through the use of proximity and a sharp, scolding directional gesture.

[continued ...]

Controlled-Random Group Presentation

This video documents our presentation of Situated Technologies Pamphlet #5, A synchronicity: Design Fictions for Asynchronous Urban Computing by Julian Bleecker and Nicolas Nova for our Media History and Theory class.

The article being discussed can be found here.

4 Presenters
1 Section each
5 Talking points per section
2 Images per talking point

Every 1 minute, the presentation system selects, at random, 1 of the four speakers and 1 of his or her 5 talking points to discuss.

Each talking point will have 2 images displayed for 30 seconds each. Images will be selected at random from the 40 total images.

This continues until all of the talking points are covered. No talking points will be duplicated.

The intent behind mixing the order of talking points and the sequencing of images is to explore the potential for new connections to develop between the different presenters’ topics for discussion.

The Informed Kitchen (a useless prototype)

This project looks at how unhelpful a great deal of information will be when associated with mundane objects as corporations look to infuse every act with a chance for communication. Consider this inline with the today’s quality of search results and data aggregation. If unchecked or under-considered by designers, it is easy to imagine how our world will continue to present us with information that is of little or no value.

Daniel Lara and I decided to pair our projects together in order to explore how the ridiculous could become even more so. By taping into my sensor data, his system could know what he was touching. By accessing his sensors, I used the information from a person in the space to determine scale and audio volume of the videos so that closer meant larger and louder.

Project Statement

Ubiquitous Street Bureau: A design research project to study the thresholds of walking in a driving culture.

Developed and explored by Daniel Lara, Ana Ramos, and Alex Braidwood

Final Presentation

(Click on the images to view them full size)

Sole Scans

Every sole tells a story. By collecting images of the bottom of people’s shoes along with some additional information collected form the provided survey, this inquiry looks to investigate the roll that footwear plays in our determining when and where to walk.

[continued ...]

Real Space Sampling
While driving around the city of Los Angeles, I stumbled upon an area in the back corner of a parking lot where a hole had been in a chain link fense so that homeless people and transients could gain access to the protective area underneath a bridge over the LA river near a train yard. The most interesting aspect of this space of the city was the hidden and overlooked nature of both the location itself and the people who used it. In order to develop an audio and visual profile of the city, chose to documented some unseen elements within the space, more specifically, invisible typography with the location. While on-site, I used a radio scanner to record communications from the airwaves at the specific location. I then edited the sound down to only mentions of letters and numbers, including the ways in which police officers communicate letters by stating words. Visually I was attracted to the discarded memorabilia that was littered about. Much of it had been there for many years and was well ground into the dirt. I focused my collections on those items that contained small typography and interesting forms. I then explored these items back in the studio using macro photography.

The Location

Audio results of radio scanning the area for the typographic audio form

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Macro photography explorations of other-worldly textures and typographic forms

[continued ...]

3rd Iteration of Electronic News Reader Home Screen

This round focused on the further refinement of the visual language of a traditional newspaper and how we that visual language can be more integrated within the proposed digital space. This version also contains a more refined system, visually and functionally, for integrating the ‘widgets’ used to filter the presented content and the sources from which it is drawn. We also developed a visual system that utilizes the dots from the world map in order to identify how globally or locally a particularly story is being reported. The more dots associated with the story, the more broadly the story is being reported. As we were working on this phase, we also decided that the REader MIX was engaging enough that we should feature it more prominently within the design. To clarify, here are some descriptions for the features and functionality being proposed:

Location Filter
The “filter-matrix” developed for the eReader allows users to access stories based on a 2 dimensional sorting of where the story itself took place as well as the location of origin of person or agency reporting on the story. This would allow the user to gain a more broad perspective of location, national and global events. For example, one could view news of North America as reported from South Africa. Or read stories about the Middle East as reported from the Middle East. Adjusting the location of the source can demonstrate large disparities and prejudices in the reporting of an event. The location filter gives the reader the tools to broaden their understanding of the stories presented.

Source Type
This slider within the interface allows the user to determine the reputability and type of coverage that they are interested in reading. The “authority” scale gradates from International News Agencies through Opinion and Affiliated Organizations down to Blogs and social media. Using this tool gives the reader access to a more diverse set of information while still putting the priority for stories to be considered (as best as can be assumed by any large media outlet) actual, reported, edited, fact checked, responsible news at the forefront. Each story is then displayed along with the icon for its source so that the reader is constantly kept aware of the origination of the content being displayed. This system does not employ editors of its own. Instead, the system aggregates the content from a variety of sources and organizes for display as major home page stories as well as filterable content.

REader MIX
The REader MIX is an interactive module that exists in the majority of the layouts and contains a collection of words, phrases and sentances that have been added by all users of the GeoReader. When a user finds a particular word or phrase that they are interested in, they can press, hold and drag to highlight the phrase. A contextual link then appears asking them to add it to the REader MIX. Once added, the text becomes part of the dynamic, ever changing narrative presented to all users of the GeoReader. Each entry is color coded to match the section the reader who added it was viewing it in (since many stories will exist under multiple filters) and is a link back to the original story from which it was extracted. This offers users a new way of accessing and finding content they they may be interested in. Headlines don’t tell the whole story. Summaries don’t get to the heart of the story quickly enough. But if someone finds one particular phrase to be compelling, then someone else might too and follow that phrase to read a story they may not have found otherwise.

Full size PDF [1200 x 1920]

[continued ...]

This video capture demonstrates the first prototype developed to illustrate the movement, organization and function of the electronic news reader that we are proposing. The main features demonstrated in this prototype are the dynamic nature in which content would shift and adjust, the use of filters in place of the traditional “one-category/section” structure of a traditional newspaper, and the filtering based on the locations of both where the story happened and the original location of the reporting source.

Initial prototype screen-grab.

Click to launch video [QuickTime: 1200 x 630]