http://benjamincreek.blogspot.com/

mesh modeller that uses KINECTs depth perception and homemade data gloves

2011-07-26T18:33:00.001-07:00

a simple mesh modeller that uses KINECTs depth perception and homemade data gloves for a more real world oriented user interaction in virtual 3d space.
realized only with open source software

SixthSense

2011-07-25T01:30:00.000-07:00

sixthsense

SixthSense: How It Works: A webcam captures video, including specific hand signals that the laptop reads as commands. A mini-projector then displays the relevant content — e-mail, stock charts, photos — on the nearest surface Bland Designs

Imagine a wearable device that lets you physically interact with interfaces that appear in front of you on any surface, where and when you want them. You can watch a video on your newspaper's front page, navigate through a map on your dining table, and flick through photos on any wall. The "Sixth Sense" system from Patti Maes' Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab does all this through a prototype built from $300 worth of off the shelf components. You can even take a photograph by simply holding your hand in the air and making a framing gesture.

SixthSense is a wearable gestural interface device developed by Pranav Mistry,

2011-07-25T00:50:00.001-07:00

SixthSense - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

SixthSense is a wearable gestural interface device developed by Pranav Mistry, a PhD student in the Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab. It is similar to Telepointer, a neckworn projector/camera system developed by Media Lab student Steve Mann^[1] (which Mann originally referred to as "Synthetic Synesthesia of the Sixth Sense").^[2]

The SixthSense prototype comprises a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera contained in a pendant like, wearable device. Both the projector and the camera are connected to a mobile computing device in the user’s pocket. The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces, walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces; while the camera recognizes and tracks user's hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques.^[3] The software program processes the video stream data captured by the camera and tracks the locations of the colored markers (visual tracking fiducials) at the tips of the user’s fingers. The movements and arrangements of these fiducials are interpreted into gestures that act as interaction instructions for the projected application interfaces. SixthSense supports multi-touch and multi-user interaction.

Voyagers [openFrameworks]

2011-07-15T21:57:00.000-07:00

Voyagers - permanent installation for @NMMGreenwhich by @Lightsurgeons @obviousjim @tgfrerer and others #openFrameworks | CreativeApplications.Net

Voyagers [openFrameworks]

Created by The Light Surgeons for the National Maritime Museum in London, the installation “Voyagers” engages with England’s long standing relationship to the sea, featuring thematic images and film from the museum’s collection animated atop a continually flowing ocean of typography across an abstract wave shaped structure. Together with a number of other projects, the installation opens to the public tomorrow. We got a chance to take a sneak peak earlier today and get some insight into the making together with what we enjoy most – the debug info and some fantastic behind the scene images.

James George from the New York studio Flightphase collaborated with TThe Light Surgeons to create custom application to animate the content in realtime. Created using openFrameworks, the applications use a number of different tools to communicate the narratives. The ocean effect of type sweeping across the installation surface is a 3d wave simulation created using a vector field. The complete simulation is stitched and mapped across seven projectors covering the 20 metre triangulated surface. The image sets were designed by the Light Surgeons to relate each of the six themes of the museum. openFrameworks parses the layouts and generates animations that cascade down the wave. Also, at the far end of the gallery is a Puffersphere, which is an internal spherical projector. During the course of each cascade of images the puffersphere collects thematic keywords that relate to the images and prints them onto the surface of the globe. Likewise, the type waves trigger projected content of the sphere as they “hit” it’s surface. The audio created by Jude Greenaway is mixed dynamically by interfacing openFrameworks to SuperCollider over OSC.

James used Dan Shiffman‘s Most Pixels Ever library for synchronizing the application. He has also released a number of changes to the library that can be found here (github). The team has also built a way to synchronize parameters over the network using MPE – github and through developing content for the Puffersphere, the team created a lightweight library for animating the surface of the sphere and can be found here.

Full credits:

Design/Direction: The Light Surgeons, Bespoke Software Design: Flightphase, Sound Design: Jude Greenaway, Additional Programming: Timothy Gfrerer, SuperCollider Programming: Michael McCrea and Exhibition Design: Real Studios

National Maritime Museum

tactile pixels to create an electrical field you can feel.

2011-07-10T08:57:00.001-07:00

Tactile Pixels Will Make It Easy To Read Braille On Touchscreens

By Kwame Opam on July 10, 2011 at 9:00 AM

It’s a familiar complaint. Even as companies like Apple try to tie the computer interface back to the natural world, touchscreens are still woefully flat. But recent developments, including Senseg’s new E-sense technology, could bring real-world touch into everyday computing.

Obviously, this is nothing new. Research into programmable friction has already yielded impressive results, especially in the realm of stickiness. But this concept accomplishes the same goal by using “tixels” or tactile pixels to create an electrical field you can feel. Your skin responds by feeling whatever the interface wants it to feel: Buttons, perhaps, or even the fur of a virtual pet.

The project sounds really promising, and Senseg already has Toshiba backing them. Imagine video chat aided by tactile pixels. Being able to gentle touch the face of a newborn baby. Or the hand of a distant lover. The possibilities are as endless as ever. [The Next Web via Geekosystem]

Using The Kinect To Make Any Surface Multi-Touch - 3point calibration

2011-06-27T14:34:00.001-07:00

Today in the Department of Kinect Hacks, we’ve got an official-looking hack showing off how you can use the Kinect (and its open-source drivers, of course) to turn any flat surface into a multi-touch trackpad or projected Surface.

It’s pretty straightforward, really. The Kinect looks at the scene in 3D, you establish a plane and boundaries for the interaction area, and boom, multi-touch.

This little demo was put together by a seasoned interactive surface team, Patten Studio, from whom I hope we can expect to see an open demo app of this thing.

[via Reddit, where they're getting good at catching these little experiments]

Kinect Hacks: Flash, HTML, Unity and Silverlight integration

2011-06-17T01:18:00.000-07:00

Blitz, an interactive marketing agency, has released its source code and scripts for a Kinect mod that outputs data compatible with Flash, HTML, Unity and Microsoft Silverlight. The company, which helped launch Halo: Waypoint with Microsoft and 343 Industries, explains that the device's standard C++ programming language was too limited for budding Kinect hackers.

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/01/13/kinect-hacks-flash-html-unity-and-silverlight-integration/

Has Anybody Downloaded The Kinect PC SDK Yet? | Gizmodo Australia

Has Anybody Downloaded The Kinect PC SDK Yet?

By Nick Broughall on June 17, 2011 at 3:45 PM

One of the most exciting things about Microsoft’s Kinect gaming peripheral (aside form Dance Central) is the awesome ways that hackers took it and used it to create really interesting and new user interfaces for engaging with technology. And now that Microsoft has officially launched an SDK that lets users create their own apps using the Kinect camera, we’re wondering if any of you have downloaded it yet.

It’s an amazing technology that opens up the doors for lots of future applications, many of which are likely to be created by people playing around with this SDK.

If you have downloaded it, tell us what you think in the comments below. What are you planning to do with it – will you be trying to create something amazing, or just stuffing around for laughs?

Museum of the personal: the souvenir and nostalgia

2011-06-10T08:07:00.001-07:00

Museum of the personal: the souvenir and nostalgia

Essentially, I am interested in dealing with
photography's capacity to hold nostalgic significance for the possessor.

Souvenirs

2011-06-10T07:59:00.001-07:00

Museum of the personal: the souvenir and nostalgia

Souvenirs generally fall into two distinct types: a souvenir of a place,
or a souvenir of an event. These types sometimes overlap, and once purchased
both aspects are considered intrinsic to the narrative of the object. For
instance, someone may say 'I bought this key ring at Stonehenge last summer'
or 'I bought this tee-shirt at Big Day Out last year.' As contended earlier,
it is obvious that a mass-produced kitsch materiality limited to the realm
of tourism does not bound the souvenir as an object. Souvenirs can also be
precious objects from the start¾for instance souvenir commodities from jewelry
factories and gem fields. Rather, the souvenir can take any material form
as long as the relationship with the possessor is intact. By this, I mean
that there is no separation or rupture of the narrative cast by the possessor
regarding the object. This relationship is at once fetishistic, nostalgic
and above all capable of generating a narrative or discourse with the aid
of the owner. Without the narrative, the objects meaning is invisible, not
able to be articulated without the possessor's input, its role as a stand
in or partial object is lost.

2011-06-10T07:06:00.001-07:00

Sweatshoppe – Video Painting « Urban Projection

Sweatshoppe – Video Painting

Got a mail to a fantastic project going on in New York. I just post the mail here :

Multimedia performers Sweatshoppe have been wheat pasting buildings

with moving images all over New York. Mapping video projections to

LED-lit paint rollers, Sweatshoppe lay their projections on a surface,

paint-stroke by paint stroke. They call new digital performance style

“Video Painting” and have demonstrated the end result here:

SWEATSHOPPE, 4spots, the landing extras from SWEATSHOPPE on Vimeo.

How it works: The software controlling the video was written in Max.

The paint roller does not use any sort of paint, it simply contains

green LEDs. The software tracks the color green and outputs the x y

position which are sent to drawing commands and the strokes are

textured with video.

Sweatshoppe is video artists Bruno Levy and Blake Shaw. They plan on

eventually releasing the software, but only after it is much more

refined, buffed up with features and is user-friendly.

SWEATSHOPPE Video Painting

2011-06-10T06:47:00.001-07:00

SWEATSHOPPE Video Painting @ DIS-PATCH Festival Belgrade from SWEATSHOPPE on Vimeo.

calibrate CCV

2011-06-10T00:55:00.001-07:00

Community Core Vision (CCV) – Calibration | Seth Sandler

Community Core Vision (CCV) - Calibration

In order to calibrate CCV for your camera and projector/LCD, you'll need to run the calibration process. Calibrating allows touch points from the camera to line up with elements on screen. This way, when touching something displayed on screen, the touch is registered in the correct place. In order to do this, CCV has to translate camera space into screen space; this is done by touching individual calibration points.

Optical Multitouch Techniques

2011-06-10T00:53:00.001-07:00

Multitouch – How To | Seth Sandler

Optical Multitouch Techniques

Each technique utilizes 3 main components:

Infrared Camera (or other optical sensor)
Infrared light
Visual Feedback (projector or LCD)

Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus

2011-06-08T21:12:00.001-07:00

Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus by Julius von Bismarck & Benjamin Maus | CreativeApplications.Net

The “Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus” was designed by Julius von Bismarck & Benjamin Maus. It is a drawing machine that illustrates a never-ending story by translating words of text into patent drawings.

Seven million patents — linked by over 22 million references — form the vocabulary. By using references to earlier patents, it is possible to find paths between arbitrary patents. They form a kind of subtext.

The machine attempts to show how new visual connections and narrative layers emerge through the interweaving of the story with the depiction of technical developments.

Basic procedure

1. The program downloads and parses a part of the text of a recent best-selling book.

2. The algorithm eliminates all insignificant words like “I”, “and”, “to”, “for”, “the”, etc. The remaining words and their combinations are the keywords for the patent drawings.

3. Using the keywords in chronological order, it searches for the key-patents

4. The program now searches for a path connecting the found key patents. This is possible because every patent contains several references to older patents – the so-called “prior art”.

5. All key-patents and the patents connecting them semantically are arranged and printed.

6. Goto step 1.

Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus

2011-06-08T20:56:00.001-07:00

The Works of Silke Hilsing: Impress & Virtual Gravity | Designerscouch #thecritiquenetwork

The Works of Silke Hilsing: Impress & Virtual Gravity

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Virtual gravity is an interface between digital and analog world. With the aid of analog carriers, virtual terms can be taken up and transported from a loading screen to an analog scale. The importance and popularity of these terms, outputted as a virtual weight, can be weighed physically and be compared. Therefore impalpable, digital data get an actual physical existence and become a sensually tangible experience.

Virtual Gravity [Processing]: Weight of digital data / project by Silke Hilsing | CreativeApplications.Net

Martin Wattenberg & Marek Walczak - Apartment

2011-06-07T21:20:00.001-07:00

Database Aesthetics » Martin Wattenberg & Marek Walczak - Apartment

Saturday, 9 Feb 2008

Martin Wattenberg & Marek Walczak - Apartment

In Wattenberg and Marek’s Apartment, “viewers are confronted with a blinking cursor. As they type, rooms begin to take shape in the form of a two-dimensional plan, similar to a blueprint. The architecture is based on a semantic analysis of the viewer’s words, reorganizing them to reflect the underlying themes they express. The apartments are then clustered into buildings and cities according to their linguistic relationships.

Each apartment is translated into a navigable three-dimensional dwelling, so contrasting between abstract plans/texts and experiential images/sounds.

Apartment is inspired by the idea of the memory palace. In a mnemonic technique from a pre-Post-It era, Cicero imagined inscribing the themes of a speech on a suite of rooms in a villa, and then reciting that speech by mentally walking from space to space. Establishing an equivalence between language and space, Apartment connects the written word with different forms of spatial configurations.”

Experience the project here.

Martin Wattenberg: Apartment

2011-06-07T20:32:00.001-07:00

Martin Wattenberg: Apartment

Viewers are confronted with a blinking cursor. As they type, rooms begin to take shape in the form of a two-dimensional plan, similar to a blueprint. The architecture is based on a semantic analysis of the viewer’s words, reorganizing them to reflect the underlying themes they express. The apartments are then clustered into buildings and cities according to their linguistic relationships.

Apartment is inspired by memory palaces. In a mnemonic technique from a pre-Post-It era, Cicero imagined inscribing the themes of a speech on a suite of rooms in a villa, and then reciting that speech by mentally walking from space to space. Establishing an equivalence between language and space, Apartment connects the written word with different forms of spatial configurations.

In some versions the computer constructs a 3D as well as 2D structure. In a few later installations, viewers can collaborate, with two people able to merge their apartments into
a combined structure.

Curiosity cabinets were history's first happenings,

2011-06-07T06:03:00.001-07:00

Jonathan Salem Baskin's Dim Bulb: Two-Headed Babies

Curiosity cabinets were history's first happenings, or performance art pieces.

Over time, science got more rigorous, and education more common. The scientific method robbed life of myths and superstitions, and replaced them with facts and repeatable processes. We lost our experience of magic, only to have it replaced with steam engines.

Serious museums emerged to educate people on this shift.

curiosity cabinet painting

2011-06-07T06:02:00.001-07:00

WELCOME TO THE DALI HOUSE (PLEASE MIND YOUR HEAD)

A bit more rooting around in other people’s boxes of stuff lately. Nothing to get alarmed about though. Specifically it’s the curiosity cabinets alluded to in previous posts on Mark Ryden

Studio Bility's Curiosity Cabinet

2011-06-07T06:00:00.001-07:00

Studio Bility's Curiosity Cabinet | Apartment Therapy Los Angeles

We've always loved curiosity cabinets, and this one from the Icelandic husband and wife design team of Studio Bility is no exception. The unit opens from all four sides, offering a myriad of storage slots for all shapes and sizes of curiosities to artfully present when the opportunity arises..

Projection Mapping definition

2011-06-07T01:26:00.001-07:00

Projection mapping on the rise

As visualists have noticed already and known for some time now, projection mapping is cool. And now it seems that this technique is going mainstrem in a big way as it is beginning to be used more and more in commercial contexts. In my city I am noticing more and more outdoor video projections – some of them using mapping techniques.

For those who stumble upon this article and are not familiar with the term, projection mapping is the technique of beaming video (with a standard video projector) onto three dimensional objects and adjusting and masking the image so that it seems to follow the shape of the target object instead of spilling out onto walls etc. The result can be surprisingly effective and eye catching as the video is no longer a flat square on the wall but becomes an object in space – an animated sculpture if you will.

projected onto the floor of the gallery that allows the visitor to walk ‘through’ it

2011-06-06T19:17:00.001-07:00

Group exhibition, Ljubljana and Ribnica/Slovenia: You Own Me Now Until You Forget About Me. | CONT3XT.NET

Martin Wattenberg and Marek Walczak

(with additional programming by Jonathan Feinberg)

Apartment (2001-2004) | Website, projection

In Apartment Martin Wattenberg and Marek Walczak were inspired by Cicero’s mnemonic technique of a memory palace. The user establishes an equivalence between language and space by typing words and phrases into the computer. After being automatically processed, language takes the form of a two-dimensional blueprint projected onto the floor of the gallery that allows the visitor to walk ‘through’ it. The semantic relationships of the written words are connected to spatial and contextual configurations and at the same time cause their architectural re-organisation.

http://www.turbulence.org/Works/apartment/#

tiles on wall arrangement

2011-06-06T19:12:00.001-07:00

y Giovanna Rinaldi and Misha Davidoff's Final Show

Senior Studio

Apr 30, '09, 6:59 AM

The Method of Loci - The Mental Walk

2011-06-06T18:55:00.001-07:00

Method of loci - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

'the method of loci', an imaginal technique known to the ancient Greeks and Romans and described by Yates (1966) in her book The Art of Memory as well as by Luria (1969). In this technique the subject memorizes the layout of some building, or the arrangement of shops on a street, or any geographical entity which is composed of a number of discrete loci. When desiring to remember a set of items the subject literally 'walks' through these loci and commits an item to each one by forming an image between the item and any distinguishing feature of that locus. Retrieval of items is achieved by 'walking' through the loci, allowing the latter to activate the desired items.

The method of loci is also commonly called the mental walk.

In basic terms, it is a method of memory enhancement which uses visualization to organize and recall information. Many memory contest champions claim to use this technique in order to recall faces, digits, and lists of words.

more to do with their technique of using regions of their brain that have to do with spatial learning

It is generally applied to encoding the key ideas of a subject. Two approaches are:

1. Link the key ideas of a subject and then deep-learn those key ideas in relation to each other, and;

2. Think through the key ideas of a subject in depth, re-arrange the ideas in relation to an argument, then link the ideas to loci in good order.

It has been found that teaching such techniques as pure memorization methods often leads students towards surface learning only. Therefore, it has been recommended that the method of loci should be integrated thoroughly with deeper learning approaches.

Example:

During the mental walk, people remember lists of words by mentally walking a familiar route and associating these objects with specific landmarks on their route. An example of this would be to remember your grocery shopping list in a mental walk from your bedroom to kitchen in your house. Let's say the first item on your list was bread; then mentally you can place a loaf of bread on your bed. As you continue mentally walking you can place the next item, assume it is eggs, on your dresser. The mental walk continues like this as you place consecutive items along a familiar route that you walk. So when you are at the grocery store, you can then think about this walk and “see” what you placed at each location. In your head you will remember bread being on your bed, and eggs being on the dresser. This can continue for as many items as you want to place on your path as long as the route continues. The more dramatic the images, the more vivid the memory. For instance: instead of "bread", try to visualize a giant loaf of bread; instead of "eggs", imagine broken eggs all over the place.

Memory - linking landmarks -the roman path

2011-06-06T18:49:00.001-07:00

2011-06-06T18:47:00.001-07:00

Academictips.org - Memory Techniques, Memorization Tips - The Roman Room Technique

The Roman Room technique is an ancient and effective way of remembering
unstructured information where the relationship of items of information to
other items of information is not important.

It functions by imagining a room (e.g. your sitting room or bedroom). Within that room are objects. The technique works by associating images with those objects.

To recall information,
simply take a tour around the room in your mind, visualising the known objects and their associated images.

Expanding the Roman Room System

The technique can be expanded in one way, by going into more detail, and
keying images to smaller objects. Alternatively you can open doors from the
room you are using into other rooms, and use their objects to expand the
volume of information stored. When you have more experience you may find
that you can build extensions to your rooms in your imagination, and populate
them with objects that would logically be there.

Other rooms can be used to store other categories of information.

Moreover, there is no need to restrict this information to rooms: you could
use a view or a town you know well, and populate it with memory images.

Summary

The Roman Room technique is similar to the Journey method, in that it works
by pegging images coding for information to known images, in this case to
objects in a room or several rooms.

The Roman Room technique is most effective for storing lists of unlinked
information, whereas the journey method is most effective for storing lists
of related items.

Curiosity Cabnet, Cabinet of Wonder, Wonder-room

2011-06-06T08:03:00.000-07:00

Cabinet of curiosities - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A cabinet of curiosities was an encyclopedic collection in Renaissance Europe of types of objects whose categorical boundaries were yet to be defined. They were also known by various names such as Cabinet of Wonder, and in German Kunstkammer or Wunderkammer (wonder-room).

File:Berlin Naturkundemuseum Korallen.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Modern terminology would categorize the objects included as belonging to natural history (sometimes faked), geology, ethnography,archaeology, religious or historical relics, works of art (including cabinet paintings) and antiquities. "The Kunstkammer was regarded as a microcosm or theater of the world, and a memory theater. The Kunstkammer conveyed symbolically the patron's control of the world through its indoor, microscopic reproduction."^[1] Of Charles I of England's collection, Peter Thomas has succinctly stated, "TheKunstkabinett itself was a form of propaganda".^[2] Besides the most famous and best documented cabinets of rulers and aristocrats, members of the merchant class and early practitioners of science in Europe also formed collections that were precursors to museums.

Several internet bloggers describe their sites as a wunderkammer, either because they are primarily made up of links to things that are interesting, or because they inspire wonder in a similar manner to the original wunderkammer (see External Links, below). Robert Gehl describes internet video sites like YouTube as modern-day Wunderkammern, although in danger of being refined into capitalist institutions, "just as professionalized curators refined Wunderkammers into the modern museum in the 18th century."^[19] Playwright Jordan Harrison's Museum Play is structurally based around the cabinets, habitats and hallways of a natural history museum.

Content is Queen - composite collage

2011-06-01T06:20:00.001-07:00

today and tomorrow

“Content is Queen” is a new project by Sergio Albiac, it is a generative video painting that comments on democracy and power.

At the same time, is a paradoxical dialogue and strange marriage between the banal and utterly majestic: to create the series, the most popular (in a truly democratic sense) internet videos of a given moment are used as the input of a generative process that “paints” with action the image of a contemporary Queen.

You might also want to check out a more static version by Sergio called “Divided Experiences“.

Sony's "SmartAR" Augmented Reality Tech Demo

2011-06-01T05:36:00.001-07:00

Sony's "SmartAR" Augmented Reality Tech Demo - Core77

Sony's "SmartAR" Augmented Reality Tech Demo

Posted by hipstomp | 30 May 2011

|
Comments (1)

Sony might have lost the portable music player and smartphone war, but it's too soon to count them out of the product design space. What they need is a hit or a killer app to put them back in the game, and since they've lost points on hardware, perhaps they'll make it back in software. Take a look at "SmartAR," the augmented reality technology they've been messing around with in their skunkworks:

Needless to say, the ability to photograph barcode-less items in the real world and get instant information on them could be huge, a sort of away-from-a-home-computer Google. What remains to be seen is if Sony can bring it to the masses in a palatable format and, of course, what Google will counteroffer if SmartAR takes off.

Street Art Issue and Projection Mapping

2011-05-31T20:29:00.001-07:00

IdN New Releases

IdN presents the Street Art Issue and Projection Mapping issue for May-June 2011. The IdN Video v18n2: Projection Mapping issue includes a DVD with 17 leading international studios and designers who play with optical perceptions, create imaginative illusions in real time. Take a look at the video below:

NONOBJECT - THE CHARGED SPACE BETWEEN THE USER AND THE PRODUC

2011-05-30T20:03:00.000-07:00

ESSENCE | NONOBJECT

We look beyond the object itself, Inside and out // We focus on the ethos that defines the meaning of a product and its function and purpose. Using our unique approach, we are able to create products that move you, that challenge conventional wisdom, that embrace positive and meaningful experiences.

OUR FOCUS IS NOT JUST THE PERFECT DESIGN SOLUTION BUT THE CHARGED SPACE BETWEEN THE USER AND THE PRODUCT. THE INTANGIBLE SPACE THAT DEFINES THE EXPERIENCE AND ENABLES DEEPER CONNECTIONS

Forgetting to Remember/ Remembering to Forget

2011-05-30T19:54:00.001-07:00

Cultural Memory: Forgetting to Remember/ Remembering to Forget | Réseau européen d'études littéraires comparées / European Network for Comparative Literary Studies

Cultural Memory: Forgetting to Remember/ Remembering to Forget

memory is not just an individual, private experience but is also part of the collective domai

2011-05-30T19:52:00.001-07:00

Cultural memory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Because memory is not just an individual, private experience but is also part of the collective domain, cultural memory has become a topic in both historiography (Pierre Nora, Richard Terdiman) and cultural studies (e.g., Susan Stewart). These emphasize cultural memory’s process (historiography) and its implications and objects (cultural studies), respectively. Memory is a phenomenon that is directly related to the present; our perception of the past is always influenced by the present, which means that it is always changing.

lieux de mémoire - The memorial site / remember in terms of the photograph – or they can serve as a reminder of our propensity to forget

2011-05-30T19:51:00.001-07:00

Stewart, for example, claims that our culture has changed from a culture of production to a culture of consumption.

These specific objects can refer to either a distant time (an antique) or a distant (exotic) place. Stewart explains how our souvenirs authenticate our experiences and how they are a survival sign of events that exist only through the invention of narrative.

Catherine Keenan explains how the act of taking a picture can underline the importance of remembering, both individually and collectively. Also she states that pictures cannot only stimulate or help memory, but can rather eclipse the actual memory – when we remember in terms of the photograph – or they can serve as a reminder of our propensity to forget. Others have argued that photographs can be incorporated in memory and therefore supplement it.

Nora pioneered connecting memory to physical, tangible locations, nowadays globally known and incorporated as lieux de mémoire

lieux de mémoire - The memorial site is a historical concept put forward by the book Places of Memory, published under the direction of Pierre Nora between 1984 and 1992. Nora is equally well known for having directed Les Lieux de Mémoire, three volumes which gave as their point the work of enumerating the places and the objects in which are the incarnate national memory of the French. According to Pierre Nora , "a place of memory in every sense of the word is going to be the most tangible and concrete, possibly geographically located at the object more abstract and intellectually constructed. " It may therefore be a monument , a prominent figure, a museum , the archives , as well as a symbol of a currency , an event orinstitution .

"An object becomes a place of memory when he escaped oblivion, for example with the display of commemorative plaques, and when a community reinvestment of its emotionand its emotions . "

Individuals remember events and experiences some of which they share with a collective. Through mutual reconstruction and recounting collective memory is reconstructed. Individuals are born into familial discourse which already provides a backdrop of communal memories against which individual memories are shaped.A group's communal memory becomes its common knowledge which creates a social bond, a sense of belonging and identity. Memory work - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

it is perception driven by a longing for authenticity that colors memory, which is made clear by a desire to experience the real (Susan Stewart)

Memory work - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

group's

Robert Gober Nursery wallpapers

2011-05-30T19:24:00.001-07:00

Why Not... A Robert Gober Nursery? - Daddy Types

I've always loved the cute-but-unsettling evocations of vestigial childhood memories that adhere to the incredible, hand-made sculptures of Robert Gober. And it continues to surprise me that no one has ever licensed Gober baby furniture--actually, that doesn't surprise me at all. But at least, why has no one created a Gober-inspired nursery?

I mean, the actual crib and playpen sculptures are problematic because a) they're sculptures, not functional objects, so b) they're often distorted or incomplete, c) they probably run about a million dollars apiece if they ever came to market at all, d) if you did manage to get one of the rare, 4-sided, right-angled works, the conservation risks of having a teething kid gnaw on the rail might keep you up at night, and the real dealbreaker, d) the spindles are spaced more than the CPSC-mandated 2 3/8 inches apart, which could pose a strangulation or entrapment hazard.

no tree grows in a perfectly straight line. Why then do we seek perfections in our lives and in our objects?

2011-05-30T18:43:00.001-07:00

NonObject: The Phone Designed With Wrinkles - Gizmodo

a more honest representation of life and how we live it? No orange is a perfect sphere; no tree grows in a perfectly straight line.

Why then do we seek perfections in our lives and in our objects?

Tarati invites us, finally, to "reach out and touch someone" through the invisible magic of technology. It is, literally, poetry in motion, the first step toward realizing the promise of cellular technology. Technology, invisible as it is, is also magical. It is possible to penetrate the barrier of the physical.

wo Kinect Devices And A Projector Combined To Create A 360 Degree Snowglobe Display (video)

2011-05-30T18:29:00.001-07:00

Two Kinect Devices And A Projector Combined To Create A 360 Degree Snowglobe Display (video) » Geeky Gadgets

An interesting project on show at the Computer-Human Interaction Conference in Vancouver combine two Microsoft Kinect devices and a projector, together with a large acrylic global and some custom software and hardware. To present a 360 degree view of an object and which can then track a viewers movements and be controlled by gestures.

“Project Snowglobe” has been designed by students from Queens University and has a hemispherical mirror mounted inside of an acrylic sphere on to which the projector displays its image. Watch the video after the jump to see “Project Snowglobe” in action.

The imaged viewed within the globe is not actually in 3D but is moved as the viewer moves around the globe and is tracked by the two Kinect devices.

Planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence

2011-05-30T18:23:00.001-07:00

Planned obsolescence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence^[1] in industrial design is a policy of deliberately planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete or nonfunctional after a certain period.^[1] Planned obsolescence has potential benefits for a producer because to obtain continuing use of the product the consumer is under pressure to purchase again, whether from the same manufacturer (a replacement part or a newer model), or from a competitor which might also rely on planned obsolescence.^[1]

For an industry, planned obsolescence stimulates demand by encouraging purchasers to buy sooner if they still want a functioning product. Built-in obsolescence is used in many different products. There is, however, the potential backlash of consumers who learn that the manufacturer invested money to make the product obsolete faster; such consumers might turn to a producer (if any exists) that offers a more durable alternative.^{[citation needed]}

Planned obsolescence was first developed in the 1920s and 1930s when mass production had opened every minute aspect of the production process to exacting analysis.^{[citation needed]}

Estimates of planned obsolescence can influence a company's decisions about product engineering. Therefore the company can use the least expensive components that satisfy product lifetime projections. Such decisions are part of a broader discipline known as value engineering.

Planned obsolescence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1932 with Bernard London's pamphlet Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence.^[

Brooks Stevens

2011-05-30T18:17:00.001-07:00

Brooks Stevens - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Planned obsolescence

Though he is often cited^{[citation needed]} with inventing the concept of planned obsolescence (the practice of artificially shortening product lifecycle in order to influence the buying patterns of consumers in favor of manufacturers), he did not invent it but rather coined the term and defined it. Stevens defined it as "instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary". His view was to always make the consumer want something new, rather than create poor products that would need replacing.^[4] There is some debate over his role in this controversial business practice.^[5]

head tracking camera and rotating projector

2011-05-30T18:09:00.001-07:00

A gaming experience that only requires you to use your head

Ze Banaff | May 4 2011

DIY 3d scanner

2011-05-22T22:28:00.001-07:00

DAVID 3D Scanner

How does scanning with DAVID work?

1. Set up background and camera

2. Calibrate your camera with one click

3. Start scanning by sweeping the laser line over the object

4. Gaze at the 3D window and export your result to .OBJ

5. Optional: Automatically stitch several scans/meshes

with DAVID-Shapefusion and export .OBJ, .STL, or .PLY

Moject - Mobile Motion Projection

2011-05-22T02:44:00.000-07:00

Moject | What is Moject?

What is Moject?

Moject stands for “Mobile Motion Projection”, a patented technology and system developed by Dave&Adie that enables devices to interact with projected content.

When can I use Moject?

Dave&Adie are making the technology available through licensing to interested parties like device manufacturers and software companies so they can Moject ‘enable’ their products. If your company would like to know how you can integrate Moject interactivity into your products then get in touch and we’ll arrange a Discovery meeting.

If you are a hardware hacker or modest gadget tinkerer you might want to try our free guide to building a simple Moject (for non-commercial use). Check back on our blog or follow us on twitter to be the first to hear when our guide is published.

What devices can be Moject enabled?

Almost any device can benefit from integrating Moject technology but primarily products such as,

Handheld Consoles
Games Consoles
PC Desktop & laptops
Mobile Phones
Portable Media Players

Automatic Projector Calibration - Johnny Lee

2011-05-22T02:43:00.001-07:00

Johnny Chung Lee - Projects - Thesis

Automatic Projector Calibration

The fundamental concept of my thesis is to: 1) Embed optical sensors into the projection surface. 2) Project a series of Gray-coded binary patterns. 3) Decode the location of the sensors for use in a projected application. This video demonstrates this idea in the form of a target screen fitting application. It goes on to demonstrate how this approach can be used in multi-projector applications such as stitching (creating a large display using tiled projection) or layering (multiple versions of content on the same area for view dependent displays). Additionally, it can be used to automatically register the orientation of 3D surfaces for augmenting the appearance of physical objects.

This technique is also useful for performing automatic touch calibration of interactive whiteboards or touch-tables.

Lee, J., Dietz, P., Aminzade, D., and Hudson, S. "Automatic Projector Calibration using Embedded Light Sensors", Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, October 2004. [pdf][mov][ppt]

Beagle Board finds its new purpose in DIY wearable computer

2011-05-22T02:37:00.001-07:00

Beagle Board finds its new purpose in DIY wearable computer | Blog | ZiggyTek

Martin Magnusson a researcher and an entrepreneur has created his own wearable computer by using a Beagle Board, a pair of Myvu Crystal video glasses, a bluetooth keyboard and an iPhone. A DIY wearable computer is like something from a sci-fi movie!This small but terrific gadget runs Angstrom Linux and it relies on a bluetooth keyboard for input and a tethered iPhone for its Internet connectivity.

Wouldn’t it be great if they would release this gadget on the market?

Office Pod

2011-05-22T02:31:00.000-07:00

After realising that the house im living in for the next 6 months didnt have any interior space for me to fit my desk i desided to make this little space to ensure i can work digitally at home when i need to.

BeagleBoard will let hobbyists and open source hardware enthusiasts go where the Arduino won’t

2011-05-22T02:28:00.001-07:00

BeagleBoard Gives New Power to Open Source Gadgets | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

BeagleBoard Gives New Power to Open Source Gadget

Open source hardware hobbyists now have a chipset to play with that’s comparable to the powerful processors found in smartphones such as the Nexus One or HTC Incredible.

Texas Instruments has released a new version of its low-power, single-board computer called BeagleBoard-xM. It’s based on the same 1-GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor that drives the most sophisticated smartphones today. That gives it far more processing power than the leading open-source microcontroller platform, Arduino, which many hobbyists currently use to create robots, sensors, toys and other DIY devices.

The BeagleBoard-xM has multimedia features similar to the processor seen in the Palm Pre and Motorola Droid, and includes on-board ethernet, five USB 2.0 ports and 512 MB of memory.

“It’s a fully loaded, open platform that allows users to run multiple applications and embed them in devices,” says Jason Kridner, ARM software architecture manager and BeagleBoard community manager. “We wanted to offer something that’s cheap, ups the performance level and has sufficient memory.”

The first BeagleBoard debuted in 2008, targeting hardware hobbyists who wanted a powerful chipset to build home-brewed gadgets. But, so far, it has been eclipsed by the simpler open source microcontroller Arduino. Arduino has become a big hit among DIYers powering an eclectic variety of projects including electronic textiles, a fire-breathing dragon and many robots.

BeagleBoard isn’t as popular, even though it packs in more technical firepower. Some hobbyists say that could change as open source hardware hackers get more ambitious and move beyond what a simple microcontroller can do.

The 3-inch–square BeagleBoard-xM runs a full Linux operating system with desktop managers and office applications. It also includes a 2-D and 3-D graphics accelerator, a port to add a computer monitor and an S-video port for TV.

BeagleBoard will let hobbyists and open source hardware enthusiasts go where the Arduino won’t, says Justin Huynh, a open source hardware hacker.

“A lot of people complain that Arduino is not powerful enough and if you want something that’s more technical and intensive it is just not good enough,” he says. “So BeagleBoard can be a very interesting alternative.”

And at $180, the BeagleBoard-xM is inexpensive enough to be a technical toy for DIYers, says Hyunh.

“What we have seen happen in the Arduino community is now happening with the BeagleBoard,” he says.

Here are four cool ideas that use the BeagleBoard:

BeagleBoard Videowall

There are at least two ways to create a large display: Buy a giant TV screen from Best Buy, or MacGyver a solution using multiple PC monitors.

The BeagleBoard Videowall tries the latter. It has six 19-inch LCD monitors networked together over USB to run high definition full-screen video.

“I enjoy the challenge of making the most out of limited resources, and the BeagleBoard is a perfect platform for doing just that,” says Måns Rullgård, an embedded software consultant based in England. “It has the power to do really cool things if you get it right, while remaining small both in physical size and power consumption.”

Rullgård and his project partners wanted to create “something spectacular” using the BeagleBoard and FFmpeg, open source multimedia libraries and programs.

The resulting Videowall project uses six BeagleBoards, where each board plays a special file containing only the corresponding segment of the video. The files were created ahead of time on a PC. To synchronize the playback across the BeagleBoards, they are interconnected with a USB-based network.

The video wall made its public debut in February in Brussels and it will be shown this week at the LinuxTag conference in Berlin.

Photo: Måns Rullgård

Beagle Boards - DIY Micro Computers

2011-05-22T02:25:00.001-07:00

Beagle Embedded Starter Kit

UPDATE: I’ve also included an option to have BeagleBoards with the BeagleTouch headers pre-soldered on.

Thanks! – Justin

The Beagle Embedded Starter Kit is designed for embedded developers working on mobile applications that require tablet-style functionality.

The kit contains everything needed to bring up Linux on a portable touchscreen device. With a 4.3” OLED touchscreen that mounts directly on the BeagleBoard, the BeagleTouch reduces the need for several peripherals and a mess of wires. Serial communication to the BeagleBoard is brought out to a Type B-mini USB port, and the entire setup can be powered and charged through theBeagleJuice battery module, which includes an on/off switch as well.

Everything is modular and snaps on or mounts directly to the BeagleBoard C4, resulting in a compact handheld device that can serve as a tablet computer or control panel. The kit comes with a 4 GB pre-formatted SD card to boot Angstrom Linux.

The Embedded Starter Kit makes interfacing with BeagleBoard hardware simple and modular, allowing embedded software developers to spend more time prototyping custom applications and less time navigating complex hardware.

Applications

handheld mobile device
kiosk interface
portable control panel

Components

BeagleBoard Rev C4
BeagleTouch touchscreen display module
BeagleJuice battery module
4 GB pre-formatted Angstrom Linux boot SD card

Resources

Beagleboard.org – BeagleBoard support site
eLinux.org wiki – Embedded Linux Wiki
antipastohw wiki – BeagleBoard wiki resources
Build your own boot SD card: instructions, kernel, and rootfs

PicoP® Display Engine is an ultra-miniature laser projection module capable of producing full color, high-resolution images that are always in focus

2011-05-22T02:15:00.001-07:00

Pico Projector Displays: PicoP Display Engine Development Tools

The Microvision PicoP® Display Engine (PDE)

The PicoP® Display Engine is an ultra-miniature laser projection module capable of producing full color, high-resolution images that are always in focus (video: see how it works). Small enough to be embedded directly into a variety of electronics products, the PicoP® Display Engine is ideal for your next generation display application.

360deg. Augmented reality gaming device

2011-05-22T02:06:00.001-07:00

Laser projector stuck to iPhone for 360 degree gaming | Joystiq

Laser projector stuck to iPhone for 360 degree gaming

by Griffin McElroy on May 9th 2010 3:30PM

Are you ready to watch some videos of the most unnecessary iPhone modification in the device's recorded history? Check out the two clips posted past the jump to see YouTube user SoundKite's Frankenstein-esque tech mash-up, in which he adheres a Microvision ShowWX laser projector to an iPhone 3GS. While playing a game which uses the iPhone's compass (such as Sky Siege), the projector gives the illusion of 360-degree immersion.

It looks awfully neat, though we're not sure how many practical applications it actually has. Though it would be pretty great to hijack a movie theater, and force its patrons to witness our sick Tilt to Live skills.

GPS - virtual layer onto the physical

2011-05-22T02:05:00.001-07:00

ExerGame Lab

Breath of Fresh Asthmapolis: GPS Inhalers

Dr. Sickle's previous work involved studying asthma and chronic respiratory disease in India but in developing Asthmaoplis he and his team are seeking to better track the environmental factors and triggers to asthma attacks. His goal is to map where and when environmental exposures trigger asthma symptoms by using inhalers that have a built-in GPS device that signals the central server whenever the puffer is used. Of course they will also have access to other sets of data including pollutants, pollen, wind direction which will enable them to better track factors impacting lung disease and overall air quality.

[Via Geekosystem - Better Lives for Asthma Sufferers With GPS Inhalers]

University of Toronto - Multiple Virtual Information Spaces - Flashlight on virtual layer in physical space

2011-05-22T01:52:00.000-07:00

YouTube - Handheld Projector Demo

Imagine having a projector inside your cell phone or PDA, what can you do with it? Researchers from University of Toronto made a demo.

http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~caox/

micro projector - augmented reality - PicoP® Display Engine at Heart of Game Demo

2011-05-22T01:33:00.001-07:00

360-degree "virtual reality" display,

2011-05-22T01:31:00.001-07:00

Laser projector stuck to Wii Remote for faux 360-degree immersion | Joystiq

Laser projector stuck to Wii Remote for faux 360-degree immersion

by Griffin McElroy on May 12th 2010 3:00AM

We can already see a hot new trend surfacing in the gaming hardware modding world: Hastily conceived designs featuring the handheld ShowWX laser projector. Yesterday, we saw what happens when the pint-sized display was adhered to an iPhone 3GS; today, we see how Nirav Patel managed to stick the projector (and a Spacepoint Fusion gyrometer) to a Zapper-equipped Wii Remote. The result is a somewhat disorienting 360-degree "virtual reality" display, which is just perfect for playing simple, open source first-person shooters with.

Picture = Moment + Equipment

2011-05-22T01:28:00.001-07:00

iphone « I'm Not Actually a Geek

As for the “quantity of meaningful visual data” being reduced, I think of it mathematically:

The X/Y variable represents the decrease in data per picture. If Y is the “full” data from a high resolution photo, then X is the reduced data set. The loss of scene details, the inability to discern people’s expressions, etc. Yeah, that is a loss due to low quality cameras.

The B/A variable represents the increased number of pictures enabled by the proliferation of convenient low quality cameras. If A is the quantity of photos with high resolution cameras, B is the overall number of photos inclusive of the low quality cameras.

Multiply the ratios, and I believe the overall historical record has been improved by the advent of phone cameras. In other words, “> 1″.

Sharing Is Caring

Something the higher quality, standalone cameras have lacked is connectivity. They miss that aspect we have to share something in the moment. The fact that I can share a picture just as soon as a I take it is extra incentive to take the picture in the first place.

diagrams to show interaction loops

2011-05-22T01:26:00.001-07:00

Phone Microprojector - Three-color lasers to display images. With lasers, the image is always in focus, regardless of distance from the display surface.

2011-05-22T01:24:00.001-07:00

iphone « I'm Not Actually a Geek

Phone Microprojector

This was really cool. It’s a device that lets you broadcast video and images on any surface. You insert your iPhone into the microprojector and point it where you want to display. It uses three-color lasers to display images. With lasers, the image is always in focus, regardless of distance from the display surface.

The inventor stressed the medical uses of it. He showed how a brain scan would look. Doctors can view results on-the-fly, on any surface. This gives them the ability to react much more quickly to medical conditions.

But another guy watching this and I both had the same thought: this would be great for business. Sales presentations held on your iPhone. It also seems like something that work at trade shows.

And how about watching videos through your iPhone? Not on the small iPhone screen, but broadcast on a nearby wall or a screen in the back of a car seat? That would be pretty slick.

Making digital content graspable

2011-05-22T01:20:00.001-07:00

iphone « I'm Not Actually a Geek

TEDEx Talk: Phones That Touch Us

PhD student Fabian Hemmert presented at a recent TEDx talk. He is working on a concept where phones include physical movements that better connote actions to people using them. In the video below, you’ll see him describe how the phone would shift weight in relation to changes in movement on a map.

As Hemmert notes, humans live in a physical world, one “which tastes good, feels good smells good”. He wants to design products that better integrate that experience.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

digital worlds - virtual worlds

making digital content more graspable - tactile

-shape

-weight

-lifelike/dynamic

in the future -

not humans more technological

but

technology more human

huge projected display wii hack

2011-05-22T01:06:00.001-07:00

wii - Hack a Day

Having experienced quite a bit of trouble getting the Nintendo Wii remotes to work reliably with his home theater projector, [Sprite_TM] designed his own sensor bar replacement. If you’re not familiar, the Wii remotes have an infrared camera in the tip that sense two IR LEDs in the sensor bar that resides above or below your television. The problem is that if you’re too far away, the points of light are not where the remote expects them to be and the cursor will not perform as expected. Since this is a huge projected display it’s no surprise that the player is further away from the screen than the system was designed for.

[Sprite_TM's] solution was to build a projection system for the two IR points. The unit in the picture above is a driver circuit with two IR emitters mounted on a heat sink, each with its own reflector. The reflected beams are shined through a Fresnel lens and projected on the same wall as the TV image. The viewer will not be able to see this light as it’s in a longer wavelength than the visible spectrum. But the Wii remote performs beautifully now and the replacement sensor bar is happily mounted out of sight above the projector.

Flâneur - the drifter

2011-05-22T00:17:00.001-07:00

Flâneur - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term flâneur (English pronunciation: /flä-ˈnər/) comes from the French masculine noun flâneur—which has the basic meanings of "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", "loafer"—which itself comes from the French verb flâner, which means "to stroll". Charles Baudelaire developed a derived meaning of flâneur—that of "a person who walks the city in order to experience it". Because of the term's usage and theorization by Baudelaire and numerous thinkers in economic, cultural, literary and historical fields, the idea of the flâneur has accumulated significant meaning as a referent for understanding urban phenomena and modernity. In French Canada flâner is rarely used to describe strolling and often has a negative connotation as the term's most common usage refers to loitering.

Flâneur is not limited to someone committing the physical act of peripatetic stroll in the Baudelairian sense, but can also include a "complete philosophical way of living and thinking", and a process of navigating erudition as described by Nassim Nicholas Taleb's essay on "why I walk" in the second edition of The Black Swan (2010)^[1]

Flâneur - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"filter bubbles" & information diets

2011-05-21T20:31:00.000-07:00

Eli Pariser: Beware online "filter bubbles

information diets

personalised search results - but is it getting it right - is it a balanced result - what it thinks we need not what we need?

passing of the gatekeepers from human to algorithms - ethical considerations lost?

Karim Nader

2011-05-20T21:33:00.000-07:00

Karim Nader, 40
Neuroscientist
McGill University

Nader's big breakthrough came in 1999, when he first revived and tested the obscure theory that memories, once formed, do not necessarily remain stable. Instead, he posited, they could be unfixed and "reconsolidated"

Nature.com Video > Erasing fear memories - the reconsolidation window

2011-05-20T01:58:00.000-07:00

http://www.nature.com/nature/videoarchive/memory/index.html

competitive memories fighting for expression

exingtion training

merging meory - stored in a different form

target specific fear memory - rather than your ability to recolect information

>> memory - different elements / sub-files - this collage of connections creates our experience of a memory

dont want to erase your recollection of the event - just change your emotional response - still remember the content - maintian continuity in your life

disrupting emotional response removed - still remember - just not special/ vibrant any more.

Here we introduce a non-invasive technique to target the reconsolidation of fear memories in humans. We provide evidence that old fear memories can be updated with non-fearful information provided during the reconsolidation window

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7277/full/nature08637.html

memory, more like a shifting collage , memory might be constantly revamped

2011-05-20T01:31:00.000-07:00

recollections frequently surfaced with the help of recovered-memory therapy techniques like hypnosis and guided imagery, in which patients are encouraged to visualize terrible experiences.

Cognitive scientists suspected that some of these memories were bogus, the unwitting product of suggestion by the therapist.

::: memory tools altering our memories - bias of what is thought more vital in the recollection of the memory - e.g. visual data over other sensorial data included in the memory file? :::

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jul-aug/03-how-much-of-your-memory-is-true/article_view?searchterm=memory&b_start:int=1

Spurred on by the controversy over recovered memory, other cognitive scientists found that false memory is a normal phenomenon

Even harrowing memories—the so-called flashbulb memories that feel as if they have been permanently seared into the brain—are not as accurate as we think. Less than a year after a cargo plane crashed into an Amsterdam apartment building in 1992, 55 percent of the Dutch population said they had watched the plane hit the building on TV. Many of them recalled specifics of the crash, such as the angle of descent, and could report whether or not the plane was on fire before it hit. But the event had not been caught on video. The “memory” shared by the majority was a hallucination, a convincing fiction pieced together out of descriptions and pictures of the event.

memory is more like a shifting collage, a narrative spun out of scraps and constructed anew whenever recollection takes place.

Nader tweaked a standard method used in fear research, in which rats are trained to associate a tone with an electric shock to the foot. The animals quickly learn that the sound is bad news. If they hear it weeks later, they freeze in fear. It is an easy way for the experimenter to know that they remember what took place. Nader trained some rats, then played the tone again 14 days later, prompting them to remember. He also simultaneously injected them with a protein-synthesis inhibitor, which prevents new memory from forming by prohibiting alteration at the synapses. According to the standard model of memory, the chemical should have no effect since the memory of the tone has already consolidated. In reality, the treated rats’memory disappeared. When Nader sounded the tone again later, the animals did not freeze. LeDoux was won over by this simple but powerful demonstration, he showed that reactivating a memory destabilizes it, putting it back into a flexible, vulnerable state.

>>>>> Memory constantly rewritten/reconstructed - Re-consolidation

teasing out the reconsolidation process molecule by molecule. Nader’s group found that the NMDA glutamate receptor—which solidifies memory—also is involved in destabilizing it. A group led by Sue-Hyun Lee at Seoul National University demonstrated that proteins must be actively dismantled to destabilize a memory, more evidence that the old memory is actually changed as it is recalled.

“I felt more detached from it,” she says. “I felt that I was relating a narrative rather than describing something right in front of me right now.” After the study was over, the flashbacks returned, though with less intensity. For her, the only real cure was time.Six-session treatments with a total of 12 doses of propranolol have shown better results. Collaborating with Harvard psychiatrist Roger Pitman, who was the first to try propranolol for post-traumatic stress, the McGill group has treated about 45 PTSD patients, ranging from soldiers to rape victims. Most had been suffering for years. But after the longer treatment, their symptoms declined by half and stayed that way even six months afterward. They still remember what happened, but it is less disturbing. “They say: ‘I’m not thinking about it as much. It just doesn’t bother me as much anymore,’?” Brunet says. As a group, they are considered to be in remission. The researchers must still prove that the improvement will last. If it does, it could offer rare hope to millions of people with PTSD, a disorder from which only a third completely recover.

>>> tools for constructing memory>>> emphasisng certain perts of the memory?>>>

Anxiety, acquired phobias, and addiction are increasingly described as disorders of emotional memory,

overly powerful fear memory, for example, can crystallize into a phobia, in which a relatively safe experience like flying in a plane is inextricably linked to a feeling of extreme danger, No matter how the phobic person tries, his emotional memory refuses to update itself to incorporate reassuring information. A treatment that restores his emotional memory to a flexible state

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jul-aug/03-how-much-of-your-memory-is-true/article_view?searchterm=memory&b_start:int=2

Addiction is another kind of pathological remembering, but in this case the memory is pleasurable.

drugs of abuse enlist the amygdala and the brain’s reward centers to forge unforgettable memories of pleasure. Anything connected to the bliss reawakens the memory, in the form of craving.you are suffering from reminiscence, from an emotional memory

memory might be constantly revamped

As you replay these memories, you reawaken and reconsolidate them hundreds of times. Each time, you replace the original with a slightly modified version. Eventually you are not really remembering what happened; you are remembering your story about it.

your memory is only as good as your last memory. The fewer times you use it, the more pristine it is.

We’ve all had the experience of repeating a dramatic story so many times that the events seem dead, as if they came from a novel rather than real life. This might be reconsolidation at work.

the flexibility of memory might be functional—an advantage rather than a bug in the brain. Reconsolidation might be how we update our store of knowledge, by making old memories malleable in response to new information. “When you encounter a familiar experience, you are remembering the original memory at the same time, and ?the new experience somehow gets blended in.

From the perspective of survival, constructive memory is an asset. It allows you to pull together scraps of information to simulate the future on the fly.

Facing something new, we want to link the novel information with memories to better interpret the situation. If the side effect is a few mistakes

memory and imagination are two sides of the same coin. Like memory, imagination allows you to put yourself in a time and place other than the one we actually occupy.

remembering and imagining mobilize many of the same brain circuits. “When people are instructed to imagine events that might happen in their personal future and then to remember actual events in the past, we find extensive and very striking overlap in areas of brain activation,” he says. Other researchers have found that people with severe amnesia lose their ability to imagine. Without memory, they can barely picture the future at all.

When calcium floods a neuron as a memory is formed, it turns on an enzyme called CaMKII (calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase). Among many other things, the enzyme responds to signals from NMDA receptors, leading to more receptor activity and stronger signaling throughout the network of cells.

You would think, therefore, that the more CaMKII, the more robust a memory would be. But in experiments with mice, Tsien has found there is a limit. If he drives CaMKII above the normal limit while the animal is actively remembering an experience, the memory simply vaporizes, as the connections between the cells suddenly weaken. The effect happens within minutes, and it is permanent and selective, affecting the recalled memory while leaving the others unchanged.“It erases the memory being recalled. It is feasible that by manipulating specific molecules, we can selectively alter memories in the brain.”

protein kinase M-zeta (PKMzeta), which is involved in memory maintenance,“You inhibit the PKMzeta and those glutamate receptors float away very, very fast,” he says. “As a result, the memory is lost—very, very fast.” The implications are staggering. If stored memories were inscribed in the brain, it is hard to imagine how flipping one chemical switch could erase them so quickly. “It really is a paradigm shift in how people think about long-term memories,” Sacktor says. In the old view, erasure should cause permanent brain damage as the synapses are ripped apart. Instead, Sacktor’s rats’ brains remain intact. Once the ZIP treatment wears off, the animals behave and even learn normally again. “It’s like wiping a hard disk

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jul-aug/03-how-much-of-your-memory-is-true/article_view?searchterm=memory&b_start:int=3

Nader and Brunet’s studies suggest much more benevolent possibilities. If he had received reconsolidation therapy, Carrey’s character would not have forgotten Winslet’s. He simply wouldn’t care that much about her anymore. He would be able to look at his failed relationship as if through the wrong end of a telescope. What is on the other side is still visible, but it is tiny and far away.

>>> army veterans - easing memory from war - (PTSD study with a new, $6.7 million grant from the U.S. Army,)

LeDoux’s lab has figured out a way to trigger reconsolidation without drugs to weaken memory, simply by carefully timing the sessions of remembering. “The protocol is ridiculously simple,” LeDoux says.

>>> Tools to help people with dementia and other memory loss problems retain important memories. digital applications that ultalise physical sensorial data to reate memory stimulating experience?

Does the very act of remembering undo what happened?

2011-05-20T00:04:00.001-07:00

For a hundred years, people thought memory was wired into the brain,” Nader says. “Instead, we find it can be rewired—you can add false information to it, make it stronger, make it weaker, and possibly even make it disappear.

Neuroscientists believe that memory forms when neurons in these key brain structures are simultaneously activated by glutamate and an electrical pulse, a result of everyday sensory experience.
The experience triggers a biochemical riot, causing a specialized glutamate receptor, called NMDA, to spring open and allow calcium ions to flood the cells. The ions stimulate dozens of enzymes that reshape the cells by opening up additional receptors and by prompting the formation of more synapses and new protrusions that contain still more receptors and synapses. In aggregate, these changes make neurons more sensitive to each other and put the anatomical scaffold of a memory in place.

Enacting all these changes takes time, and for up to a few hours
the memory is like wet concrete—solidifying but not quite set, still open to interference.

Once the process is over, though, the memory is said to be “consolidated.” neuroscientists talk of memory the way geoscientists describe mountains—built through a dynamic process, but once established almost impossible to reshape quickly except by extraordinary means

>>>>>>
What actually happens when we recall the past? Does the very act of remembering undo what happened? Does a memory have to go through the consolidation process again?

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jul-aug/03-how-much-of-your-memory-is-true/?searchterm=memory

actively able to reshape her memory of the event

2011-05-19T23:38:00.001-07:00

She took a low dose of a common blood-pressure drug, propranolol, that reduces activity in the amygdala, a part of the brain that processes emotions. Then she listened to a taped re-creation of her car accident. She had relived that day in her mind a thousand times. The difference this time was that the drug broke the link between her factual memory and her emotional memory. Propranolol blocks the action of adrenaline, so it prevented her from tensing up and getting anxious. By having Magil think about the accident while the drug was in her body, Brunet hoped to permanently change how she remembered the crash. It worked. She did not forget the accident but was actively able to reshape her memory of the event, stripping away the terror while leaving the facts behind.

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jul-aug/03-how-much-of-your-memory-is-true/past.jpg

Automatic Projector Calibration

2010-05-16T01:42:00.001-07:00

Johnny Chung Lee - Projects - Thesis

Automatic Projector Calibration

The fundamental concept of my thesis is to: 1) Embed optical sensors into the projection surface. 2) Project a series of Gray-coded binary patterns. 3) Decode the location of the sensors for use in a projected application. This video demonstrates this idea in the form of a target screen fitting application. It goes on to demonstrate how this approach can be used in multi-projector applications such as stitching (creating a large display using tiled projection) or layering (multiple versions of content on the same area for view dependent displays). Additionally, it can be used to automatically register the orientation of 3D surfaces for augmenting the appearance of physical objects.

This technique is also useful for performing automatic touch calibration of interactive whiteboards or touch-tables.

Lee, J., Dietz, P., Aminzade, D., and Hudson, S. "Automatic Projector Calibration using Embedded Light Sensors", Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, October 2004. [pdf][mov][ppt]

Quick Reckoner Submission

2010-05-06T00:46:00.000-07:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More hong kong

Tressured objects box

2010-05-05T01:11:00.001-07:00

Google Image Result for http://pepperedthought.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/amelie-and-the-box.jpg

Your Very Own Treasure Box
Jump to Comments

Remember the scene in Amelie when she finds a little tin treasure box that had been hidden behind the tiles of her powder room?

amelie and the box

“…Only excavators of Tutankhamen’s tomb could have known what she felt like, uncovering this.”

Or Addie Loggins’ (Tatum O’Neal) keepsake box with the false bottom in Paper Moon?

addies treasure boxaddies treasures inside the box

These were the only things she held on to from her old life with her mother, before her whole life was turned around by a con artist with a heart of gold.

Having to leave a place without all your belongings is traumatic to anyone, yet she took the things that mattered most to her, and they served her well: a picture of her mother, some of her mothers old perfume and jewelry, cigarettes – all little memories that will comfort her and make sure she never loses that part of her.

Whenever I see things like this, such as a character that only has one suitcase of their belongings, it intrigues me. We have been trained in this capitalist society to buy more stuff buy bigger houses to fit more stuff. When does it end? If there was a fire in your gigantic house, would you be running into your bathroom to grab the soaps carved into roses? No, you’d be grabbing a quilt your grandmother made you and your dog (or children, if the case called for it). It’s these things that are most important to us, so why do we need all the other things? Why do we keep unimportant stuff around?

I have started reading Rowdy Kittens, and became very interested in the subject of downsizing. This couple is downsizing their life because they want to be able to move into a tiny house soon. But they have nothing but good things to say about living with less. Why don’t more of us do that? :)

I have been inspired to start purging my life as well; the Beau and I are going to have a garage sale to get rid of a lot of stuff, and once the dust settles from that, the real purging can begin.

What would you put in your trinket box?

Interview with Rohan Whiteley - Survey Submission

2010-05-04T05:32:00.000-07:00

Key Aspects Submission

2010-05-04T05:26:00.001-07:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More hong kong

touchpoints - memory and identity

2010-05-03T07:44:00.001-07:00

spacial and object based memory triggers

hong kong bamboo scaffolding

2010-04-26T18:18:00.001-07:00

hong kong bamboo scaffolding

Kingsley Ng - Hong Kong Young Design Talent Awards 2009

2010-04-26T18:05:00.001-07:00

Hong Kong Young Design Talent Awards 2009

DesignSmart Young Design Talent Award

Kingsley Ng

A diversified background in the arts has served as the foundations to Kingsley Ng’s progressive leap forward in design. Ng is a fine arts graduate of Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto. His educational experience comprises applied studies in new media, architecture and the contemporary arts. Thoroughly multidisciplinary, Ng has practised professionally using interactive sound and graphics, interior, branding graphic and packaging design. In recent years, through his enlistment into Jack Morton Worldwide, Ng has honed his many skills to focus on the pioneering development of experiential design.

Space imbued with ambience created by light, sound, colour, texture, wind, water – well anything really – defines the work. As abstract as this may seem, experiential design can essentially be defined as the act of designing narratives within any given 3-dimensional space. With Jack Morton Worldwide, Ng has been able to invent messages within space for a number of clients across the globe. Refreshing approaches include creating an interactive lightshow that is electronically triggered by candle-lit paper boats drifting above a pool of water. Designed within the Fabrica Research Centre, the experiential design, which included a play of ambient sound, functioned as homage to Tadao Ando. Other notable works by Ng in the yet-to-be established field include a Musical Wheel in Hong Kong and a Musical Loom in France. The Musical Wheel is a large, six metre rotational wheel. While seated inside, participants rotate slowly in tandem with the wheel, which creates ambient sounds from all sides.

Ng admits that experiential design is still a largely unknown entity, and asserts the need for further development. To this end, he hopes to further himself with applied research and eventual practise of the discipline.

Ma Ke Wuyong

2010-04-26T16:39:00.001-07:00

Ma Ke Wuyong - Victoria and Albert Museum

Ma Ke is one of the most prolific fashion designers working in China today, she graduated from the Suzhou Institute of Silk Textile Technology in 1992 and four years later set up her own label Exception de Mixmind.

Ma Ke's interest in the crossover between contemporary art and fashion led her to establish the artistic brand Wuyong (Useless) in 2006. Wuyong is an examination of the concept of 'uselessness' and how this interpretation varies when seen from different points of view. In February 2007, Wuyong was presented at Paris Fashion Week for the first time and the innovative concept attracted much attention within both art and fashion circles.

Taking discarded items such as an old paint covered sheet Ma Ke transforms it into a dress, the cracked paint creating a beautiful pattern on the garment, and an old tarpaulin is constructed into a coat of magnificent volume. For Ma Ke this focus on personal interpretation and transformation is a way of highlighting the importance of the individual and the inestimable value of life.

Innovation Tower” will serve as a driving force in the development of Hong Kong as a design hub in Asia

2010-04-26T07:19:00.001-07:00

Innovation Tower Hong Kong, Architect, Building, Photo

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has appointed world-renowned architect Zaha Hadid as Chief Architect of its new “Innovation Tower”.

Zaha Hadid has made a trip from London to Hong Kong to present her design concepts at a press conference hosted by Mr Victor Lo Chung-wing, Chairman of PolyU Council; and Mr Alexander Tzang, Deputy President of PolyU.

Addressing the press conference, Mr Victor Lo said PolyU’s new “Innovation Tower” will serve as a driving force in the development of Hong Kong as a design hub in Asia. The new Tower will also provide additional space to facilitate inter-disciplinary research and education in the field of design.

ART HK

2010-04-26T07:12:00.001-07:00

ARTHK10 | Welcome link to ArtHK10 home

ART HK 10

ART HK is the leading showcase for international Modern & Contemporary Art in Asia with over 150 galleries participating from 29 different countries. ART HK reflects Hong Kong’s ‘Gateway’ status in presenting a unique opportunity for collectors to see and buy work of a quality and geographical diversity not available anywhere else in the world.

Stitching Together, by Åsa Ståhl and Kristina Lindstöm

2010-04-12T19:49:00.001-07:00

Google Image Result for http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/wow/0agreenrevolution.jpg

Åsa Ståhl and Kristina Lindstöm, Stitching Together. Photo by Otto Von Busch at the Malmö Festival 2009

Stitching Together, by Åsa Ståhl and Kristina Lindstöm, is a "hacked" digital sewing machine. People forward the machine one of their personal SMS and it dutifully embroiders it.

Meat book - interactive flesh

2010-04-12T19:48:00.001-07:00

Meatbook

The Meatbook, an interactive art installation, explores the use of a novel tangible interace to provoke a visceral response in the viewer. The Meatbook presentes the symbiosis of the mechanical and the organic as it simultaneously juxtaposes the conflicting materiality of these media. Sensors, motors and other mechanics are used to animate the meat, generating movements specifically designed to produce visceral, even cathartic responses from the user. By simultaneously generating revulsion and fascionation, the user undergoes an embodied experience in which the alien and the familiar come together in the form of a book.

Google Image Result for http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/wow/0agreenrevolution.jpg

Åsa Ståhl and Kristina Lindstöm, Stitching Together. Photo by Otto Von Busch at the Malmö Festival 2009

Stitching Together, by Åsa Ståhl and Kristina Lindstöm, is a "hacked" digital sewing machine. People forward the machine one of their personal SMS and it dutifully embroiders it.

Visualizing the Issues behind Food Dependence: How to Feed the World?

2010-03-30T15:28:00.001-07:00

Visualizing the Issues behind Food Dependence: How to Feed the World? - information aesthetics

If you appreciated the depth and level of detail of the now classic infographically animated The Credit of Crisis - Visualized, you will probably also like the following! "How to Feed the World?" [dvanw.com] explains in more than 8 minutes the intrinsic issues involved with international food dependence and the existing regional differences of food intake, in both quantity as quality.

For instance, in Europe, people have access to a varied, large diet, while the available (affordable?) food in Africa does not cover the normal human needs, causing African people to die about 20 years younger on average. What are the reasons for this injustice? You can watch the answer in the movie below.

The movie even discusses the feasibility of some potential solutions, such as increasing the cultivated land area, increasing the yield of a given agricultural area, increasing the use of organic products, introducing innovative watering techniques, and so on, and finishes with a concrete recommendation of where you have the ability to make a difference.

http://vimeo.com/dvanw/videos

The Discreet Window: Publicly Showing Work Activity to the Outside

2010-03-30T15:07:00.001-07:00

The Discreet Window: Publicly Showing Work Activity to the Outside - information aesthetics

The Discreet Window [ishback.com] is a window blind that provides visual feedback for a home-office environment about a user's work activity. As an ambient display, The Discreet Window acts as a membrane that communicates the work intensity to both the home-office space and the outside. The more the user works, the less light is coming inside the room. Thus, the less visual contact there is between both sides of the window.

In practice, this means that when the shade is all the way open, one has not been working, and vice versa. The graphing function then shows the historical data. Most of the current tools of self-monitoring provide intrusive alerts, bringing the risk of disturbing the optimal work pattern of the individual. Instead, the same information has more attractiveness and influence to the user when presented to him on demand as a summary over time.

Designworks

2010-03-29T17:00:00.001-07:00

design capabilities. people. resources. philosophy. history > designworks

designworks is a global team of product development experts. Our knowledge and skill, combined with cutting edge research and technology allows us to design the future for our clients. We understand and work with clients across the consumer, medical, sport, ICT, toy, and transport sectors.

design capabilities. people. resources. philosophy. history > designworks

designworks was established in the UK in 1991 by Jeremy Gardner and Peter Rickett. Today designworks meets and exceeds the challenges of a diverse and prestigious clients list.

designworks > Brisbane Australia + Windsor UK + Hong Kong > contact details

hong kong.

unit 312a

new east ocean centre

9 science museum road

tsim sha tsui east

kowloon

hong kong

t +852 3188 2287

f +852 3579 3030

+brisbane and windsor UK offices

DAKA - industrial design

2010-03-29T01:09:00.001-07:00

DAKA – ABOUT US

Established in 1993, Daka’s passion for innovation has led to over a decade of sustained growth. We create unique products with ability to identify niche markets where we apply our product development expertise. We have also built a strong portfolio of Intellectual Property Rights to protect the innovative technologies and designs of the products that we have developed.

Fueled by the dedication of our team, we now stand as a company that won multiple international awards, and with ISO9001:2000 accreditation that upholds the highest standards of quality.

Building on our success is our key motivation, and our expanding portfolio of products reflects this. With quality and innovation in equal measure, we are committed to total excellence.
+ Preview Corporate Video
Identify, develop and market innovation niche products that possess mass consumer appeal in the global market.

Our focus is to specialize in the development and marketing of next generation innovation consumer products by applying advanced technologies and know how to every aspect of product development. We are also dedicated to strengthen our Intellectual Property Rights for all the products that we design.

Emotive Studio

2010-03-29T01:08:00.001-07:00

Emotive Studio, Design Agency, Hong Kong, Packaging

Emotive Studio is expert in the packaging practical aspects: displaying optimization and shipping protection. We develop a strong visual and tactile ways to reach your customer.
We will also ensure that your product is packaged for maximum impact on your customers and not the environment.

Since 2001 Emotive Studio has been serving a diverse portfolio of clients from our office in Hong Kong. Our team of designers from Asia and Europe has experience in working with many industries and International markets.
From initial concepts, then brand development and finally bringing your product to market, we can provide an integrated service or just fulfil a one-off design brief.

104 -105, 1F Casey Building
38 Lok Ku Road, Sheung Wan,
Hong Kong

T (852) 2805 1107
F (852) 3582 4900

» info@emotivestudio.com

Hong Kong Awards for Industries

2010-03-29T00:57:00.001-07:00

Hong Kong Awards for Industries

The Hong Kong Awards for Industries was officially launched in 2005 by merging the former Hong Kong Awards for Industry and Hong Kong Awards for Services, established in 1989 and 1997 respectively, to rationalise and update the two awards. The merged Awards continues to recognise the outstanding achievements of Hong Kong enterprises in their move towards higher technology and higher value-added activities. The Awards covers seven categories.

Industrial designers society of Hong Kong

2010-03-29T00:53:00.001-07:00

Wel come to In dustrial designers society of Hong Kong

ndustrial Designers Society of Hong Kong (IDSHK) was founded in 2002. IDSHK aims to promote higher levels of professionalism and status of Hong Kong's industrial designs. In 2004, IDSHK has issued and published the "Professional Practice & Contract Template for Hong Kong Industrial Designers" (Chinese/English CD format). IDSHK has worked to foster public interests to the value of industrial design (I.D.).

IDSHK has regularly organized I.D. seminars, knowledge-sharing forums, mentor workshops and trips to the international I.D. Expo & Forum of China. IDSHK has actively established collaborations and strategic alliance partnership with industrial bodies and education institutes.

InnoSphere Product Design & Development

2010-03-29T00:52:00.001-07:00

InnoSphere Product Design & Development

With over 10 years of design and development experience, we are specialized in consumer electronics and household appliances. Our creativity ensures your product gives a great impact to your target consumer!

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES:
- Design: Consumer electronics, household appliances and premiums
- New product line build up and development
- Brand building and market positioning
- Prototype and mold making
- Production and project management

Awarded collaboration projects:
- Hong Kong Award for Industries 2005
- Hong Kong Original Gifts & Household Products Design Competition 2005

Address : Unit 231, 2/F, InnoCentre,
72 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong, H.K.
地址: 九龍塘達之路72號創新中心二樓231室
Tel : (852) 3586 0896
Email : info@innosphere.hk
Web Site : www.innosphere.hk

Golden Sun Housewares Manufacturing Ltd

2010-03-29T00:40:00.001-07:00

Company Profile

Golden Sun Housewares Manufacturing Ltd. is a Hong Kong based sole proprietorship founded by Mr. Kwok Kang-sang in 1967 specialising in stainless steel and plastic houseware production. In 1986, Mr. Kwok moved the manufacturing base to He Ao, Heng Gang of Shenzhen in China to further develop his business. Over the past 11 years, Golden Sun has evolved into one of the largest houseware manufacturers and exporters in Hong Kong with average sales over US$ 16.5 million annually.

Our phenomenal success is attributed to our persistence in producing the best kitchen utensils. To do so, we have employed 950 full-time staff, each and all of them are expertise in their own specialized field. Their distinguished professionalism has ensured our products, from design, craftmanship to quality, are always among the finest.

The tremendous success of Golden Sun is attributed to the efforts of Mr. Kwok and devoted services from our employees. We shall strive to maintain our leading position and dedicate ourselves in making the finest houseware of the world.

mindblog.com

2010-03-26T22:12:00.001-07:00

Google Image Result for http://mindblog.dk/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/cultural-probe-data-425x283.jpg

cultural probe created by Robert James Djaelani

2010-03-26T22:01:00.001-07:00

Google Image Result for http://nicolegoestoschool.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/2313083644_0f32303166.jpg
A cultural probe is a carefully measured, planned inquiry into the preferences, experiences, and desires of an audience.
kit of interactive objects that were designed easily facilitate conversation and participation.

Community Chest

2010-03-25T17:45:00.001-07:00

ILD - community chest

Do Not Disturb Project - Cultural Probe

2010-03-25T17:37:00.001-07:00

I have designed a pack that will allow one to find out the who, what, when and where of a particular anti social behaviour. The pack contains a box in which 4 cards are stored. On each card there is a different task for the participant to carry out. They are first asked to write down an anti social behaviour that affects them the most. Then they are asked to either draw or stick thing to the silhouette provided, in order to see who the perpetrator of there anti social act is. The next card allows the participant to show on a map exactly where the behaviour takes place. The final card allows the participants to show what time of day the anti social act takes place, by setting the time on the clock provided.
http://imd.dundee.ac.uk/degshows/2007/jennyk/final%20cultural%20probe.html

Flickr Clock

2010-03-24T23:45:00.001-07:00

Google Image Result for http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2182/2012431840_8252527320.jpg

There’s something really wonderful about using the flickr clock interface to browse through people’s moments from around the world. The clock displays only video content and lets you lean back and just click to view another short clip which someone uploaded somewhere around the world.

cultural probe - Robert James Djaelani example

2010-03-24T23:41:00.001-07:00

Google Image Result for http://www.ilikedesign.co.uk/images/smartpalette.jpg

A cultural probe is a qualitative research tool that allows a researching to carry out a rapid form of ethnography on a user without the researcher being present . The results are very subjective which combined with quantitative research creates a very strong method of understanding a users existing personality.

cultural probe kit

A completed Cultural Probe.

I am interested in the distinction between product and research tool and many of the items in a cultural probe's context were, i believe, both products and tools for research.

"Selected volunteers are given probe packs. The participants use the items in the pack over a period of a few weeks and then return the pack. The items in the pack depend on the circimstances, but are all designed to stimulate thought as well as capture experiences.

Once we consider systems beyond the traditional office PC, especially those involving personal experience, design needs to establish new methods of study. Other researchers have used diary studies asking participants to note particular kinds of incidents. Another group asked parents to give them lists they kept (shopping lists, to do lists). Role play has also been used to get people to act out aspects of their life that they might not wish to be observed." www.equator.org

Cultural probes - explained

2010-03-24T23:34:00.001-07:00

Cultural probes (also known as diary studies) provide a way of gathering information about people and their activities. Unlike direct observation (like usability testing or traditional field studies), the technique allows users to self-report. Information gathered from cultural probes is particularly useful early in the design process.
When are Cultural Probes appropriate?

Cultural probes are appropriate when you need to gather information from users with minimal influence on their actions, or when the process or event you’re exploring takes place intermittently or over a long period. For example, you could use cultural probes to explore how patients feel over the weeks or months following a surgical procedure, or how travelling salespeople manage their work.
How are Cultural Probes conducted?

Selected participants are briefed, given a kit of materials, and briefed about the requirement to record or note specific events, feelings or interactions over a specified period. Typically, a follow-up interview is conducted at some point after the briefing session. This helps ensure that participants are actively engaged, and are collecting the required information. At the end of the specified period, the materials are collected and analysed. A de-briefing session is also typically conducted, in order to supplement, validate and otherwise explore the information gathered by the participants. Information gathered is then analysed, and documented in some fashion.
What’s in a Cultural Probe Kit?

The contents of the kit depend on what type of information you want to gather, and on the materials with which participants are familiar. Most kits contain a diary for recording comments or impressions. The kit may also contain a scrapbook, or this may be combined with the diary. Other contents may include a camera with printing capability (an instant camera or digital camera with printer). It may also contain items such as a voice recorder, pens, post-it notes, staplers and the like – anything that can help the user gather and record information. People respond positively to attractive kits, so using good quality materials is worthwhile.
Recruitment

Recruiting is particularly important with cultural probes, since they rely on a large investment of participants’ time. Participants in cultural probes are expected to spend at least several hours during the course of the activity, so they are likely to require remuneration that is more significant than that for, say, usability testing. In addition, they usually cannot be monitored closely, so problems may not be picked up during the course of the activity. Therefore, it’s particularly important to ensure that you recruit the right participants, and that you monitor and support them as well as possible throughout the process.
The Right Data

You can help participants gather the right information by briefing them carefully, and by providing kits that prompt them for the types of information you want. However, you also need to take care not to unduly restrict the information they gather, in case you miss out on important insights. Providing a contact phone number that they can feel free to call for assistance or advice throughout the data-gathering period is a good idea.
Analysis and Documentation

Use affinity diagramming to analyse the data gathered. The data is also likely to be useful in creating personas, and this provides a good communication medium. Making participants’ notes and photos available to project team members also provides a good way to communicate findings.

Google Image Result for http://www.iamas.ac.jp/isp/probe_pack.jpg

Cultural probes / diary studies

2010-03-24T23:31:00.001-07:00

Also observations can tell you about what people do, but less about what they feel. What is really important to them and what just mundane? Cultural probes are one way to access environments that are difficult to observe directly and also to capture more of this 'felt life'.

Cultural probes (also known as diary studies) provide a way of gathering information about people and their activities.
Unlike direct observation (like usability testing or traditional field studies), the technique allows users to self-report.

Google Image Result for http://www.iamas.ac.jp/isp/probe_pack.jpg

PolyU Design is one of the World’s 30 Best Design Schools

2010-03-24T23:08:00.001-07:00

PolyU Design is one of the World’s 30 Best Design Schools « Hong Kong PolyU Design Blog
BusinessWeek announced the 2009 World’s Best Design Schools list and PolyU Design was one of the 30 chosen schools. Click to see its Special Report on Design Thinking

Hong Kong Design Centre

2010-03-24T23:03:00.001-07:00

Hong Kong Design Centre - About Us

The Hong Kong Design Centre is a non-profit organisation dedicated to helping local designers and businesses realise their full potential. We take a leadership role engaging in a proactive dialogue that preaches to government, industry, business partners, educational institutions and private organisations about design as a strategic, value-enhancing constituent of business. Towards the wider public audience we tirelessly seek to inculcate a greater appreciation of the ways design contributes to a better quality of life.

The Hong Kong Federation of Design Associations established the Hong Kong Design Centre in 2001. The founding members of the Federation, including Hong Kong Designers Association, Interior Design Association Hong Kong, Hong Kong Fashion Designers Association, and the Chartered Society of Designer, founded the Hong Kong Design Centre to consolidate efforts for a better means of improving Hong Kong design. The Hong Kong Design Centre was and remains to be the only organisation in Hong Kong dedicated to encouraging, inspiring, supporting, and facilitating the best use of design as an instrument for the sustainable competitiveness, economic prosperity and overall well-being of society.

Hasbro toy design HK Office

2010-03-24T22:57:00.001-07:00

Hasbro toy studio visit « SCAD in Hong Kong: Industrial Design
Freq uently Asked Questions

With respect to China, Hasbro has a team of quality control engineers and inspectors who are trained to ensure that our quality and safety systems are being followed. This team, based in Hong Kong and China, is integrated within Hasbro’s U.S.-based global Quality Assurance, Safety, and Audit organization, and its role is to ensure that these vendors are producing products that comply with our high safety and quality standards. The Hasbro team in China has many responsibilities, among which are performing on-site factory visits and audits, particularly during the manufacturing process.

KALOMIX LIMITED

2010-03-24T22:47:00.001-07:00

KALOMIX LIMITED
Unit 127, 1/F, InnoCentre, 72 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong

Kalomix --- Creating Infinite Possibility | Facebook

Formed by a group of professional & passionate designers, Kalomix is a multi-disciplinary design studio provides endless innovative but practical solutions to tackle new challenges.

We provide consultant service and develop our own product line.

Go Public HK Graphic Design

2010-03-24T22:36:00.001-07:00

Go Public | Interactive Design Agency | Hong Kong

Unit B, 8/F, Yally Industrial Building
6 Yip Fat Street, Wong Chuk Hang
Hong Kong

Jason Cheung

Interplanetary Director of Strategic Planning

Jason is a co-founder of Go Public, and was previously a Regional Strategic Analyst for global media agency Universal McCann, where he advised clients such as Intel, Microsoft, and Marriott International.

Justin Potter

Chief Solar Quadrant Director of Development

Justin is a co-founder of Go Public, and has worked as a core graphic artist at Quiksilver Hong Kong/China Headquarters, and continues to pioneer new marketing solutions by pushing commercial design to its limits.

Joseph Luk

Intergalactic Director of Business Development

Joseph is a co-founder of Go Public, and was previously a Senior Consultant at Synovate Business Consulting. He has advised Fortune 500 companies on market entry, market feasibility, and corporate restructuring.

Adriel Chan

Chief Orbital Director of Reconnaissance

Adriel is a co-founder of Go Public, and was previously an advisor at KPMG Shanghai. He has worked with numerous Fortune 100 companies, performing full scope audits among other services.

Samantha Wong

Earth Sector Programmer

Samantha is Go Public's programming guru and loves to develop useful applications on the side. She leads programming production on web projects.

Stephanie Pui

Earth Sector Web Designer

Stephanie is Go Public's key web designer, and is responsible for graphical / interface design on web projects, and various offline projects.

Terry Wang

Mars Sector Technical Consultant

Terry is Go Public's key technical consultant and coordinates programming production.