research presentations 08-02-2003 [in memoriam to freddie the ferret who died during the course of this session]

present: cocky, nat, lina, rob, jehan, nik, maja

anti-gravity, zero-gravity, 10+g force

  • chinese movies about flying (started 2 years ago - crouching tiger, hidden dragon…)
  • the movements are exactly what cocky is trying to do
  • old chinese movies — you still see the ropes + fake effects
  • images from flying birds + movie - the travelling birds
  • birds in water - flocking and swarming
  • cape horn - ship around 1900 - sailing artound - good images in the storm
  • looking for the feeling of movement
  • 'the hopping feeling'
  • scene in the trees - bending of the tree
  • losing gravity + refinding it again
  • 'i want flocks of people to move like that'
  • rhythms in it - slow / speeding up of things
  • tempo of a mosquito being born
  • stilts with springs
  • anti gravity parabolic flight
  • kitzou dubois - art in space
  • underwater choreograpy, choreography on trampolines
  • isabel rocamora
  • mainly research about the system on the bungees, ropes, harnesses
  • wall gmes –> rock climbing clubs
  • different air densities - desert, madagaskar, mountains, city walls
  • easy to experience so you dont have to train for months – you can develop a skill if you want
  • ladders
  • la guarra
  • harnesses that are safe enough, painless, but with enough freedom of movement
  • inflatable structures (rewana)
  • establishing movement from her childhood dreams, for both untrained + trained people
  • tools - general, later context based

alchemy and tarot in RPGs

  • p~lot rpg – personal transoformation
  • alchemy - mandala, unity of oposites, separation/purification/recombination
  • adam mclean - animal symbolism in alchemy
  • visual mantras for chemical changes
  • cycle of colour changes
  • quintessence
  • animal shapes representation of whats going on in the flasks
  • unity of opposits - as above so below… cyclical processes
  • animals and colours from the essey - to show the stages of transformation
  • card game about personal transformation - tarot- randomness a-causality
  • we all create our own realities + there is synchronicity to link it to the events in you life + tarot
  • projecting charatceristics of ourselves on environment
  • tarot - reflection of your own reality
  • two events - psychic + physical - interlinked
  • acausal opening between events
  • scientifically – why do we have the impression of causality?
  • jung synchronicity to explain acausality
  • natural randomness – can cause divinity -
  • tarot in an alchemical context – scientific context – idea of progress - always a step away
  • tarot history
  • 15-18 ct – game cards from egypt, islam, china –> linked with card games
  • 1420 in norhtern italy - from islamic culture
  • gypsies brought tarot from egypt
  • 'god and birds'
  • trumpf - game characters based on dante's cosmos
  • french - ignored the rules of the italian game
  • from the 19th ct it became a secret game
  • the church pursuing heretics- incorporating secret knowledge into a game
  • church - learning cosmology through game???????? what happened to it when it became as a secret game?
  • minor arcana - cards today from the 14th ct - made for an italian king
  • major arcana - where do the symbols come from?
  • 'ganzenbord' - numerology – path through them – dices to add randomness
  • game - players participate in the tarot + rpg –> synchronicity
  • rpg+tarot → integrate it through personal transformation
  • need a certain belief into the system
  • corporeal/digital – situated rpg
  • creation of new symbols? –> gnomic
  • 2 sides of cards - 1 with lina's drawings, one blank, for the players to fill in
  • 2 goals - 1 linear narrative, one personal transformation
  • 1 side - the character with a global goal, one with a less explicit which one
  • find the 'opposite' to unify with — how do you find balance between your character and the opposites
  • people make their own stages by the connections that players make with the symbols
  • history of tarot
  • card games
  • myth of how the tarot came about - dante's cosmos
  • nummerology – looking at 7 - moon, death, disease * about 100 different styles
  • how is the game built? - structure of the games + analyse the cards
  • game structure for the p~lot game
  • luminescent installation - with a game - you as a card/character are going on a path
  • responsive floor - the process of walking, physical game
  • go more back than 15th century - china, japan
  • playing cards
  • museum of games - in UK
  • 3d live games in physical spaces based on 2d cards
  • material research with small materials - linking with card-games
  • using printing techniques to print symbols and attributes with the cards in an rpg
  • material experiments - luminescence, conductivity, mechanical changes.

Community Wireless Networks (problems as paths towards solutions)

  • cost effective self sufficient community wireless network connected to the internet
    • problems - power, internet connection
    • place where it is installed, units talking to other units - local
    • outside world - this is where we are, we are dangerous and have TCP IP
    • txOom - on the edge of the outside world
    • TCP IP protocol explanation….. with milk boxes and conveyor belts for wired networks
  • radio - good thing for getting info from one place to another
    • how to deal with reassembling info packets wirelessly
    • higher frequency - less distance, higher bandwidth and vice versa
    • well defined community within 100s of metres, with line of sight
    • trees and water are a big stopper to the wirelessly sent info
    • high frequency - txOom like - can go up to app 30km
  • another problem - transmitting data between the local village and the global centres from 100-2000km away
    • electricity and powering problem - solved by solar technology
    • most of it is photovoltaic - not very efficient → 17% - research into increasing efficiency - spectrum of visible light Ga instead of Si - increased to 35% efficiency
    • other approaches - metal in liquid or gel suspension - problem with reducing chemicals - while the photovoltaic cells can stay out 'forever'
    • what technology do you want to put in place in these remote villages to aid the people + what are you going to do with these
    • different combinations of technologies to come to an optimal solution
    • antennas and lenghts…

Musings on Context

  • reading on 'context' in the context of culture
    • social contexts - Club Med? what is the problem with it?
    • which context is interesting for us, and why is it new?
  • culture + cultural analysis Geertz - anthropology written 20-30years ago
    • thick and thin description in anthropology
    • thin - describing the action
    • thick - context, circumstances…
      • describing culture - seminal to use thick description
  • etnography - manuscript of shaped behaviour
    • culture is something public, because meaning is public, –> shared consensus
    • human behaviour happens in twitches
    • culture is not something symbolic, homogenous
    • culture - not a power, but is a context which can be thickly described
    • problem with cultural institutions - describe it thinly, which is a problem..?
  • common sense as a cultural system:
    • 2 extremes of culture: common sense and art –> negotiate the position in between (foam?)
    • we need to position ourselves in the continuum between the two?
    • innovation is not categorisable
      • problem with breaking out of the box

How to Survive being in exile through Flusser's communication theory (the FoAM story

Flusser: Writings, Minnesota University Press

  • prag-london-brazil-france-germany
  • communication theory
  • home, homelessness, what it means to be in exile
  • german Mcluhan
  • only now his stuff is translated in english
  • poetic, clear writing
  • creativity
  • difference between heim and wohnung
  • patriotism is a symptom of an aesthetic disease
  • heimat - a habit
  • very good quotes to be put in the twiki!
  • info structures
    • linear sequences diachronic
    • surface structurtes synchronic
    • spatial structures 3d synchronic
  • 2 codes:
    • discursive codes - sender - receiver – transmission point a-b
    • dialogical - message oscillates between participants - synthetises during the dialog —> emergent code
  • Material Metaphor: Katherine Hales: Writing Machines
  • Posthuman … Cybernetic / Bad Literary Cryticism
  • writing machines
  • material metaphor - say describing TCP-IP protocol with milk cartons
  • –> grounded in the world
  • metonym-metaphore debate?
  • reading electronic texts - not taking the medium into account → context

what is a symposium?

  • –> orgiastic debate
  • - victorian food banquets, instead of sexual acts
  • - homosexual conotations
  • - foam banquet by december
  • evaluating the tgarden system
  • txoom user testing
  • child play environments - instead of putting them into playgrounds, you put them into playSpaces like tgarden
  • research on play and play spaces
  • extract the heuristics of playspaces
  • psychology, play/learning,
  • –> unpredictable behaviour - materials that can be transformed in different ways
  • the environment should be changeable (sandcastles better than dead tree trunks)
  • free movement, spontaneity, flexibility
  • 'hypothetical constructs' that jehan read are too abstract - unable to test it
  • subject matter and subject testing - a very fuzzy research method
  • this week @ FoAM - made the subject matter is even fuzzyier
  • in HCI - u have to know your users - top down approach - building a user model before making a product
  • yahoo site design - middle out approach - top down + darwinian approach to selecting what works - everything that doesnt lead to a purchase - iterative process
  • design/design forecasting how do designers categorise people not for mentality groups — send info.!
  • what is the goal of txoom?
  • effectiveness of responsive spaces
  • in artistic projects do we have to tailor things to the users or should we tailor for rupture?
  • difference in testing effectiveness of design products and artistic spaces
  • designing an experiment for just children:
  • people with given goals - with games
  • people without goals - without games
  • project should be done by may - she needs our input in the process
  • research_notes_march2003.txt
  • Last modified: 2007-06-19 10:22
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