VersuS and ConnectiCity on Social Cities of Tomorrow

VersuS and ConnectiCity have been featured as best practices for city innovation at the Social Cities of Tomorrow event.

Here is the link where you can see the shortlisted best practices on Social Cities of Tomorrow’s website.

Check it out: there are some wonderful projects in there :)

Enlarge Your Consciousness in 4 Days 4 Free

Here are some updates to the project Enlarge Your Consciousness in 4 Days 4 Free

Here is the event on the website of BTF Gallery

Here on Artribune

Here is the official announcement on ArteFiera OFF

Here is a wonderful article on D’Ars Magazine

And on this issue of Espoarte you can find an article about the project

Here is a slideshow of the backstage, preparing the exhibit:

and here’s a slideshow about the exhibit:

More information and materials about the work are coming up in the next few days.

“the most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.” Andy Warhol

EYCI4D4F Diagram 1

Introduction

In this essay, we describe the ideas which led us to participate to the “Enlarge Your Consciousness in 4 Days 4 Free” project, together with Mezzapelle-Deriu.

The mutation of the human being in contemporary times is characterized by drastic speed and by powerful, ubiquitous effects, which are transforming not only ourselves, but also the form and function of the whole planet, including the ways in which we learn, communicate, relate, work, think. And the ways in which we experience emotions.

Art is Open Source has often dealt with the theories and practices of human emotion.

Emotions are not “action”, yet they are the energy that creates action. They are the tool/effect through which we experience the world and with which we decide to take action, and in which direction.

And emotions have profoundly changed in the last decade or so, due to our renewed experience of the world, our re-built perception of space and time, our re-created ways of establishing presence, identity, relations, collaborations. Due to the digital membrane which has been covering all our planet and which is now becoming indistinguishable from the rest of the planet itself.

Multiple types of discussion can be started up while engaging these issues: from the most futuristic ones to the most critical. Incredible positive scenarios perfectly match horrible ones.

In this never-ending struggle between adoption and critique, we choose the way of Nature. The way of Nature, in the sense that it is useless and impossible for us human beings to “decide” what is natural, what is unnatural, what is good and what is bad. What we can do, as free human beings, is to observe the constant, fluid, continuous mutation which we experience, and adopt ethical approaches in making our own decisions.

Human beings, the planet and Nature, change, mutate. This mutation includes all the technologies, networks, dangers and opportunities which we’re currently facing. We can observe, try to gain the best possible understanding of things (from our point of view, determined by personal history, cultural background… ), share knowledge, information and perspectives with people, and act.

Enlarge Your Consciousness in 4 Days 4 Free is about this.

A project through which we reflect on the mutation of human emotions.

Background

The web is increasingly relied upon as a reflection of reality (Bray et al, 2007).

This fact gives rise to great challenges for human beings, who are in a state of great transformation of the ways in which they perceive their identity, privacy, relationships, societies, cities, and in which they perceive their presence and role in the planet.

Every action we perform in our daily lives has measurable effects in terms of digital information: wether we turn the lights on in our living room, buy an apple at the supermarket, use our mobile phone to contact our friends to decide to go to see a movie and, in possibly more explicit ways, whenever we study, work and entertain ourselves using one of the multiple internet-aware processes which have started to be progressively more present in our common routine.

It is possible to recognize the fact that a digital information membrane has covered the totality of our world (Pickles, 2004, Mitchell 2005, Zook & Graham 2007), mutating our perception of the spaces, times and modalities in which we conduct our lives.

It is possible to describe the emergence of novel forms of sensoriality through which we experience the world, deeply connected to digital interactions, technologies and networks, or even externalized onto digital devices. (McLuhan, 1964; de Kerckhove, 1997).

Simple experiments allow to gain awareness of this: a simple mobile phone call will force us to move through space in the case of absent network coverage, just as an additional sense outside of the conventional boundaries of our bodies and externalized onto the mobile phone which makes us aware of electromagnetic fields of specific ranges of frequency.

Just like our brains have shown to be able to mutate, to adapt to drastic effects due to impairment or damage (Doidge, 2007), we are experiencing deep changes due to this re-structuring of reality, to integrate the digital layers of the world into our common perception.

This process has already taken place to a certain degree, as we completely give for granted a series of manifestations of this part of our neo-reality in the tasks which we face each day.

Younger generations show distinct transformations in the ways in which they learn, focus, relate, collaborate, work (Turkle, 1995), and in the ways n which they perceive their own identity, privacy, and the definitions of public and private spaces (as in West, Lewis and Currie, 2009; Pearson, 2009; Thompson, 2011; among many others).

The continuous processes through which we simultaneously construct and experience our reality (de Certeau, 1984) see specific effects from these mutations, as our perception digitally changes, and our ways of constructing/interacting with the world progressively adopt digital tools and have digital characteristics.

For example, the idea of recognizing the urban environments described by Lynch in 1960 updates to the concept of Digiplace expressed by Zook and Graham in 2007.

In this, emotions play a crucial role.

In Myer’s definition (2004) emotion involves “physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience”. It is the way in which we relate to the world and the processes which take place in it: it is not action, but the thrust which creates it.

This centrality of emotions has led multiple scholars and practitioners to place the study of emotion at focal points in multiple disciplines, across Neurobiology, Social Sciences, Cognitive Sciences, Psychology, Computer Science, Robotics, Ethnography, Economy, Design, Architecture.

Theory of emotions is crucial in the analysis of organizational processes, design and multiple areas of communication.

Classical researches on the Theory of Emotions have produced multiple approaches and classifications, such as the ones found in Descartes (353, 1989 edition), Spinoza (1656, 2006 edition), Hobbes (1651, 1976 edition), Plutchik (1980), Elkman (1999) and Prinz (2004), describing evolutionary, social, psychological, dimensional and other types of models with reference to the general nature of human beings or to the specifics of different cultures around the planet.

EYCI4D4F Diagram 3

Emotions are understood to be the turning point according to which we identify, use and create information.

“The central focus of a unified theory of information behavior is the process by which users adapt to the information environment and make use of it for personal and social purposes. By making this adaptation process explicit, the model reveals how the ubiquitous information environment can be viewed as an affective information environment because all information needs, seeking, reception, and use is processed through emotions.” Diane Nahl, Danila Bilal (2007)

Therefore, emotions are placed at the center of strategies and design processes, as both tools and measures of experience.

Our mutated perception of the world through technologies and networks has changed or emotional approaches, as well: the fact that we experience the world and that we enact our actions using digital tools (or, more in general, using modalities which have clearly identifiable digital characteristics, either directly or indirectly), also shifts our emotional domains online.

Designers have incorporated the affective dimensions of technology to the extent that the expression “emotional design” has become identified in ergonomics as “Kansei Engineering” or “pleasurable engineering” (Green & Jordan, 2002; Grimsaeth, 2005; Jordan, 2000).

According to Don Norman, “the focus of emotional design is to make our lives more pleasurable” (Van Hout, 2004).

Yet the experience in the merged analog-digital reality which emerges from the observation of the contemporary world is profoundly different than the precedent one.

“When reading fiction or watching a movie we enter the imaginary world even if we remain aware of its imaginary nature. We suspend disbelief and though, on one level, we accept the fictional reality of the characters, on another we recognize that the situation is make-believe. In cyberspace this recognition is often absent.” Aharon Ben-Ze’ev, 2004.

This comment from Ben-Ze’ev describes in synthesis the different directions according to which the observation of human experience can move along.

In the observation of emotions, it is possible to observe how a constructivist approach is used in experience by human beings.

Identity, public/private spaces, privacy, are all the object of personal creation, thanks to the characteristics of the media and tools which take part to the process.

The possibility of freely creating digital content and to attach it to objects and spaces, transforms the world into a public, accessible, free read/write platform (Iaconesi, Persico, 2011).

This modality progressively takes onto our daily lives.

As Turkle (1995) tells us, the users who are “logged on to one MUD or another for at least forty hours a week. It seems misleading to call what [they do] there playing. [they spend their] time constructing a life that is more expansive than the one [they live] in physical reality.”

Enlarge Your Consciousness

Enlarge Your Consciousness in 4 Days 4 Free grabs emotions in real-time from social networks and uses them to gain better understanding of the way human beings have transformed  by using digital technologies and networks.

A real-time process has been designed to extract real-time public information from multiple social networks. Specifically, the following social networks are used:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Flickr
• FourSquare

Each social network requires specific modalities to be able to read information from it.

For example Twitter allows usage of public APIs of multiple types to query its real-time systems and access information that can be freely used in applications and mash-ups, as long as a series of requirements are met (including correct mentioning of sources, presentation details, the enforcement of restrictions to the types of allowed practices to be performed using the data, etc. ). Using these APIs it is possible to capture, in real-time, the content produced by users relative to specific keywords, timeframes, geographical locations, hashtags etc. .

Foursquare offers a similar mechanism, allowing developers to access real-time data using public APIs. Using these techniques it is possible to extract real-time information about the places people visit (check-ins), the information they value or suggest (tips) and other information which can be easily inferred by analyzing data (for example, great deals  of information can be understood by analyzing the times and time-patterns according to which people access different locations, characterising them as work-places, entertainment venues, commercial places etc).

Flickr also offers extensive support to developers, allowing them to access a variety of APIs which permit multiple types of real-time searches and the creation of wonderful meta-services.

Facebook is the most difficult social network from which to harvest information without breaking any law :) 

While it offers multiple forms of integration to other applications (e.g.: the possibility for users to connect their social network presence to online applications, thus obtaining a variety of different results) Facebook seems to be oriented in ways according to which all possibility to systematically observe societies and communities remain its sole possibility.

Luckily, this enforcement is not too strict, and, together with our lawyers and with the support of the international developer community (including some people at Facebook itself, who have been proved to be very helpful in this, even at our explicit statement that “we are trying to produce a system which lawfully extracts information about the emotions of online users, for non-commercial goals, in respect to your terms of service, and with the sole objective of producing tools for art and scientific research”).

It turns out that by using a combination of the functions offered by the Graph API and with a careful dosage of tuning, it is possible to capture, anonymize and process information from Facebook, in ways which have been proved very useful for our research.

Several automatic processes have been setup to capture information from the aforementioned social networks using these techniques.

The texts, comments, tips, image/video captions published by online users were anonymized and processed using Natural Language Analysis.

Multiple techniques have been developed and documented to analyze textual information to be able to extract from it valuable information.

It is now common practice to process texts to extract information regarding the emotions and issues engaged by user contributions to online discussions, even sometimes being able to identify the places which are being discussed, even when explicit geographical coordinates are not provided in the payload of the messages by using GPS or Assisted GPS technologies.

In EYCI4D4F we decided to avoid using keywords-based analysis, as it often leads to multiple problems:

• words are often used in multiple ways, which cause erroneous interpretation
• words are invented all the time, even by simply using creative spelling for them
• human beings are really creative, and tend to express emotions in multiple ways
• the same words in two different cultures can represent entirely different meanings

Information is processed using Natural Language Analysis by applying techniques which have been inferred by existing highly effective techniques, such as the ones described in the researches of Gentile/Lanfranchi/others, Leidner/Lieberman, Quin/Xiao/others, Shi/Baker mentioned in the references at the bottom of this article.

The processing techniques were prepared using a set of linguistic templates (similar to regular expressions) created in 29 languages to identify syntactical/structural text patterns which would highlight the user expressing an emotional condition.

This approach led us to being able to systematically filter out with a high level of success (around 93%) messages expressing emotions.

Using a large vocabulary (this, too, in 29 languages, including around 25000 elements) of words which are related to the specific emotions, we have in this way been able to classify 16 base emotions according to Robert Plutchik’s classification. In the obtained classification each message was associated to a weighting parameter according to which a certain emotion was expressed. Each message could be associated to more than one emotion (in accordance with Plutchik’s classification which sees complex emotions being represented as linear combinations of base ones).

The results, thus, looked like:

[user XYZ][message KWX][JOY:n1; SURPRISE: n2...]

In this structure:

• XYZ is an anonymized version of the user identification strings used on social networks
• KWX is a reference number of the content, to be able to identify user activity and relational activity
• n1, n2… are numbers from 1 to 1000 describing the intensity according to which the single emotion has been identified in the message

This information was continuously captured from social networks.

A series of services was designed to that they could be periodically queried (polling) to get constant updated on the most recent emotions that were captured from social networks.

These services were used to pilot a series of information visualizations and a physical installation.

A first visualization was the one shown in the video below:

Here, messages are shown at the top of the screen, together with the color blocks representing the emotions which were found in the message.

As soon as a new message is captures, it is added to the central visualization, and connected through color-coded curves to the blocks representing the single base emotions. If the message expresses complex emotions, more than one connection is made.

At the bottom, a bar graph shows the recent intensities of the base emotions. The values of the bar graph are used in an additive sound synthesis process to generate the everchanging sounds which could be heard at the exhibit at BTF Gallery in Bologna for the presentation of the project.

Here below is a sample of a few minutes of the generated sounds:

EYCI4D4F generative sounds

another visualization can be seen in the following video:

Here each block represents a single emotion, as captured in real-time from social networks. In the visualization each block was very small, and it gave a sense of the enormous amount of data which was being captured.

Another visualization allowed to understand the sequences of emotions which were expressed by users:

EYCI4D4F diagram 4

Here three levels showed how one emotion evolved into another for multiple used in the most recent few minutes, effectively showing the trends of complex emotions expressed by individuals.

A further visualization showed the geographical distributions of emotions around the world:

EYCI4D4F diagram 2

The information about the most recent emotions received from the harvesting system was transformed into signals which powered the motion of the installation.

In the installation 16 jellies were created and associated to two intensity levels of the 8 base emotions in Plutchik’s classification.

EYCI4D4F installation

Each jelly was installed onto a silicon base and a step motor was connected to its bottom , so that it would receive a mechanical stimulation from it.

Whenever an emotion was sensed, a signal was sent to the respective motor, thus causing the vibration of the jelly.

A video projector mounted on the ceiling of the exhibition space projected onto the jelly the profile image of the user who generated the emotion.

EYCI4D4F installation

The result was a matrix showing in real-time the expression of emotions on social networks, through a suggestive, poetic physical visualization, also alluding to the variability and instability of human emotions through the typology of the motion of jellies.

Conclusions

One aspect of this project was considered striking from everyone involved: it seemed incredible how substantially easy it had been to capture and process all this information from unaware internet users.

The captured information was public, to all effect. Yet the messages publicly expressed on social networks engage important themes, and describe to a high level of detail the approaches which each user adopts in confronting to news, relationships and multiple subjects, also describing the users’ tastes, likes, dislikes, wishes, desires and, as we have learned, emotions.

This “public intimacy” represents a fundamental issue for research and discussion of the contemporary era, also because it represents the main driver of online service providers’ business models: the possibility to harvest, process, classify and sell this information in multiple ways still represents the biggest money-making methodology which is available to anyone deciding to create a business using technologies and networks.

The modalities according to which this information is captured is also remarkable.

Internet users continuously sign complicated “Terms of Service” agreements when they access online services: these texts are complex and long, and people read them only rarely and understand them even less.

While there is a general understanding about the fact that the information produced through our behavior is the object of business of service providers, this notion substantially gets lost during what is perceived to be a public, open, transparent set of platforms, in which people perform common routine activity without worrying too much about what implication their actions could have.

To remark these issues, we decided to add a final part to the project.

EYCI4D4F users for sale at 9.99 euros

A set of boxes was designed to contain the profile of a single, random social network user. 100 hundred boxes of this type were produced, randomly selecting users whose emotions came up while processing data for the visualizations and installation.

Each box contained a link and a QRCode. They led to an address at which a small interface showed the profile image of the user (but without showing any other data which could be used to identify him/her/it) together with the list of the most recent emotions expressed on social networks.

The user was transformed into a sort of social-network-mediated-tamagotchi.

We put the boxes on sale for 9.99 euros.

EYCI4D4F users on sale

Users on sale for 9.99 euros. Business as usual. 

REFERENCES

• Ben-Ze’ev, A. (2004) Love online: emotions on the internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Bray, D. A., Chidambaram, L., Epstein, M., Hill, T., Thomas, D., Venkatsubramanyan, S., Watson, R. T. (2007). The Web as a Digital Reflection of Reality. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, Vol. 18, No. 28. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=961088
• de Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• de Kerckhove, D. (1997). The Skin of Culture: investigating the new electronic reality. UK: Kogan Page Publishers.
• de Spinoza, B. (2006). The Ethics. Fairford: Echo Library.
• Descartes, R. (1989). The passions of the soul. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
• Doidge, N. (2007). The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the frontiers of brain science. USA: Viking.
• Elkman, P. (1999). Handbook of Cognition and Emotion. Sussex: John Wiley & Sons.
• Gentile, L., Lanfranchi, V., Mazumdar, S., Ciravegna, F. (2011). Extracting Semantic User Networks from Informal Communication Exchanges, in The Semantic Web. ISWC 2011, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 7031/2011, pp. 209-224. New York: Springer Link.
• Green, W. S., Jordan, P. W. (Eds.) (2002). Pleasure with products: Beyond usability. New York: Taylor & Francis.
• Grismaeth, K. (2005). Kansei engineering: Linking emotions and product features. Accessed December 15, 2011, from http://www.ivt.ntnu.no/ipd/fag/PD9/2005/artikler/PD9%20Kansei%20Engineering%20K_Grimsath.pdf
• Hobbes, T. (1976). Leviathan. Forgotten Books. Accessed January 12, 2012, from http://www.forgottenbooks.org/info/9781605069777
• Iaconesi, S. , Persico, O. (2011). RWR Read/Write Reality Vol. 1. Rome: FakePress Publishing.
• Jordan, P.W. (2000). Designing pleasurable products: An introduction to the new human factors. Philadelphia: Taylor & Francis.
• Leidner, J. L., Lieberman, M. D. (2011). Detecting geographical references in the form of place names and associated spatial natural language. SIGSPATIAL Special, Newsletter, Special Issue, Volume 3, Issue 2, pp. 5-11. New York: ACM.
• Lynch, K. (1960). The image of the city. Cambridge Mass., USA: MIT Press.
• McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: the extensions of Man. Canada: MCGraw-Hill.
• Mitchell, W. (2005). Placing words: symbols, space, and the city. Cambridge Mass., USA: MIT Press.
• Myers, David G. (2004). Theories of Emotion. Psychology: Seventh Edition. New York, NY: Worth Publishers
• Nahl, D., Bilal, D. (2007). Information and emotion: the emergent affective paradigm in information behavior research and theory. Medford, New Jersey: Information Today, Inc.
• Pearson, E. (2009). All the World Wide Web’s a stage: The performance of identity in online social networks. First Monday, Vol. 14, N. 3. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
• Pickles, J. (2004). A history of spaces: cartographic reason, mapping, and the geo-coded world. New York, USA: Routledge.
• Plutchik, R. (1980). Emotion: Theory, research and experience: Vol. 1. Theories of emotion. New York: Academoc.
• Prinz, J. (2004). Gut Reactions: A Perceptual Theory of Emotion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Quin, T., Xiao, R., Fang, L., Xie, X., Zhang, L. (2010). An efficient location extraction algorithm by leveraging web contextual information. GIS ’10 Proceedings of the 18th SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, pp. 53-60. 2010. New York: ACM.
• Shi, G., Barker, K. (2011). Thematic data extraction from Web for GIS and applications. Spatial Data Mining and Geographical Knowledge Services (ICSDM), 2011 IEEE International Conference on, Proceedings, pp. 273-278. Fuzhou: IEEE.
• Thompson, J. B. (2011). Shifting Boundaries of Public and Private Life. Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 28, N. 4. Cambridge, UK: Sage.
• Turkle, S. (1995) Life on the screen: identity in the age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Shuster.
• Van Hout, M (2004). Getting emotional with… Donald Norman. Design & Emotion. Accessed December 15, 2011, from www.design-emotion.com/2004/12/15/getting-emotional-with-donald-norman
• West, A., Lewis, J., Currie, P. (2009). Students’ Facebook ‘friends’: public and private spheres. New York: Taylor & Francis.
• Zook, M., Graham, M. (2007). From Cyberspace to DigiPlace: Visibility in an Age of Information and Mobility. In H. J. Miller (Ed.), Societies and Cities in the Age of Instant Access. London, UK: Springer.
• Zook, M., Graham, M. (2007). Mapping DigiPlace: Geocoded Internet Data and the Representation of Place. Environment and Planning: Planning and Design, 34. doi: 10.1068/b3311

click here for more info on the Ubiquitous Pompei project

In this lesson we analyzed a series of initiatives which used ubiquitous technologies and a structured approach to interaction on social networks to design innovative scenarios for large-scale events of international relevancy.

The cases shown during the lesson have been selected because of the effectiveness of their design, which achieved the result of both enhancing the experience of the event through novel forms of awareness and interaction, and also to leverage in specific, significative ways the opportunities offered by these technologies.

Chevy at SXSW

At SXSW 2011 Chevrolette designed a complete presence using a series of strategies which allowed them to enact a powerful brand awareness campaign by integrating physical and digital events in really natural ways.

• a series of spaces designed as lounge areas allowed visitors to benefit from free wireless connection and to engage in fun, interesting, socially collaborative activities which also suggested they generate  online content on social networks
• a series of activities involved Chevy cars to provide useful services to visitors, such as giving them rides across the city of Austin; visualizations were used to show in event space the paths of these city traversals, generating beautiful geographical patterns
• all activities had direct evidence on social networks, either by showing in the event the results of the event-relevant communication taking place in real-time on social networks and by providing multiple occasions for visitors to generate online content such as photoshoots, little contests, participatory narratives in conferences to which you could participate by joining in Social Network discussions
• a partnership with Gowalla allowed to offer advanced, fun and unexpected location based services and initiatives which were seamlessly integrated with the overall event experience; for example visitors who were already registered to Gowalla received messages as soon as arriving at Austin’s airport, giving them welcomes, instructions and small games also of the collaborative kind to which to participate
• special events were created specifically for active social network users
• Here is an article describing a couple of additional features of Chevy’s presence at SXSW

Joyce 4th anniversary

A completely different approach was used by Joyce, the exclusive fashion brand, to celebrate their 40th anniversary.

The wish to create an extraordinary experience allowed Joyce to integrate multiple technologies in the event, providing natural interaction techniques such as the following one (see Reactivision for concept on how this works) or projection mapping, turning entire architectures into spectacular screens:

Artvertiser

Through Artvertiser we analyzed the possibility to create augmented vision practices to transform the perception of spaces.

Augmented Shadow

Through the Augmented Shadow project we learned ways in which it is possible to use physical objects to naturally interact with digital processes and narratives, opening up scenarios in which it is possible to invent novel ways to interconnect people, events, places and processes.

Zugara Augmented Shopping

Through the Zugara augmented shopping experience we analyzed how it is possible to take existing practices, such as trying on clothes while shopping, and substantially reinvent them, using novel forms of digital interaction applied to obtain natural forms of interaction.

We then expanded the concept by analyzing the strategies behind the realization of Prada’s concept stores.

Daito Manabe’s Faces

We then investigated on novel uses of technologies which allow to interact directly with people’s bodies. One example was Daito Manabe‘s faces transformation software, allowing you to “wear” the faces of famous people.

Coca Cola Village

Coca Cola Village example was used to analyze how Near Field Communication and social networks could be used to both create exciting experiences in events and to also create powerful communication strategies that can produce and spread novel forms of communication. At the village, guests were given RFID bracelets which they could use when attending the various environments, such as pools, playgrounds and events. Each bracelet was associated with the guest’s Facebook account. By simply passing their arm near a sign depicting the famous Thumb Up of Facebook’s “I Like” action, guests would publish onto the social network that they were having fun performing that specific activity.

Sony Vaio Scavenger Hunt

Then a scenario about a Scavenger Hunt created by Sony for the presentation of their Vaio products was analyzed to understand the use of QRCodes and location based technologies to create participatory events in which the interactions would take place in the space of the city.

The Netherland Film Festival

The Netherland Film Festival used Augmented Reality to create a narrative experience that visitors could access while moving from one venue to the other. Disseminated bits of a story were accessible using augmented reality by pointing a smartphone to passer-by’s, to see callout balloons pop up over their heads, transforming them into unexpected actors of an AR movie.

The Tourist in Dallas and Ralf Lauren’s 4D experience

Then a series of examples of projection mapping techniques was shown to explain how to transform entire architectural surfaces into screens, to visualize both engaging sensorial experiences or to experiment in the visualization of realtime data.

Here below are the slides using during the lesson:

Our contribution will engage the possibility of designing large-scale events using methodologies which allow to create seamless experiences which join together physical and digital environments to achieve multiple objectives.

breakdancing in the street

In the first introductory lesson, we started by analyzing the image above. It shows people watching a breakdancing show in via del Corso in Rome.

What we did was to imagine what was going on beyond the appearances. If we look at it from a specific perspective, all the people in the picture are busy generating ubiquitous digital information. Each of them probably has a mobile phone in their pocket. Some of them are taking pictures, which will possibly end up on social networks and probably be even geo-tagged to associate to them the information about where the shots were taken. Maybe some of them will publish something like “great breakin’ street show in Rome today!” on Twitter. Each of them probably has some sort of digital means of payment, such as ATM or credit card.

From such observations, we figured how multiple layers of activity are simultaneously going on in a single space, and we could imagine representing them visually or in some other form, for example using Augmented Reality, to have the perception of something which goes beyond our “natural” vision of the world we live in, beyond the landscape.

What we envisioned is that it is now possible to transform each physical space into an augmente space, in which ubiquitous technologies can be used to stratify digital information and interactive experiences onto the ordinary reality.

This produces an entire new vision for our cities and, more in general, for our physical spaces, which now are able to embed digital information creating novel scenarios for the activities  of our daily lives.

We interpreted this as a generalization of the term Screen.

screens everywhere

We are used to seeing screens everywhere in one way or the other.

Each advertisement, each led display, each timetable at the train station, each menu outside a restaurant, each weather and temperature display, each microwave oven. Multiple things in our environment show information in ways which we would have no problem in defining as “screens”: surfaces of some kind showing information and/or narratives.

Some places are more explicit in being filled with screens, such as Times Square (NY), shown in the image above.

Yet it non difficult to imagine how it is possible to transform virtually any surface into a screen designed to show information and offer opportunities for interactivity.

Through Ubiquitous technologies, mobile devices, augmented reality, location based systems, near field computing, sensors, electronics, wearable devices, electronic gadgets, smartphones and multiple types of display technologies, each space, each surface and even thin air can become a screen, radically augmenting the physical environment by layering onto (and interweaving into) it multiple digital experiences.

We noted how this approach radically changes the definition of public space.

In its classical definition, public space is somewhat a description of borders, of boundaries, which we, public administrations, cultures, common practices, symbols and temporary agreements define as such.

In this new scenario, public space becomes a simultaneous compresence of multiple definitions. By adding an Augmented Reality layer to a space I can transform it into a public space for discussion, for example. In that same space I can add other opportunities for public, shared interaction, which may or may not be related to one another. Furthermore, people from diverse locations can converge into a single digital public space and, thus, into a physical space, as the information and narratives which they generate materialize in a single location regardless of where or when they have been generated.

This approach transforms space/time into a read/write framework for multiple simultaneous forms of expression.

Such possibilities drastically interact with our notion and perception of place.

In his book “The Image of the City” Kevin Lynch describes the ways in which we recognize places, the elements which we use in our perception of place to identify it: aesthetics, materials, lights, configurations of buildings and streets, signage, people’s walking patterns… In the consideration of an augmented place (Digiplace,as Zook & Graham describe it) we experience a different geography: emergent; ubiquitous; multiple; open-ended; capable of hosting at the same time multiple perspectives, layers of information, narratives.

This issue calls for new methodologies in designing space and the processes which take place in it, across time, geography and ubiquitous digital presence and interaction.

The need to positively design this new idea of space, which fluidly mixes physical and digital domains, requires modifications to our practices.

This is exactly our approach in our contribution to the Master of Exhibit Design:

• Create a novel vocabulary, a novel language, a novel usage grammar for space, in which digital tools, ubiquitous technologies, screens and interactions form a series of new possibilities, materials, methodologies which can be used to design space and the processes which take place in it, taking into account the idea of a space which is multi-layered, interactive, emergent, in which multiple people and information can converge ubiquitously, and which can be interconnected in real-time with all the parts of the planet;
• focus on the technologies and methodologies which we can use to enact these processes, and learn how to keep up with their rapid evolution, constantly identifying new tools and “materials” to design spaces and interactions, and integrating them into our design practice;
• learn how design processes change, to account for these additional possibilities;
• learn how to activate these new ideas for space, connecting them to social networks and ubiquitous experiences, using computers, mobile phones, smartphones, devices, gadgets, interactive systems, natural interactions and, most of all, creating the narratives and cognitive accessibility and effectiveness which are able to let people tune in to the novel possibilities and modalities.

During the lessons we will focus on the following approach:

lessons approach

There will be a horizontal and a vertical classification of the themes discussed in the lessons:

• vertically, we will perform activities which will engage three main issues:
• natural interaction, meaning the modalities of digital interaction which are implemented using common, natural, physical, widely known and accessible gestures and practices, such as touching/moving physical objects, wearing devices under the form of pieces of clothing, traversing spaces with interactive features in them, looking at things, speaking, showing ourselves or objects to vision devices, triggering sensors with our behaviour
• screens, in the many ways in which we can imagine to create a screen today, using those technologies and methodologies which permit to realize portable screens, screens on smartphones, transforming objects into information displays, transforming entire architectural surfaces into screens, and understanding the concepts and methodologies according to which we are able to publish information and opportunities for interaction onto them, from the incredibly small, to the incredibly large;
• next-step social networks, investigating the ways in which it is possible to ubiquitously interconnect people, engage them in events or processes of other kinds, create information in real time using sensors, interactions, content harvested from social networks, interconnecting person to person, person to place, person to object, object to object, visualizing this information and allowing people to naturally and accessibly interact with it.
• horizontally we will analyze issues which cover the whole scenario of designing public space and the processes which take place in it:
• the methodologies which allow innovation to take place, including the adoption of technologies
• the mutation of design practices, to take into account the possibilities offered by ubiquitous technologies and natural interactions
• the activation of this new form of space/time/process, by designing the strategies of the multi-modal, trans-media communication which becomes a fundamental element in the creation of place

We will do all of this starting from the idea of the Great Event.

A Great Event, such as the Olympics, major conventions, city-wide happenings, film festivals and things like that, are peculiar in the fact that they create important processes in the city for the length of their duration.

A city is a specific type of place, as in its territory multiple processes, of large, medium and small scales, constantly interweave, engaging society, administrations, companies, groups of citizens, and addressing major issues such as health, security, mobility, environment and pollution, energy, law, regulations, cultures, commerce.

The creation of a major event in a city requires multiple types of action, and the design of the event itself is only one of them, the others being the search for a suitable location; the establishment of relationships with local administrators, companies, citizen representatives; the request for licenses and permissions; the assessment of issues related to health and security; the dialogue with organizers, sponsors and territorial subjects. This type of overall activity describes a Great Event as an ecosystem of practices with great impact on the urban texture of the place it is organized in, from points of view which are economic, commercial, social, cultural, communicational, and requiring different types of interventions on both the territorial configuration and on the administrative, bureaucratic and civic apparatuses of the city.

In the following lessons of the course we will focus on the ways in which a Great Event can be designed to incorporate the technologies and methodologies described above into the definition of a city-wide process which is able not only to realize an harmonious and effective interrelation between physical and digital spaces, but also to promote novel practices which are able to interconnect people worldwide, across cultures, languages and approaches.

The Great Event which we will describe will take place in a physical location, but it will also interconnect in real-time people from all over the planet. In the physical space natural interactions, ubiquitous screens and networked processes will allow people to produce and experience real-time information and to relate, learn, and participate in novel ways, suggesting new scenarios for entertainment, citizenship, commerce, knowledge, culture and awareness.

Here below you can find the slides used in the first, introductory lesson.

Here Below are some of the videos used during the lesson:

This changed the ways in which we work, learn, relate, consume, communicate, love.

Enlarge Your Consciousness in 4 days 4 free

Enlarge Your Consciousness in 4 Days 4 Free uses people’s real time emotional expressions on social networks to animate a physical installation.

The emotions of millions of users on social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and FourSquare are harvested in real time (using open available APIs and techniques such as Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning) and used to give life to physical manifestations and info-aesthetic visualizations.

The project is the result of a wonderful collaboration between Salvatore Iaconesi / Oriana Persico (Art is Open Source) and Lara Mezzapelle / Giacomo Deriu.

Enlarge Your Consciousness in 4 Days 4 Free will be officially launched at BT’F Contemporary Art Gallery Friday, January 27th 2012 at 7pm, and is an official initiative of Arte Fiera OFF.

Here is the address:

BTF Art Gallery
Via Castiglione 35
40124 Bologna

Here are some useful links:

Enlarge Your Consciousness in 4 Days 4 Free

http://artisopensource.net/eyci4d4f/

Art is Open Source

http://www.artisopensource.net

Mezzapelle – Deriu

http://www.mezzapelle-deriu.com/

BTF Contemporary Art Gallery

http://www.btfgallery.com/

on Espoarte

http://www.espoarte.net/2012/01/espoarte-75-primavera-2012/

on Il Pensiero Artistico

http://www.ilpensieroartistico.eu/?p=5133

Ubiquitous Pompei

Carlo Infante published a wonderful article on L’Unità, comparing the Ubiquitous Pompei project to his practices of Urban Experience. Thank you Carlo!

(you can download the PDF of the article by clicking here)

And then a coverage of the project appeared here on Post Interface

Be sure to check out the website for Ubiquitous Pompei here:

http://www.artisopensource.net/pompeiAR

and to keep track about the project on FakePress Publishing’s website here:

http://www.fakepress.it/FP/?p=2124

More news coming up in these next few days!

You can find it here: http://www.artisopensource.net/versus-cities/

VersuS the realtime lives of cities

We will officially present it as part of a novel form of radio show, in which a musical voyage through the cities of the planet will allow us to experience in realtime the emotions expressed by people through social networks.

Music, as other forms of expression, originates from the cultures, backgrounds, emotions and desires of people living in cities, territories and immersed in landscapes and visions. The sounds, fragrances, environments, economies, events of those places generate the sounds which artists express in their music.

VersuS the realtime lives of cities

We can imagine music to be, in a way, a generative form of art, through which the emotions, sensations and visions of people are expressed in aesthetic ways.

Today, we benefit from novel forms of expression, using ubiquitous technologies and networks, and we constantly generate information about our feelings and visions through the many digital interconnections which are interweaved with every part of our daily activity, either voluntarily or even without knowing about it.

With the VersuS (and ConnectiCity) project, we explored the ways in which we can become active observers of this scenario, capturing and interpreting the emotions, feelings, sensations, desires and visions of our cities, as expressed by people using digital devices and ubiquitous technologies, and by the city itself, through sensors and realtime information.

VersuS the realtime lives of cities

In this occasion, we wish to create a tool that can be used to represent and interact with this richness of information, to better understand the cities we live in, and to become more aware and conscious of our environment and of the human population sharing with us our urban spaces.

The VersuS project aims at creating novel ways in which it is possible to listen to cities in real-time.

On January 5th, we will perform a voyage through music, exploring cities, the sounds that have originated in them over the years, and at the same time looking at the emotions which are expressed in realtime in those same locations, finding clues about what people  think, experience, feel, express, and how it relates to the ways in artists capture and represent the essence of urban spaces.

here below you can find the press release, we hope you will be able to join us in this experience.

(NOTE: the project in this version uses the 3D earth and libraries provided in one of the examples of the Three.js 3D javascript library by MrDoob, is created using WebGL and is best experienced on Chrome browsers)

PRESS RELEASE:

Travel through 6 cities, in Italy, Europe and the United States. A live performance capturing in real time the emotions of cities, in an open dialogue with music.

On January 5th 2012, on RaiTunes, the sounds of Alessio Bertallot meet the hybrid, neo-real worlds of Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico. The language of radio will be  contaminated with the language of new media arts, generating novel forms of expression and narratives.

Starting at 11pm and up to 11:40pm, “VersuS, the real time lives of cities” will be showcased in an entirely new version created to interact in real time with the RaiTunes playlist.

This version of the VersuS project will be officially presented during the broadcast, in which listeners will be invited to a realtime voyage into music and the emotions of London, New York, Philadelphia, Berlin, Bristol and Milan.

Moving from city to city, Alessio Bertallot will lead the audience through the discovery of the music that originates in those places, expression of concrete and flesh.

Simultaneously, planet earth will revolve towards the cities: a plunging zoom will allow us to experience cities’ chitchat in front of our eyes; the messages which people, in that moment, are exchanging on social networks will be captured, analyzed, and shown over the places in which they originated, in a dynamic, neo-real, visualization, showing in realtime the sensations of the people which live in that city, transforming us into global eyes, in emotional voyeurs of the whole planet.

January 5th, 11pm – 11:40pm, on RaiTunes.

Realtime updates and dialogue with Alessio Bertallot and the creators of VersuS will take place on RaiTunes’ Facebook page.

SITE: http://www.raitunes.rai.it/

FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/AlessioBertallot?ref=ts

This project on FakePress: http://www.fakepress.it/FP/?p=2140

more info here: Ubiquitous Pompei