nicolasnova's posterous

Locative media remained the stuff of demos and art-technology festivals until 2008 when Apple released the GPS-enabled iPhone 3G. Paradoxically, the mass realization of locative media seems to have taken the wind out of its sails as an art form. Although courses on writing apps proliferate in art and architecture programmes, the promise of locative media seems to remain just that: a promise, its transformational ambitions forever enshrined in William Gibson’s Spook Country (2007), a novel which, tellingly, was set not in the future but in the recent past.

Why do I blog this? The quote echoes with my feeling and it's the second time this week that I encounter such comment about locative media. I actually don't know what it means about the use of this technology but I guess we'll see pretty soon how users repurpose such devices and services to their own context and interests.

In the fifteen years since Derrida first used this term, hauntology, and the related term, hauntological, have been adopted by the British music critic Simon Reynolds to describe a recurring influence in electronic music created primarily by artists in the United Kingdom who use and manipulate samples culled from the past (mostly old wax-cylinder recordings, classical records, library music, or postwar popular music) to invoke either a euphoric or unsettling view of an imagined future. The music has an anachronistic quality hinting at an unrecognizable familiarity that is often dreamlike, blurry, and melancholic—what Reynolds describes as “an uneasy mixture of the ancient and the modern.

Why do I blog this? I ran across several occurrences of this term recently, both in academic paper and music columns. There seems to be something intriguing here that can perhaps be connected to current discussion and work about the circulation of cultural elements (Basile's work), atemporality and the relationship between the past and the future.

Just read on gameplanet.co.nz:

Rather than trying to program enemy AI to think, behave and play like a human, developers simply imbue them with increased hit points, better statistics, or any number of favourable benefits whilst removing the same attributes from the players themselves. Manipulating these variables commonly forms the structure of a difficulty level.

In the quest to present the player with an action-packed experience, developers often sacrifice realism to keep the story flowing, or keep the participant at the crest of a wave. It's unlikely, after all, that precise emulation of a Special Forces raid in war-torn Afghanistan would lend itself well to the gaming publi

Why do I blog this? Artificial Intelligence is one of these Holy Grails some people are looking for. The term itself is fascinating as it encapsulates some sort of magic. Referring to something as "AI" leads to some expectations on the part of the observers and it's funny to see how people in the video-game industry describes the evolution of such tech.

Bloom.io seems to be an interesting platform and their tag-line is just fantastic.

"Our mission to bring you a new type of visual discovery experience is already underway. We’re building a series of bite-sized applications that bring the richness of game interactions and the design values of motion graphics to the depth and breadth of social network activity, locative tools, and streaming media services.  These new ‘visual instruments’ will help you explore your digital life more fluidly and see patterns and rhythms in the online services you care about. And they’re coming to a tablet, media console, or modern web browser near you!"

Why do I blog this? it seems to be an interesting platform for what Fabien calls "sketching with data. The motivation from Bloom's team is quite relevant too:

""The ways in which people interact with computation are changing swiftly as we move into more casual relationships with our digital services on tablets, big screens, and across social networks. We believe we have some compelling answers about how digital experiences will evolve into these new contexts. Please, follow along with us and explore these playful, dynamic instruments of discovery together."

"Because the primary input method of the iPad is a single piece of multitouch glass, developers have incredible flexibility to design unique user interfaces. It’s hard to appreciate the variety of UIs though, since turning the screen off removes virtually all evidence of them. To spotlight these differences, I looked at the only fragments that remain from using an app: fingerprints."

Why do I blog this? It's interesting to observe how this quick hack enables to observe touch interface usage patterns very easily. The idea here is to benefit from physical traces to describe the accumulation of interaction over time. It would be fun to add a temporal dimension to this.

Much of what is put under the “smart city” umbrella has actually been around for a decade or more. Bit by bit (or byte by byte), we’ve been retrofitting various city systems and networks with devices that count, measure, record, and connect. (...) The current euphoria, however, centers around a more costly, difficult-to-implement vision. Rather than retrofitting old cities, the buzz today is about building entire smart cities from scratch in a matter of a few years (hence the alternative name “instant city”)
(...)
The first phase of intelligent cities is exciting. (...) The act of installing, experimenting, testing, or discovering—all of this can generate innovations, both practical and those that exist mainly in the minds of weekend scientists. (...) But the ensuing phase is what worries me; it is charged with negative potentials. From experimentation, discovery, and open-source urbanism, we could slide into a managed space where “sensored” becomes “censored.
(...)
The challenge for intelligent cities is to urbanize the technologies they deploy, to make them responsive and available to the people whose lives they affect. Today, the tendency is to make them invisible, hiding them beneath platforms or behind walls—hence putting them in command rather than in dialogue with users. One effect will be to reduce the possibility that intelligent cities can promote open-source urbanism, and that is a pity. It will cut their lives short. They will become obsolete sooner. Urbanizing these intelligent cities would help them live longer because they would be open systems, subject to ongoing changes and innovations. After all, that ability to adapt is how our good old cities have outlived the rise and fall of kingdoms, republics, and corporations.

Why do I blog this? Some interesting elements, to be considered after the series of workshop we had at Lift11 this week (about smart cities and the use of urban data).

Last April, Henk Hofstra created an "urban river" in Drachten, Holland. The Blue Road installation is an example of what mind-blowing urban public art can be.

Featuring 1000 metres of road painted blue and the phrase "Water is Life" written in eight-metre-high letters across it, the Blue Road is reminiscent of the waterway that used to be where the road is now. It's a memorial to nature, but it's also just plain awe-inspiring. There's even a few cool tidbits along the road, like a sinking car.

Sifteo cubes are a true game system. Each cube is equipped with a full color display, a set of sensing technologies, and wireless communication. During gameplay, the cubes communicate with a nearby computer via the USB wireless link. Manage your games and buy new ones using the Sifteo application installed on your computer. Each cube packs a full color LCD, a 3D motion sensor, wireless communication, a peppy CPU and more. Your computer connects to the cubes via the included Sifteo USB wireless link.

Why do I blog this? this seems to be an intriguing "networked object" platform. I like the idea of creating applications/gameplay based on the interactions between several cubes.

"Would you know if a dear, but seldom seen, friend happened to be on the same train as you? The proximeter is both an agent that tracks the past and future proximity of one’s social cloud, and an instrument that charts this in an ambient display. By reading existing calendar and social network feeds of others, and abstracting these into a glanceable pattern of paths, we hope to nuture within users a social proprioception and nudge them toward more face-to-face interactions when opportunities arise."

Why do I blog this? although I am not sure about the use case (and how it may lead to some new quirky social behavior), I find interesting FOR ONCE to see a location-awareness device that is not focused on the present/real-time. The idea here is rather to give some information about the near future... and I would find interesting to have this sort of representation only as am ambient display at home: no mobile version, only some simple insights before heading elsewhere.

The intent of this project was to create animism in an object, with the use of programmable BlinkM® LEDs. We were interested in books because, as a set of objects, they still had a degree of individuality which we wanted to bring forward. By accentuating the character that the titles already exuded, we were able to develop each personality in unique ways, furthering the books from their common mass–produced ancestry. This experiment came close to becoming a psychoanalysis of an object–exploring themes of ego, vulnerability, intellect, and self-awareness.

Why do I blog this? curious project about books and how they can be enriched with "Individuality" features through technology.