i n t e r a c t i v e_t o u c h…

After a very interesting talk with Mosse and Timo yesterday, we have been struggeling to really define what we want to do for the next week…The main idea was to make some sort of probing device to get some answers to the questions building up,but Timo suggested that we make a platform for testing different interactions, different feedbacks, touchpoint and so on.

A platform that we can combine with sensors, sound and  visual output.He also made a point to how to make interesting output out of small data. It would be interesting to try to make a platform where you can  choose the number of input.

 A platform where you can add several readers that could affect the output simultaneously. But at this point I really feel that my lack of knowledge in physical computing is keeping me from seeing exactly how this would go about and is hindering me to see all the possibilities that obviously  are right in front of us.

But I think we will go for that solution, to make a platform that can deal with several inputs at once and see how we can make something interesting of the data colleccted. 

I really need to find out why my “line breaks” dont appear when i post the text, very annoying and I know it is hard to read…       Suggestions?

After these first weeks of the major project we have been trough a lot of research, trying to find interesting themes to work around. We have been introduced to physical computing by Einar, read the design briefs over and over again to luke out the most interesting parts. A part of the research was to find state of the art projects that where inspiring and maybe starting points for ones own project. The common themes for the projects I like is social, collaborative, sharing, tangible, tracing, networking, explorative, mapping.    In the light of this we started to look into how RFID could enhance everyday social physical interactions. This is of course a very broad theme. I at least find it quite intriguing that RFID takes place in the physical world, that it is nearfield communication. One of the inspirations of this is grounded in the tendency for social interactions to become more and more part of net based networks and that human to human interaction in the real world is suffering a bit from this phenomenon. It is always tempting and dangerous  to try to gape over to much in the same time, and when i initially started to think in the terms of social RFID, I saw big system implemented in the city, maybe games that engaged the whole city and basically made the world a better place. Then a very vice master student, namely Una, reminded me that it is not always about creating something competely new and breathtaking, but about adding a new meanigful layer on top of something that already exists to make that experience more satisfying. We have also tried to find phenomenons in the real world  that we could play around to make new kinds of interactions. The major ting about human interaction is that it is never random, by that I mean that there is always areason for people to inetract. Some sort of common ground, shared interest or shared experiences that makes people talk.One example of this is the phenomenon of crisis, where people that never have met before starts talking. And this may not be major crisis, it could be really heavy rain, a person behaving very strange, or other unexpected things. The important thing is that it gives people a shared experience that they like to talk about. This I think is very interesting phenomenon, and I think it is important to have this in mind all the way trough the project.Together with Martin we have now decided to work in the context of festivals, festivals are places where a lot of people, and very different people more or less interact with each other. They do already have a shared interest, namely music that brings them together in the first place. The fact that people usually are quite open and ready for play in these settings is inspiring as well. And will make it easier to implement a system for interaction than in the streets of Oslo city for example. Norwegian are famous for being quite stiff and minding their own business…But in settings like festivals this tends to be quite opposite, this of course has to do with the level of alcohol consumption, but also probably the common acceptance of behaving differently than normal.(It is a bit like when Norwegians goes to Grand Canaria.) Well anyhow, the bottom line is that we are working in the field of social interaction trough RFID, the context is set to festivals where we imagine that RFID is implemented in the now common wristband, which gives everybody attending the festival an unique ID for us to play around. Aah, and also we see the possibility in using the spring party at AHO to test some of the concepts we might end up with…. 

Random encounters , random connections, forced relationship are words that enters my mind as I am going trough the material from the workshop. The idea of working with a social context around uncomfortableness is somewhat interesting but I am not sure if it is wished for/ or needed in that manner.   We are looking into which settings/contexts that could gain on making a somewhat new social object that could ease or make the interaction between people more comfortable or just more fun. Social settings where a lot of people meet, like conferences and festivals could be an interesting starting point. We keep on discussing what a physical Facebook would look like, but more what it would feel like. An observation is that it is much easier to add friends and contacts in the “virtual world” , in the physical world it is a much higher threshold for doing this. One explanation might be that the social object is somewhat more visible in based social settings.  One idea is to make the common ground for people that does not know each other more visible trough the use of RFID, a place where you could perhaps find your shared memories. Some sort of a sharing device. This comes from the fact that most online network are based on sharing of some sort. There are some projects that somewhat deals with this, the photo booth from the Mediamatic workshop is one example.  Other ideas circle around making people interact that otherwise wouldn’t interact.I find it quite hard to get a grasp of this project, but it is all about making choices with is probably the worst thing at least I do. It is the feeling that you are ruling out possibilities that you doesn’t know exists.  Collaboration, sharing, exploration are words that I would like to base the project on.  How can we make people explore and interact with new people and places trough RFID? is maybe a better problem defentition. But this have to be discussed. 

Here are the slides from the first presentation of the major project this year.  Read the rest of this entry »