i n t e r a c t i v e_t o u c h…

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.