Have managed to both make and save video in processing and are pretty proud.

Also managed to trigger the camera with RFID which is another achievement seen from a certain standard. Now there will be a trickyer part networking it, and making the collage…. And making the experience interesting and fun and social.

At the moment I think we are about to set up a little idea bank. Here are just the thoughts for he moment. the stronger once are getting visualized as we speak. We have categorized the ideas on the basis of what is the main attribute to the idea.

PLAY:

TAGGING:

Tag other people to leave some traces of yourself on that person. This could be done by the user having multiple tags to leave on people, or by using readers writers on the telephone

The act would be to leave traces without the inflicting party knowing about it. This is ideal as an flirting tool. When you want people to explore you and who you are. 

The inspiration came from the notes we used to make when we where little. “kick me”.

The interaction could also be as simple as that you just leave your identity on the other person, and then it would be up to that person to explore u further.

This idea needs a back end system where all the people are registered in tha same database.This could be combined with a sort of memory base as well.

It may also be combined with some sort of a “surveillance system”.

COLLECTING PEOPLE:

A game where the task is to collect most friends, the friendship must of course be volunteer and “real”. The person that has the most contacts wins. This combined with a rewarding output the more friends you have. So that it is a motivation for doing that interaction again and again. This could be displayed on a large board. 

PLING PLONG WALL;

A wall where you can several people at the same time explore the content and each other. It could also be a wall where you could make statements.

It could be a collaboration that there would be different outcome for the different places you put your tag, and different output depending on how many uses the the wall at the same time.

It could be as easy as an music or sound installation. collaborative.

Maybe you could customize you sound somewhere and then play it there together with other people. It could also be that the wall only works when all the statins are talken at the same time. this means that people must cooperate for it to work, and maybe ask strangers to help them interact.

The wall could also be a way of displaying your mood, and tracking

CLIMBING WALL; 

a little similar than the above. Only that people needs to physically interact ant climb to get to the highest point. When people reach this point the camera starts shooting an the participants get their statue displayed at the large screen at the festival.

This is a way of letting people know that you are at the festival, it is fun easy and simple.

WATER SPRINKLER;

On hot days when people place their cards in the right pattern ol. The water turns on and they get wet.

THE SOCIAL BALL;

inspired by the interactive ball changing color when you touch it, we thought it would be could if this ball reflected your relationship to the previous who touched the ball.  If you are very close, eg have done many interactions together maybe liking the same music or whatever really. The ball would maybe have the strongest color etc.

This could be done with a reader and a zigbee inside the ball.

POOP MIXER;

when you go to the toilet a sample is taken of the sound you make beeing there, later when you can go and jamme the sounds with your friends . Maybe not the best way to pick up a girl. But fun, possibly.

MUSIC MIXER;

Mix music together either with your own samples, or sound samples premade for you maybe everybody has their own unique sound.

Then you can jam with you friend, and record it . And then people can vote on their favorite music piece.

KARAOKE;

Karaoke with headphones…..You start the machine by touching your tag.  People can sing together. Works as “pausemusikk” between the concerts. The same song and then everybody is displayed, filmed for a few second.

CAR;

How many people can you fit into a car…..

The car detects who are in the car at the same time, the car starts shouting more more, more, and encourages people to come and play. The more people the more interesting it gets.

TAU TREKKING;

The people on each side are being paired up, when you wind the rope then something happens. Good old fun, 

CLIMBING TREES; TREE HOUSE: 

you must collaborate to get to the top, and this is done by multiple people touching different parts of the thing at the same time.

COLLABORATION;

IMMIDIATE vs REFLECTIVE;

Every station must be operated by several people at the same time, the system strats to gossip about thees person. On a local level.

Visula total output, something growing, a ballon thats get bigger and bigger.

SEESAW;

intoxicating tester. 

CRISIS;

all the time we have been fascinated with the fact that at times of crisis people tend to talk with people that they usually would not talk to, this is somewhat not necessarily what people like to do, but we still think that it would be a great way to make people interact with strangers. Of course this would have to be done extremely clever to work,. But I do think it would have some potential at least.

One idea is to make umbrellas that only opens up when people that doesn’t know each other touches the thing. THis would require a back end system where your friends are

This could be done in other ways as well of course but water is pretty harmless.

COMMUNICATION;

JUNGLE TELEGRAPH:  

Interactive displays around the festivals, high up in the air  like balloons, resembling the old times fire for alert.

These could be used as a way displaying information about the different stages.Like how many people , who likes it. the activity level, how many people. How many beers etc.

STATIONS;

Different stations around the arena. A way of displaying your thoughts. It could add up in a great big noisy board that could display things like

” Martin thinks this is boring”

This concept is not very interesting if you don´t know martin though.

HIDE AND SEEK;

A little hide and seek theme. Familiar strangers kind of thing in physical form.  At every touchpoint you will be registered and the system start calculating who you are most alike so to speek. Everything based on the number of beers  you have had what kind of concerts you have watched, etc, etc. When you are very close to that person an alarm will go off. And if you find that person you can you would probably have something to talk about.

This also gives a possibilities to stalk people ypu like and manage to make them me meet you in a apparently.  random, magic way. Like faith.

Give the system the opportunity to be a fortune teller.

FORTUNETELLER;

Based on the facts and data of you in the database, the system will give you clues on what will happen to you when and your chosen one. The more you have in common the brighter the future.

This could be love handles etc.

GOSSIP BOARD;

Another idea up that alley. Based on the data in the system, the system starts to pore out fake gossip about the people standing around it. or touching it…. Like PHIL likes Hannah.

He watched her in the toilet.

Kine wants KIm to kiss her etc.

Sara has had 12 beers and should go home.

laila is in love with Per. This could lead to laughter, bizarreness. and simple fun….

Could have potential of misuse like if youget to understand that you can manipulate the gossip according to what you do.

REFLECTIVE

FACEBOOK;

mirror mirror; 

when you wash your hands your latest friend who went to the toilet is appearing in the window. We thought it would bee cool if you got some notion of who are in the festival and who are not so to speak. In this concept, your friend list from facebook is added to the festival database and throughout the festival you get glimpses of your friends.

This stems from a thought that you could play a game like hide and seek, and try to find your friends.

Shake you friends; 

was another touchpoint that we thought about in this context. It has the same affordances as the above, but this time you can shake the ball to see different friends.

Flickr; 

the last touchpoint, when you enter the festival as you use the entrance touch points the system sees you and as you walk along pictures of the friends that are currently at the festivals starts to flickr. 

A sort of ambient way of displaying who you know at the festival.

WALLPAPER;

Like a huge wall that will mirror who is interacting with it on the other side, a somewhat see trough system, that gives an visual kind of appearance on the other side. The wallpaper is alive according to who is there.

The wallpaper could also give some info in an graphical way on the state of the festival.

Like a seismographic 

THE PARK BENCH;

in the same area as the others, the bench is revealing what has been going on there before. The seat could warm if somebody you know have been sitting there.  Maybe the bench could work as a display for projecting ghost like images of others that have been there, appealing in the sense that it has a possibility to display some sort of a narrative. that you get a glimpse into other peoples lives so to speak.

A camera can record your actions ore something.

EAVESDROPPING;

AMBIENT;

VIGGO; 

The friendless egg. VIggo is the shape of a huge egg with peepholes into his inner soul. The thought was that the outside should be an ambient display for the total activity of the festival,  and the inside should be a personal display, showing your network. ol.

We thought that VIggo could have several touch points, peek holes so that people could interact with him simultaneously. 

Another thought was that Viggo could be a very abusive type, hailing in people by shouting, and acting more and more drunk the more beer had been bought and consumed of the people at the festival.

He would be like a festival pet that people had to take care of.

Like a huge community based tammagocchi.

INFORMATION;

MAP;

LIke a information board, map of where your friends was last seen. And people you have made connections to. When more people touch you can se the connections between you and your friends. do you know some of the same persons. etc.

REVIEWS; 

Get information at the festival according to your profile, like the review of your favorite reviewer. The bands you should listen to etc, This could be an application that could be useful anyhow.

SOUND STATIONS;

What are being played at the other stages right now,  you could use the rfid tag to active or give a all to another phone boot and somebody will pick it up and you can talk to that person.

MEMORY;

the tag is collecting memories for you as you go about the festival. Some you are aware of an d some are you not aware of. YOU could use this memory database as a means when getting in touch with new people, like what do we now have in common?

EXPLORE;

QUE;Discover the person standing in line with you, make things to talk about. as you are standing in the que you can read the wristband and the information starts to float. 

HUNTING GAME;everybody can leave and retrive messages from other people.

On can selv programme the tags that you where, and the tags reveal different kind of information. Differnet information leeds to different clues.

The person in question is responsible for the clues didplayed himself.When a person little clue appars,  people who touch that person will get a treat of some sort.You can collect friends in this manner.

SECRET SURVEILLANCE;as you interact with things you will end up on tape.At the stations as you use them you turn on a camera that you cant see, this is broadcast at the festival in realtime.

Make it so that people start exploring the whereabouts of the cameras. After a while you may see that people starts to misuse the installation, showing their buttoms etc.

A little paparazzi feel to it.

EXPRESS;

RATING;

Rate the concert,  later you can see the other people that had the same preferences as you. Common ground.

After fridays midterm review we are in the process of not redefining our project, but to get bak on track of what we really want to achieve. The main idea of the project was to make people interact more with other people and not with installations.

So back to square one….

It really is not that bad but we definitely needs to take a u-turn at this point and se where we are heading this time. Sometimes it is hard to keep track on what we really are looking for.

The starting point for this task was the fascination of RFID being represented in the physical world and to use this fact in a attempt to bring people closer together in the real world.

Following are a lot of thoughts that needs revising and sorting…

I am fascinated by urban gaming, but it doesent feel all right in forcing people into this kind of games.

The feedback and the meaning of the interaction and the interaction with RFID needs to be really worthwile and rewarding for it to be an ultimate experience.

Feedback as you do the interaction.Total feedback, total reward.

What we want people to do is to explore other people, and explore other places, new kinds of music.

It needs to be fun doing both the interaction with other people, but also with the physical RFID part of the interaction.

What can happen if you collect people?

Tom Igoes students game with the points that you get/loose is an example of a project that aims at making people interact more with each other. The points taken and given beeing the motivating part and a way of showing your popularity.

It might sometimes be a hinder to be to realistic when coming up with ideas…. And concept, to many constraints.

So what to do?

Go over and categorize all the ideas made so fare… See if we can use them in making people interact more with each other.

Have another workshop focusing on gaming play awards and people to people interaction.

Go out and studie how people interact with each other and also how they get in contact with new people.

Look more into the rituals of touch,  look into what is allow and what is not allowed in social settings.

Try to analyze why people in festivals are more open for play, and really take advantage of this fact when making the concept.

Look deeper into the materiality of festivals, touch, and RFID.

Thougths on technology in festivals.

Introduction of technology at festivals. Keep it low-tech!

Down to earth;

RFID as the dirty end of technology;

Make it a natural experience!

Ideas;

Social tools…. in festival;

Social objects of festivals;

Play;

Social interaction;

Origo; People needs to registerer before entering the festival. This will make the implementation of any kind of concept easier.

Design brief; Guidelines; What do we want to achieve; The goal of the project;

We want people to interact more in festivals with new people;

RFID as an social enhancer in the physical world. 

Add a social layer with RFID;

Make some assumptions and stick to them:

social networking på festival.

Ubiquitous computing!

Social norms.

Misbehavior. use this to our advantage.

Ambient displays: Get away from the the screens!!!!!!!!!!! Very important for the context::: get a feel of low tech: 

Usefulness???? Should it be useful, for the festival, for the people;

Human Factors in Computing Systems

IDEAS;  

What you do with people has an grater impact, you can see if you have been an active person or not. If you have connected to many people or not.

Every station must be operated by several people at the same time, the system starts to gossip about thees persons. On a local level. Realtime feedback.

Visual total output, something growing, a ballon thats get bigger and bigger.(from before)

How drunk the festival is….  How many beers have they been drinking.

The state of the festival displayed on an ambient display. 

Turn everyting into a game:

Hunting game , eveyody can leave and retrive messages from other people, directly on the people.

One can selv programme the tags that you where, and the tags reveal different kind of information. Differnet information leeds to different clues.

 The person in question is responsible for the clues displayed on himself. 

When a persons little clue appars people who touch that person will get a treat of some sort.

You can collect friends.

The system will keep track of who you are interacting with.

Collect the memories from the festival for you.

Every time you touch a person you leave a little bit of yourself on that peson, and its up to that person to try to find out who you are. You can display your popularity on the festival. Or the more you touch the more you reveal of yourself, like a physical human puzzle.

A game that uses you as an totally new person….?

What are interesting bit of narratives that a person can display?

What are interesting for everybody to see?

The festival as an living organism, what you contribute to it will make state of the festival change.

Collaborative art project.

What is important is to give people:

A feeling of contribution

A feeling of collaboration

A feeling of belonging

A feeling of living,breating

A feeling of natural interaction.

Ambient displays- AT A GLANCE DISPLAYS. _vibration, heat, etc as well.

It has been almost a month since my last confession…  Very bad blogging indeed since I find that every time I do blog it helps me to structure my thoughts.   

The physical computing week with Tom went fairly well, but we didn’t actually end up with a working platform prototype or probing device of any sort wich is a shame. But I at least got an better understanding of how to build prototypes I think.

We got Tom to help us with setting up multiple readers that where hooked up to one output which is a starting point for multiple inputs in an aera. And we  (or Tom) also managed to make pictures pop up from the different readers according to person.And the same features using Zig Bees to transmit the data, which I found a little magic in itself.  

Tom also showed us that it is possible for for ex. processing to get information from other sites like facebook. We specifically tried to get the friends list from facebook. This proved to be difficult for, and needs a special library that has not been written yet. But it is possible and that is interesting  

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. 

“Human beings do not socialize in a completely random way. There’s a tangible reason for us being together, that ties us together. Again, that reason is called the Social Object. Social Networks form around Social Objects, not the other way around.” Hugh MacLeod at www.gapingvoid.comAnother interesting article about social objects from the same author her.

I am finally understanding that these two concepts are fare from the same. Social objects are the shared or common ground for why a social interaction occurs. The social life of objects are the objects life itself.  Of course can the social life of object be a social object, like is the case with Thinglink.But a given object itself is not a social object per se… So a 2 liter thermos is not in itself a social object, but lets say a shared interest in outdoor activity would be. So social objects are not tangible in that sense.This is probably obvious but I had to get my head around it.