Listening to birds between meetings

Dana's work is always so delicate, inspiring and challenging. Here is her WildUrban Radio. My take on it is that you just need to turn the knob to listen to a variety of birds from your area. The radio is mapped directly to your location and you can hear the smallest species directing you closer to them whether you are going North or South ....
I have ordered one of those from her and will update on my productivity level asap.

Art for the World of Warcraft

I used to play World of Warcraft, I like to have my digital body engaged in breaking down monsters. This can be translated in defining strategies to destroy unstoppable monsters! I reached level 70, raided a lot afterwards and then entirely stopped. In France, I used to play strategy games with 15 players in the same house, creating teams, ordering Pizza and getting tones of Soda. We started on Friday at the end of the afternoon and we stopped on Sunday night.



These past months I have rarely played any game, but I cherish these addictive gaming moments and decided to design an architectural object that criticizes the process of massive multiplayer gaming, designing a refuge with a survival kit integrated as well as doing something with the laptop that continuously burned my legs while playing! Also reflecting on the intense things that are happening on world of warcraft, such as the multiboxing setup!

Recently, I've been awarded a grant by the Council for the Arts at MIT . This grant is to help the design of the AFK cookset and the WOW Pod, projects that will be exhibited from April 2009 until September 2009 at the MIT Museum. I am making these two pieces in collaboration with artist duo Jahn/Shanda, with who I always wanted to work with; I recently blogged about one of their work, and presented on this blog many projects by Marisa.
The Pod resembles a mobile structure, however it works as a parasite. Connected to the home, it depends on it, it is stuck to it and uses it for survival. A nice metaphor for the teenager who is oblivious to his addiction and the effect it has on his family house! The AFK cookset benefits from a very annoying feature from the old MacBook Pro, that literally burns your laps while playing. The AFK cookset cooks your diner while raiding, it automatically alerts you and the raiders that you are AFK because your "eggs are ready"!

The AFK cookset
World of Warcraft is a massive online multi-player game that attracts millions of players including a large proportion of teenagers and children as young as 10 years old. A typical scenario for teenagers addicted to the game is to settle down in front of the monitor on Friday night and collapse on Sunday night. Sleep deprivation as well as high saturated fat diet is the pride of these players who barely do not take any break, and when they do they sign the typical “AFK” (“Away from Keyboard”) that pops up of top of their avatar. The average AFK is of two minutes, time to run to the fridge, to open a bag of potato chips, to replenish the glass of milk, or go to the bathroom. We are proposing a design noir aiming at representing the ideal setup for the player to spend more quality time online.

Can you imagine the toll that this extreme behaviour takes on the developing body, not to mention the amount of energy waste produced during such a 48-hour non-stop game? The addiction to World of Warcraft, you see, raises questions about the ecological and physio-morphological consequences of the computer game industry – but WOW players would refuse at any cost to reduce their addiction. Another solution must be considered…

The AFK Cookset harvests the heat produced from an ordinary laptop computer to cook meals. Before beginning a WOW session, the player places a shallow metal box beneath his/her laptop. The player pulls out a metal drawer that contains a tray with subdivisions. In one section, the player implaces powdered milk, powdered eggs, a dash of salt and pepper plus seasoning to taste. This protein-rich herb omelette will be cooked first because of the egg whites’ naturally low cooking temperature. In a second subdivision, the player implaces powdered tomato, water, and basil – a perfect second course tomato bisque to provide Vitamin C-rich soup to ward off scurvy. In the final section, the player implaces a frozen pizza. This pizza will be fully heated about the time the player (warrior) is ready for a third meal.

When each respective recipe is ready, the AFK Cookset WOW Plug-in automatically notifies the player that his/her meal is ready. A graphic, announcing, “Bob’s eggs are ready” is immediately visible to the other players on the “Raid Window.”

A first sketch!


The WOW pod
The WOW Pod is an immersive architectural solution for the advanced WOW player that provides and anticipates all life needs. Before entering the WOW Pod for a weekend-full of adventures, the player first stocks the pod: he/she refills the water bag that skins the architectural exterior and pipes liquids directly into the pod via a plastic tube that the player places adjacent his/her mouth. The WOW Pod holds and dispenses up to 3 cannisters of Pringles chips within easy reach of the desktop. The AFK Cookset and backup foodtrays (see description above) provides nutrients to nourish the hungry warrior. Inside, an array of monitors and computers allows the hard-core player to simultaneously control not one – but a whole assembly of players – with ergonomic ease. For instance, normally “multi-box systems” ask the player to use key commands and different mice to switch between players (warrior, magi, etc.). Involving all the latest features of an integrative computing sytem, WOW Pod allows the player to control the magi with his/her elbows, the dwarves with his/her feet pedals, the warrior with his/her hands. The player also has the control to re-program and re-designate the team of warriors according to his/her ergonomic preference.

The exterior of the WOW Pod is a customizable skin that allows the player to publicly demonstrate his/her guild association. Normally, guild affiliations are shown through “tabards”, or wearable insignias. WOW Pod now allows the player to demonstrate to those not online the richness of his/her online identity.

A first sketch


So far we have a lot of fun! I will update soon as we progress in the building of the two pieces. More soon ....

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

MIT General Exam : passed!

I have successfully passed my qualifying MIT general exam, I am officially PhD candidate! The general exam is composed of three written requirements and one oral exam.

My committee is composed of:
Professor Hiroshi Ishii, PhD
Associate Director of the MIT Media Laboratory
Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Media Arts and Sciences
Program in Media Arts and Sciences
Main area: Tangible interaction techniques

Professor Joe Paradiso, PhD
Sony Career Development Professor of Media Arts and Sciences
Program in Media Arts and Sciences
Technical area: Technologies for body sensing and expression

Professor Edith Ackermann, PhD
Honorary Professor of Developmental Psychology
University of Aix-Marseille I, France
Visiting Scientist. MIT School of Architecture
Contextual area: Psychology, cultural artifacts and semiotics

The oral exam is here to: "show the mastery of the specific knowledge required (analysis), and the ability to think clearly and logically, and to extend ideas into new territory (synthesis)". What is so great about this process is to combine three persons you highly admire, to think with you on "what could become a research framework". You have 6 months after you sent the general exam proposal to fulfill the general exam requirements with the help of your committee. The committee was highly invested in the entire process, supporting my explorations of different directions of research, criticizing my experimentations in wearables, health care, toy design, and help me refine a potential framework throughout.

I passed the three written requirements in the form of a paper for each discipline and today I just completed the oral exam that I titled: "Grounding Interfaces: Shifting the body boundaries".

Introduction ->link to the pdf.


Motivation ->link to the pdf.


Opportunities ->link to the pdf.


Vision ->link to the pdf.



Sensing Technologies ->link to the pdf.


Conclusion ->link to the pdf.


Here is my presentation in .pdf format!

Thank you to all my friends who helped me clarify ideas, refining the framework and letting me rehearse many times!


Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Jabberstamp awarded by I.D. magazine!

Jabberstamp earned an honorable mention as one of the 23 finalists from over 2,500 entries to I.D. magazine's 2008 Student Design Review! Working on Jabberstamp with Hayes Raffle and Ruibing Wang was exceptionally fun and inspiring, I am glad it won an award!!

-> The I.D. review <-



A child playing with Jabberstamp and me in the background blurred by the magical photoshop touch!

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Light based communication networks

I attended the talk by the Talking Lights company at the MIT Media Lab. They work on light based communication networks associating information with specific locations in a building and then use that information to guide, monitor and get information to people as they move from place to place. I was fascinated by their inexpensive way to enable context aware computing and the idea of associating information in a building directly through the components already existing in the building, in this case a common light source.

So for instance, a person wears a box-link (basically a photodyode with Bluetooth) so that the system knows precisely where this person is located. The communication between the box-link and the building is created by modulating the light from an ordinary light fixture to encode information. Where GPS technology does not operate accurately and Wifi triangulation does not “detect” walls, the signal in Talking Light is constrained by walls, offering a more precise indoor localization. As the user moves in the building there is a discrimination between light sources in the area. It takes the maximum amplitude, e.g. last light, last amplitude. The light can also transmit radio quality audio, even thought this is can be done through power lines.

Also the company offers researchers the possibility to outfit lights with the communication capability or to create multi-light network for application -> here <-

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

The new MIT Media Lab under the 4th of July firework!

Happy independence Media Lab!

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Physical Heart in a Virtual Body

My friend Amit Zoran, from the Ambient Intelligence group at MIT Media Lab, continued his work on structural innovation, re-designing acoustic musical instrument according to the abilities and characteristics of rapid prototype materials. Together with Pattie Maes and Marco Coppiardi, they created a new generation of physical instruments by tailoring wooden hearts. The wooden pieces are inserted in body of the guitar to give the instrument the desired sound identity.

Watch the video of the resonator ->here<-



Amit changing the physical heart of his guitar

can traditional values be embedded into a digital object? in this project we implement a special guitar that combines physical acoustic properties with virtual capabilities. The acoustical values will be embodied by a wooden heart - a unique, replaceable piece of wood that will give the guitar a unique acoustic sound. The acoustic signal created by this wooden heart will be digitally processed in a virtual sound box in order to create flexible sound design.

His research will be presented at Nime 2008 this summer.
His paper is ->here<-
His presentation is ->here<-



Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

A stackable electric city vehicle

I had previously posted on cars that fly, swim or shrink. I mainly referred to the retractable scooter that Bill Mitchell showed us at the Media Lab Open House'08. It is an impressive piece of gear that I cannot wait to get!



However the city car is pretty neat as well ...


The City Car is designed by the smart cities group at MIT Media lab directed by Prof. Mitchell. The project is created by Ryan Chin, Wayne Higgins, Mitchell Joachim, Will Lark, Raul-David "Retro" Poblano, Peter Schmitt, Andres Sevtsuk and Franco Vairani at MIT.

The City Car is the coolest idea: a stackable electric city vehicle for use in dense urban areas! Vehicle Stacks will be placed throughout the city to create an urban transportation network that takes advantage of existing infrastructure such as subway and bus lines. By placing stacks in urban spaces and key points of convergence, the vehicle allows the citizens the flexibility to combine mass transit effectively with individualized mobility. The stack receives incoming vehicles and electrically charges them. Similar to luggage carts at the airport, users simply take the first fully charged vehicle at the front of the stack. The City car is NOT a replacement for personal vehicles, taxis, buses, or trucks; it is a NEW vehicle type that promotes a socially responsible and more effective means of urban mobility!

I looked at the process and strategy used by Will Lark, one of the researcher working on this project. He studies and constructs physical representations of architectural details of varying sizes and materials, then apply shape grammar rules for new geometry generation. His strategy is to use the software CATIA, a parametric modeling CAD program, used to design the complex geometry. The shapes are then fabricated through various media: 3D rapid prototyping, 2D rapid prototyping with 3D assembly, and full manual construction. Comparisons are then made between the automated and manual construction.

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Demoing ideas!

Soon my research lab opens its house! It is reserved to corporate sponsors only, but the Media Lab recently started an initiative opened to the public. The initiative, the LabCAST, highlights projects in their latest stages through videos. I recommend watching them!

One of the lab's primary source of funding comes from more than 60 corporate sponsors whose businesses range from electronics to entertainment, furniture to finance, and toys to telecommunications! So we demo our latest prototypes and research ideas ranging from engineering to social sciences.


"Adventures in Science" illustration by Allan Sanders

A very busy time for us bricoleurs-researchers as we need to put together our latest ideas in a demo-able format. We need to reorganize the demo space, clean the old toys, bring new ones, empty the entire floor, use carpet cleaners, basically make the space looks bright and shiny!

I recently reorganized my research area to bring my projects together, start presenting a story about my line of work. From Psychohaptics a set of haptic garments for health care, to Picture This! a new input device for video capturing and editing! Working on the proposal for my general exams for my PhD I am defining a framework for my research that I hope to present at the open house.


Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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Blog Jouons Blog Maison Blog Lesson

Adam Boulanger, Dan Ellsey and Tod Machover at TED 2008

Tod Machover chose scientist Adam Boulanger to live demo, at TED 2008, the latest cutting-edge research being done in his group at MIT. Tod worked for many years to invite everyone to compose music. Today Adam had the chance to present at TED his PhD's baby with partner Dan Ellsey. I had mentioned in a previous post his research.

Adam graduated from the prestigious Berklee's school of music, studied medicine and worked for a few years as a music neurologist-therapist in New York. When he arrived at MIT he decided to apply his specialty in neurology to music composition. He met with Dan Ellsey who has cerebral palsy and worked together on means to compose with the Hyperscore environment at the hyperinstruments research group.

For his research with Dan, Adam developed a head-set and supporting software so that Dan could expressively perform his hyperscore compositions as a soloist. Dan worked closely with the team to perform his songs using head movements. If you want more technical detail, I had interviewed Adam on the challenge in designing such device.

Congratulations to the team! More info about the event on TED's blog!


Adam, Dan and Tod - Picture from the MIT Media Lab's web site.

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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Social Resonance: Balancing Reputation with Tangible Design

Online data about our everyday activities is available for almost anybody who takes the time to spy on us. Everything that makes us live in the real world through emails, video, photo, blogs, online shopping, calendar, to name a few, is "trackable". We are entirely public, our virtual identity is somewhat the shadow of our physical existence. Not talking about avatars up to anonymous content that gives us a second life on the screen, but wouldn't that be scary to have our anonymous virtual self reflected back to us?

The research of Alyssa Wright at MIT's Ambient Intelligence research group directed by Pattie Maes consists of the ongoing design of a tangible reputation system, Social Resonance, that uses a wearable device to merge face-to-face interaction with online networking.

I love her attempt to bridge a virtual identity with a "real world" one. New forms of tangible systems can be designed to leverage the strengths, and bridge the discrepancies, of reputation systems. Like its virtual counterparts, this system aims to make explicit the perspective of anonymous actors. Yet unlike online reputations, this system is negotiated through real world action and signals.



Reputation data is mapped to an ambient display and used to preserve public readability without creating personal distress. At any state, the device is on and provides readable data. It is the shift between states, visible over time, that allows for introspection. Social Resonance attempts to map the journey, not the destination, between colors.


Mapping resonance to 5-phase color shift


Posted by Cati Vaucelle
♥ Architectradure
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Zone of emergency - Networks, Tactics, Breakdown

Amber Frid-Jimenez is teaching a class at the MIT Visual Arts Department this spring on Introduction to Online Participatory Media: Zone of emergency - Networks, Tactics, Breakdown (4.366/4.381). The course is equal parts theory, art, technology and play, exploring the wild archive of the web. The class combines an overview of the historical "art for all" approach of early net-art and tactical media with an experimental take on the popular social web today.

Time Mondays 7 – 10pm and Wednesdays 9:30am – 12:30pm
Location N51-315 IEL

The course introduces an overview of web-based platforms as means through which to explore the cultural, social, political, and economic impact of mediated communication. Hands-on design exercises and experiments are continually framed and examined by critical reflection and discussions. An overview of historical "art for all" and participatory art practices, of early net-art and current public art practices will show how digital communication and culture have altered the way in which collaboration occurs, changing conventional notions of authorship and giving rise to the collective elaboration of meaning.

This seminar/workshop is taught in two parts. The Monday Night@VAP lecture series entitled Zones of Emergency co-organized by VAP Director Ute Meta Bauer and Lecturer Jae Rhim Lee will be open to the public, but will be considered a lab for the course. Lectures and panel discussions will serve to contextualize the theory of participatory design practices in times of emergency. This course is being co-organized with Jae Rhim Lee (4.391: Understanding the Problem: Research as Artistic Practice - FEMA Trailer Project).

Students from various disciplines and backgrounds are welcome. Please
contact Amber at amber [at] media [dot] mit [dot] edu for more information.

Prerequisites: permission of the instructor. Limited enrollment of 12
students. 4.381 Graduate Level H (12 units), 4.366 Undergraduate HASS-E
(2-4-6 units).

Instructor
Amber Frid-Jimenez,(617) 869-9840, Office: N52-342, Hours: W 1–3pm and by appointment

Teaching Assistants
Kate Hollenbach, Course
Cati Vaucelle, Lecture Series
Lauren McCarthy

About the Instructor
Amber Frid-Jimenez is an artist, designer, and recent graduate of the MIT
Media Lab, where she studied with John Maeda in the Physical Language
Workshop. Her work confronts issues ranging from politics and surveillance
to representations of women in media. Her recent work includes interactive
video installations, performance-based participation from large-scale online
audiences, and painting. She has presented her work internationally at
institutions including Banff New Media Institute, Rhode Island School of
Design, Cornell University, Harvard University, School of the Museum of Fine
Arts (Boston, MA), Smithsonian Institution, American Institute of Graphic
Arts, and at independent venues such as Art Interactive (Cambridge, MA),
Upgrade! International (online), WMMNA (online), and DFN Gallery (New York)

More resources
Amber's MS Media Lab thesis
Course

Posted by Cati Vaucelle
♥ Architectradure
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Designing the future

Food for Thought: typography and food reunited.

"Holidays are always a time to gather around the dining table with family and friends to share good food and stories about times gone by. Now family favorites--whether text or images--can actually appear on the fruit, nuts, and vegetables being served with the help of a laser sign cutter. Since the process takes only five minutes per edible, the food messages can be extremely timely."

Before 3D printing musical instruments or computer etching on bread, David Small had thought of printing on fruits, a way to catch the attention of Martha Stewart. This is the story that today Dr David Small told us during a talk at our lab.

Awesome speaker and visionary designer, he presented his twenty-year history of inventing the future of visual design. From the beginning, as a student of Muriel Cooper in the Visible Language Workshop, he has maintained a strong interest in understanding how technology is changing the way that information can be designed and appreciated. His company, Small Design Firm, creates unique environments in which people come into contact with rich, tactile information. With a focus on the interplay between computer technology, interaction, dynamic typography and information design, he sketched out some next steps towards the Design of the Future.

I loved his story, the way he is fond of typography and sees it everywhere as a design principle for his interactive products. I found his Museum of Sex installation perfectly expressive.


One of the four interactive exhibit for the Museum of Sex

He revisited the written correspondence of a prostitute with one of her client. The exhibition presents a bed, with a women underneath a fabric, with letters projected onto the body shape traveling through the interstices of the white sheets. The letters resemble ants that dynamically convey the message of her fate, constructing words from her correspondence that announce her death. Very well executed, the piece is moving. What fascinates me about his work, is the actuality of his design principles. He proposes that design research is the key to the future innovation, well... we'll see...


Posted by Cati Vaucelle
♥ Architectradure
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Graphic new theme for iGoogle

After Boing Boing's Adventure in Lollipopland theme for iGoogle, John Maeda just released a graphic theme. John Maeda offers a series of online gadgets, e.g. a calculator, a clock, an elegant interactive display of his Ten Laws of Simplicity. More recently he launched a new theme on iGoogle. The theme changes based upon the time of day (every 4 hours), and is based upon a series of strokes he drew by hand and a simple algorithmic manipulation thereof. Enjoy!


Posted by Cati Vaucelle
♥ Architectradure
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Tell me a story about computers ...

These pictures are part of an awesome book Core Memory: A Visual Survey of Vintage Computers by by John Alderman.

Today with my three fellows from the media lab - Nan Wei, Amit and Seth - I just passed my final physics 123 exam at Harvard University.
I am now qualified to connect the world of analog electronics to the digital one using... a beautifully vintage 8051!!! If you want an easiest way to make things talk, Tom Igoe's book might be the way to go!

Don't forget to check the computer history museum and the post by 37signals showing outstanding computer pictures. We never get enough of seeing all their buttons and the magic of their mechanics.


Posted by Cati Vaucelle
♥ Architectradure
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A personal fitness coach

The Personal Robots Group at MIT researches on social affective touch for robots and designs robotic teddy bear! Recently Cory Kidd completed a PhD from the group and started a company: Intuitive Automata Inc.

Intuitive Automata Inc. creates robots that can help you in your everyday life. By applying new research in sociable robotics, the company is developing robots that can talk, see you, and help you in many ways.



Their first product is Autom™, a robotic weight loss coach, designed to help people who are trying to lose or keep off weight. Autom helps by encouraging you to stick with your diet for long enough to create long-term change and keep extra pounds off!


Autom the weight loss coach! - Photo © Intuitive Automata Inc. 2007

The research that led to this product started at the MIT Media Laboratory in the Personal Robots Group. Their earlier results in controlled Human-Robot Interaction studies have shown that a robot can be seen as more credible and informative than a character on the screen. Hence, there is reason to believe that a robot may be a more effective mechanism for conveying the behavior change message. Results showing that a robot can be more engaging than an animated character lends itself to the possibility of creating a set of longitudinal interactions, or a relationship, that is longer-lasting than previous techniques and therefore also more likely to have the opportunity to create long-term behavior change.

Posted by Cati Vaucelle
♥ Architectradure
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Participation Art Online

Amber Frid-Jimenez, member of the Open Studio team, focused on the emergence of online art communities for her master thesis.



She designed WikiPhone, a system in which multiple participants collaborate on soundtracks in real-time, modifying existing online videos; OpenBrand, a system that allows participants to rewrite advertisements; Emma On Relationships, a video blog inviting participants to call in for love advice; and several other projects, exploring aspects of creativity and collaboration.

For her thesis she examined the commonalities within these systems to define design principles governing the creation of participatory media, and to explore the potential of these systems to effect social and political change.

You can download her thesis!

Posted by Cati Vaucelle
♥ Architectradure
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Structural innovation

Re-designing acoustic musical instrument according to the abilities and characteristics of rapid prototype materials

After laser printing on bread, one can print instruments! My friend Amit Zoran designed this really neat concept of an acoustic guitar sound box that has been given a unique sound and behavior through a CAD/CAM process. His research goal at the MIT Media Laboratory in the Ambient Intelligence research group, is to find and analyze a space for structural innovation, especially for acoustic instruments.

His works enables players to customize their own sound by assembling different sound cells, e.g physical parts of the instruments designed in CAD/CAM, instead of considering the instrument as one big sound box. Each string can have its own bridge and each bridge can be linked to different cells. By changing a cell' size, material or structure, one can create customizable sounds.

His innovative take mainly consists of printing, using a 3D printer, cells drawn into a vectorial software. These cells, made of 30cm radius, have a variety of materials strong enough to carry the pressure of the strings and handle resonance.
People can download recommended sound cells from the internet in order to change or manipulate their guitar sounds.
In the near future, Amit is planning on testing the physical behavior of different combinations and to find optimal structures.

Don't forget to check the video!

Posted by Cati Vaucelle
♥ Architectradure