Places and tools for multi generations

Here it is, the reference paper about intergenerational places and tools written by Edith Ackermann and her peers.

Authors: Decortis F. , Ackermann E. , Barajas M., Magli R., Owen M., Toccafondi G .
Title/reference: From ‘La Piazza’ to ‘Puente’: How place, people and technology make intergenerational learning. In International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning, Vol.1, No.1/2, 2008, p. 144-155

How places and tools can be used to help mediate mindful - and joyful - encounters between people from different generations, as well as between newcomers and old-timers to a culture.

Researching with Olivier Vaubourg on designing technological playful interfaces for grand parents and their grand kids, this paper is a milestone to start digging into this divide among generations and solutions from tools to places.

Abstract: The divide between generations and the need to integrate aging populations through life wide learning strategies have been evidenced by researches and policy documents. Yet, the lack of mutually beneficial learning practices calls for innovative solutions to prevent societal fragmentation. In 'La Piazza' the purpose was to identify good practices through the use of case studies and interaction design techniques and gauge the potential of digital technologies as enablers of intergenerational learning. In 'Puente', the goal is to further explore the transformative power of existing good practices and to provide guidelines for the design of environments in which young and old can grow in connection.

Keywords: intergenerational learning; generation divide; digital technologies; case studies; good practices; interaction design; aging populations; e-learning; online learning; technology enhanced learning.

Edith made the paper available online, so enjoy!

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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Part suppliers

Adam Kumpf from the Tangible Media Group at MIT created this very comprehensive list of part suppliers for getting electronic components! A useful guide for any tech-researcher!

Interact 2007

Prototypes of Moving Pictures

Yessss! The full paper written for Interact 2007 with Dr Hiroshi Ishii is accepted! It shows how Textable Movie designed for facilitating video production has informed Moving Pictures. It presents a mechanism to seamlessly interface the various parts in video production and present our observations. The conference topic is socially-responsible interaction. So see you in Rio de Janeiro in September!

Abstract: The paper presents a novel approach to collecting, editing and performing visual and sound clips in real time. The cumbersome process of capturing and editing becomes fluid in the improvisation of a story, and accessible as a way to create a final movie. It is shown how a graphical interface created for video production informs the design of a tangible environment that provides a spontaneous and collaborative approach to video creation, selection and sequencing. Iterative design process, participatory design sessions and workshop observations with 10-12 year old users from Sweden and Ireland are discussed. The limitations of interfacing video capture, editing and publication in a self-contained platform are addressed.

Download the 14 pages paper

Thank you all of you for your feedback!

Duct tape wallet

A wallet that I saw in many hands. Now there is even a kit to make it. The duct tape wallet kit by db clay. Via ohgizmo

Tested and approved: Csound is awesome

Adam Boulanger gave Aurelius Prochazka and I a three hours introductory tutorial on csound.

Csound is a programming language -originally witten in C, ref. its name- by Barry Vercoe at MIT Media Lab. Synthesized sounds that come out of csound are elegant and allow anyone with a computer to freely compose sounds. I prefer it to reason for its infinite personal potentials.

Composer Richard Boulanger edited the famous Csound book. BT on the other end revisited csound taught by Dr Boulanger for his Binary Universe album.

Saying that, all I can say is tested and approved and I can share some of the notes I took, as I think it can help anyone start with the Csound software and compose music.

Install the csound environment from sourceforge to install the CsoundLib framework.

If you have a mac, install Mac sound -for some reason Csound 5 did not work on my intel mac-

Open Mac Csound. Save the file that automatically opened.

Any name written in "blue" are called opcode, they are functions and clic " apple + ' " to have the help file of any of these opcode. The help file gives you the usual syntax and examples for each opcode.

A specific rate is defined with k, and a. The rest of the label can be anything descriptive, but the letter 'k' and 'a' will be understood by the system as the rate you want.

you can test out the following. Add to the orchestra window (orc)
sr = 44100
kr = 4410
ksmps = 10
nchnls = 1
instr 1
kamp = 10000
kcps = 220
ifn = 1
a1 oscil kamp, kcps, ifn
out a1
endin

add to the score window (sco)
; Table #1, a sine wave table with a small amount of data.
f 1 0 4096 10 1

; Play Instrument #1, the basic oscillator, for
; two seconds. This should sound relatively rough.
i 1 0 2

e

If you press the icon, your piece will play back.

in the score window (sro) you wrote: "f 1 0 4096 10 1 "
10 is the gene routine number. 4096, a power of two. it drastically changes the sound if 4096 becomes 8!
In file:///Library/Frameworks/CsoundLib.framework/Versions/5.1/Resources/Manual/ScoreGenRef.html
the gene routines are explained.

In the (sro) window you also wrote: "i 1 0 2"
i: means instrument
1: refered to the instrument 1 from the orchestra window
0: start
2: duration in seconds
3: frequency

(then you can add different instruments, that overlap in time or start at different times etc...)

Adam mentioned the indispensable opcodes to try out:
. foscil (A basic frequency modulated oscillator.)
. grain (Generates granular synthesis textures)
. grain2 (Easy-to-use granular synthesis texture generator.)
. soundin (Reads audio data from an external device or stream)
. physical modeling instrument: pluck (Produces a naturally decaying plucked string or drum sound.)

Finally a good key ressource is the first chapter of the Csound book by Dr. Richard Boulanger, Introduction to Sound Design in Csound. It can be downloaded for free from MIT Press. Also the Csound web site community

Good luck!