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FCJ-133 The Scripted Spaces of Urban Ubiquitous Computing: The experience, poetics, and politics of public scripted space
Christian Ulrik Andersen & Søren Pold Center for Digital Urban Living, Digital Aesthetics Research Center, Aarhus University [Abstract] The computer is moving out into physical and urban reality. Since Mark Weiser’s call for a ‘computer for the 21st century’ in 1991 a migration from the screen and the desktop towards integrating computers and networks into our surroundings has been a part of contemporary computer science research; for example, in augmented reality, ubiquitous computing (ubicomp), and pervasive computing. A number of technological developments (such as big screens, new smart materials, GPS, RFID tags, and ever faster and cheaper wireless networks) have helped carry the research agendas out into ordinary reality. This article will discuss how we experience the urban space of ubicomp. It will do so by introducing the concept of ‘scripted space’ in order to discuss how ubicomp is related to new developments in public urban space. Focusing on the…
FCJ-130 Embedding response: self production as a model for an actuated architecture
Mette Ramsgard Thomsen and Karin Bech CITA Centre for Information Technology and Architecture, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen Introduction Ubiquitous computing positions a world where computation is embedded into our surrounding environment. Rather than retrieving information and communication from distinct devices (PCs) removed from contexts and activities, ubiquitous computing proposes that the mediated can become an integral part of our environment, seamlessly implanted, much in the way that text-based communications are incorporated now (Weiser, 1991). As such, ubiquitous computing places us in a world where material reality merges with computational reality, and where the built environment holds a strata for computation, a readiness towards the digital and the mediated. This paper asks what the architectural consequences of ubiquitous computing can be. Architecture is concerned with the designing and making of spatial contexts. The central objective of architectural design practice is to define spatial ambitions and ally these with the…
FCJ-129 Ubiquity Editorial (Cont.) – Interaction Designs for Ubicomp Cultures
Ulrik Ekman Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen [Abstract] I. Ubicomp Cultures: Hyperbolic Vision, Factual Developments This is a journal issue invested in remarking more than once upon the undecidability hovering today around our getting into contact with ‘ubiquity’ or ‘pervasiveness’ as a potential to be further actualized in the fields of human-computer interaction (HCI), interaction design, and the cultural life worlds of information societies more generally. It could well be that you have not yet heard of ubiquitous or pervasive computing, or that you have heard of these but still remain in doubt whether there actually is or will be such a thing, in interaction designs or elsewhere. It could also very well be the case, however, that you both know a great deal about this as a rather momentous shift, qua a third wave in computing and associated disciplines, and find yourself engaging with it…
Issue 19 – Ubiquity
Ubiquity Editorial – Interaction Designs for Ubicomp Cultures I. Ubicomp Cultures: Hyperbolic Vision, Factual Developments This is a journal issue invested in remarking more than once upon the undecidability hovering today around our getting into contact with ‘ubiquity’ or ‘pervasiveness’ as a potential to be further actualized in the fields of human-computer interaction (HCI), interaction design, and the cultural life worlds of information societies more generally. It could well be that you have not yet heard of ubiquitous or pervasive computing, or that you have heard of these but still remain in doubt whether there actually is or will be such a thing, in interaction designs or elsewhere. It could also very well be the case, however, that you both know a great deal about this as a rather momentous shift, qua a third wave in computing and associated disciplines, and find yourself engaging with it all around you in…
Trans Issue
It is now perhaps a commonplace that digital, networked and informational media are extremely transient. They diversify in form and function at a dizzying rate. At the same time, they transit and fuse “social” and “natural” differences in a manner which reconfigures all the worlds involved. It is also perhaps a commonplace to suggest that some established powers have found it difficult to come to grips with this (although this is perhaps beginning to change). For many, from seriously challenged newspaper proprietors to established media disciplines, it might be time to pause for breath, if only for a moment—to regroup and adapt established practices and ideas, to count the survivors from among the old media worlds of just a few years ago. While occasionally sympathetic, issue 18 of the Fibreculture Journal questions this approach. If we pause for breath, it is to take in the new air. This issue draws…
Issue 18 – Trans
It is now perhaps a commonplace that digital, networked and informational media are extremely transient. They diversify in form and function at a dizzying rate. At the same time, they transit and fuse “social” and “natural” differences in a manner which reconfigures all the worlds involved. It is also perhaps a commonplace to suggest that some established powers have found it difficult to come to grips with this (although this is perhaps beginning to change). For many, from seriously challenged newspaper proprietors to established media disciplines, it might be time to pause for breath, if only for a moment—to regroup and adapt established practices and ideas, to count the survivors from among the old media worlds of just a few years ago. While occasionally sympathetic, this issue of the Fibreculture Journal questions this approach. If we pause for breath, it is to take in the new air. This issue draws…
FCJ-128 A Programmable Platform? Drupal, Modularity, and the Future of the Web
Fenwick McKelvey. York / Ryerson Universities, Toronto I found Drupal in the summer heat of the riverside town of Rosario, Argentina during an internship with a women’s rights organisation in the city. The Canadian government funded me to help the organisation with their information technology, part of a program to promote Canada’s reputation as a leader in technology sector. Cynical of my government’s motives, but committed to the politics of free or open source software (FOSS), I helped the administrator migrate from proprietary software to free software alternatives. Their website relied on an aging copy of Macromedia Dreamweaver, a foreign application for most of the staff. I wanted in Rosario to create the ideal website for the NGO, but I did not have the ability to program such customised software. After some extensive searching, I happened upon the Drupal content management system (CMS) as a replacement. Drupal describes itself as…
FCJ-127 Concrete Software: Simondon’s mechanology and the techno-social
Simon Mills. De Montfort University, Leicester. [Abstract] In this article I will discuss the philosophy of technology developed by Gilbert Simondon, predominantly in his 1958 book The Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, with a particular concentration on his concepts of associated milieu and concretization. The article provides an introduction to Simondon’s theory of technological genesis and indicates the problematic nature of the cultural for Simondon’s account. This is made apparent by contemporary developments in techno-social networks. However, I will also argue that this insufficiency is not insurmountable given Simondon’s overall ontology. Instead, it is a result of his own bias regarding technological development at the time when he was writing. In the latter part of the paper I will attempt to demonstrate how this insufficiency can be overcome and Simondon’s theory can be fruitfully applied to the theorization of contemporary social media and software. Additionally, I hope this paper…
FCJ-126 The Becoming Environmental of Power: Tactical Media After Control
Michael Dieter Media Studies, The University of Amsterdam. [Abstract] There is a last enterprise that might be undertaken. It would be to seek experience at its source, or rather, above that decisive turn where, taking a bias in the direction of our utility, it becomes properly human experience. (Bergson, 1991: 184) Tactical media (TM) was originally conceived during a period of widespread media diversification, enabled most dramatically through digital and networked technologies (Garcia and Lovink, 1997). In the original account, ‘tactics’ was used with reference to Michel de Certeau as an explanation for the material diversification and experimentation with media that could challenge and compete with forms of centralised mass concentration. In this respect, while TM was informed by the rise of the Web and a nascent participatory culture, in many ways the concept was still expressed in opposition to older hierarchical formations of congealed hierarchical power (The State, Mass…
FCJ-125 From Representation to Sensation: The Transduction of Images in John F. Simon Jr.’s ‘Every Icon’
Troy Rhoades. Concordia University, Montreal. [Abstract] Perhaps the peculiarity of art is to pass through the finite in order to rediscover, to restore the infinite.—Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy? (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994: 197) Science and Art When encountering John F. Simon Jr.’s software artwork Every Icon (1997) on his website, it can be difficult for viewers to know whether they are seeing the visual execution of a mathematical theorem or experiencing a work of artistic expression. [1] This is because they are presented with a stark white and black thirty-two by thirty-two square grid on the right side of the website and three statements that read like a mathematical theorem on the left side. They state: Given: An icon described by a 32 X 32 grid. Allowed: Any element of the grid to be coloured black or white. Shown: Every icon (Simon, 1997b). [2] But…
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