SpacePlace

Eyebeam OpenLab is hiring

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If you want to spend time working in a great environment, developping creative technology projects, go check the Eyebeam proposal. Yes Eyebam is hiring:

We encourage artists, hackers, designers and engineers to apply. Participation in the R&D Fellows program includes: One year fellowship: 4 days/week commitment, $30,000 annual stipend + health benefits

Public Domain: Work created within the Open Lab will be widely distributed and freely available under open licenses. All code will be released under GPL, media will be released under Creative Commons, and hardware projects will be released with Do-It-Yourself instruction kits. The fellowship is a unique opportunity to participate in a new kind of research environment and contribute directly to the public domain.

Previous Work: The Open Lab builds on previous work developed within Eyebeam R&D. Some earlier projects include: reBlog, ForwardTrack, FundRace, Contagious Media, Social Network Soiree, ACCESS, Carnivore, Noderunner

Application: Please submit your application here by August 15th; fellowships will begin in the Fall of 2005 (flexible start date). If you have any questions, please email openlab@eyebeam.org

Good luck, the advisory Committee includes Mitch Kapoor, Joi Ito and Jason Kottke. Why do I blog this? it seems to be a great environment to work on technology-related projects, this OpenLab looks amazing. I am looking forward to see what emerge from there!

Lapining: parkour for tree-huggers

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There seems to be an intriguing trend in France: after "le parkour" (also did by the Yamakasi), there is now the equivalent, better suited for tree-huggers: lapining. Lapin-ing means acting like a rabbit (in french "un lapin" is "a rabbit"). The point is basically about running down the mountains plus jumping or climbing over things. Actually you act like a rabbit. It's organized in french mountains, especially in the Alps. The picture depicts Eric Barone, the creator of this concept.

Yet Another Signless/letterless City Project

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Christoph Steinbrener et Rainer Dempf covered all the signs, letters and commercial with yellow in Neubaugasse (Vienne, Austria). This is another example of a signless city, which seems to be a recurent pattern in art lately...

Sommer 2005, die Neubaugasse, eine Einkaufsstraße in Wien – Für den Zeitraum von zwei Wochen werden alle Werbeaufschriften, Reklameschilder, Piktogramme, Firmennamen und -logos einfarbig verdeckt. Was man aus zweidimensionalen Darstellungen oder Fotomontagen vielleicht bereits kennt, wird hier erstmals in die Dreidimensionalität, ins Hier und Jetzt der Wiener Neubaugasse übersetzt. Bei „Delete“ kommt es zu einer wohl einzigartigen Kooperation aller ansässigen Geschäftsleute mit einem spektakulären Kunstprojekt. Für einen Zeitraum von 2 Wochen verzichten die Unternehmer auf ihre Identität und werden Teil einer großen Installation.

Why do I blog thi? I liek this sort of project :) Connected pasta: two related project are described here.

Skyscraper farms update

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That's a topic I really fancy : turning skyscrapers into farms (aka "vertical farming"). That's impressive. There is now a website about it: Vertical farms:

The concept of indoor farming is not new, since hothouse production of tomatoes, a wide variety of herbs, and other produce has been in vogue for some time. What is new is the urgent need to scale up this technology to accommodate another 3 billion people. An entirely new approach to indoor farming must be invented, employing cutting edge technologies. The Vertical Farm must be efficient (cheap to construct and safe to operate). Vertical farms, many stories high, will be situated in the heart of the world's urban centers. If successfully implemented, they offer the promise of urban renewal, sustainable production of a safe and varied food supply (year-round crop production), and the eventual repair of ecosystems that have been sacrificed for horizontal farming.

There is a whole essay about it here. In addition, a nice project that concretize this idea:"The Living Tower" by Pierre Sartoux and the workshop soa architects in Paris. : Why do I blog this? this is an intriguing project I find interesting, I am just wondering about the problems it can foster... Connected Pasta: I already blogged about this pig farm in a skyscraper.

Visualizing occupancy of study space

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A very intersting research paper (thanks pierre for pointing me on this resource)Visualizing occupancy of library study space with GIS maps by Jingfeng Xia (School of Information Resources and Library Science, University of Arizona).

ABSTRACT Purpose – This research seeks to observe the occupancy of study areas in a university library over a period of several months with the aim of evaluating the efficiency of library resources usage. Design/methodology/approach – In undertaking the research, study facilities of a library, such as chairs, sofas, carrels, and tables, were first drawn as features on maps using a GIS application. Geospatial databases were then created to store data of occupancy of the facilities by library users, which were observed by the author. On connecting records in the databases to features on the maps, GIS functions were explored to analyze observed data and exhibit the analytical results on the maps. Findings – The findings of this research challenge the predominant opinion that insists that academic library users have a preference of study carrels over tables for studying. Instead, the research reveals that student users tend to select tables to study, especially tables equipped with electrical and internet connections. At the same time, group study rooms are overwhelmingly welcomed. Practical implications – This research demonstrates the potential of GIS technology for assisting library operations with regard to study space management. With GIS, libraries can have an automation tool to record their daily activities, analyze the data, and exhibit the analysis on maps for better understanding. Originality/value – This is an experimental work. Librarians may find it useful in managing the activities of their library and helpful in providing information for space rearrangement and service enhancement.

Why do I blog this? the use of GIS to study the use of space (in terms of its social affordance) seems relevant and compelling. Using space syntax methdology might be a good solution to complete this approach.

Political cartograms

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I just found (finally a web version after 2 hours struggling to find on the web) an interesting map of the political geography of Switzerland. It depicts last week-end' votation. Swiss people had to vote for the integration of their country in the Schengen/Dublin zone. Here is a map done by Jacques Levy (at epfl). It depicts the proportion of votes according to the density of population: There seems to be a clear distinction between cities and countrysides. The source of this picture is this document (published by swiss newspaper Le Temps). Thank you <a href="http://www.timtom.ch/blog/index.php"TimTom for the colored version!

Visitor.Files: displaying patterns of traffic/pedestrian activity in neighborhoods

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Visitors.Files is a neat project in between art and information visualization by Christina Ray.

Christina Ray's Visitor.Files originated with a wish to replicate the heightened awareness commonly felt when first landing in a foreign city, when every person, sight and smell appears curious and full of potential. By including herself in the common flow of sidewalk activity and intensely studying the events happening around her,

The making of the visualization is of particular interest:

The Visitor.Files process involves acting as a passive observer of the activity at street intersections. At the locations she visits, Ray takes notes, shoots video and photographs and collects "samples" such as flyers, newspapers or other urban detritus. Each session of overt surveillance lasts approximately 15 minutes, or until 25 specific activities have been noted. Observations are tied to the date, time, weather, location and direction (i.e. "Woman in a red coat walking a large dog walks west, then south" or "police car stops at light, then goes north"). The information collected is entered into a database which then informs a series of coded maps. These "maps" in turn become geometric abstract paintings on vellum that simultaneously resonate with random activity and systemic order. The paintings, photographs, samples and video footage are gathered into slim file cases, one for each session, to literally encapsulate the original experience and the multiplicity of the data collection.

There is also a blog about it, with great pictures.

People behavior in conferences

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A categorization of people behavior in conferences (seen in 360 ezine):

A research team led by Steelcase Inc. has studied how people behave at conferences and how the space supports their activities … or not. Among the key findings: people display a range of behaviors that correlate to how connected they are to the content of the conference, and most churn through several levels of participation by the time the event is over.

Some engage actively, Some sponge, quietly soaking up information Some lurk along the perimeter, Some eddy together and form small groups, Some camp out on phones or computers away from the group, Some “ostrich” by pulling in and out of the main event.

Video Games Places/Archetypes

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In a slide by Steffen Waltz, I found a very nice list of place often referred to as game archetypes & rhetorical figures:

Arena - Board / Stadium - Bridge - Castle - Cave - Caroussel - Cellar - Chamber - Church - Colosseum - Control room - Dungeon - Elevator - Factory - Forest - Fortress - Garage - Garden - Hide-out - Hinderance - High Rise - Island - Jail - Kindergarden - Laboratory - Labyrinth - Level - Machine room - Ménagerie - Miniature -Museum - Naval - Panopticon- Panzer - Park -Planets -Playground - Plaza - Sandpit - Sky -Space ship / -station -Submarine -Supermarket -Theatre- Underworld - Utopia / Impossible Arch - Vehicle - Zoney

After-PLAN notes by Marc Tuters

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Just skimmed through Marc Tuters's follow up to open plan. Marc gives a great summary of what has being said + some other comments about his chat with conference-goers; which is nice since it adds some stuff to the huge amount of material I gathered from there. I particularly agree with his take about current locative media projects:

A common criticism that arose in my discussions with other conference-goers regarded the perceived lack of diversity amongst Locative Media projects. While a few visionary art works generated some buzz (...), the field of Locative Media that emerged from this discourse-driven event seemed best expressed by two particular projects: Urban Tapestries and Blast Theory.

How to move further from both the 'post-it' thing and the participants tracking?
Besides, Marc now runs Locative Media News on this MUSE platform.

Today\'s Big Thing is... Google Map

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Yet Another Map Interface (YAMI, well it sounds pretty gound) thanks to Google: maps.google.com. It's a DHTML map interface with searching/zooming/panning capabilities. Here's what I've been pointed to after typing 'michael jackson' as a query: Why do I blog this? It definitely seems a nice move for Google to go into maps, very relevant to their search engine business (locating stuff is important and it's a good add-on to google local). Chris also pointed interesting comments about it (like the recurent problem in this kind of application: the missing scale!). He also shouts at europeans companies which should also release something! For that matter, Giles pointed on map.search.ch but it's not truly the same, it's more place/address related.

What strikes me with google is that they launch tons of services (all in beta version) like gmail, google local, orkut and so on (or either buy trendy stuff like blogger or picasa). Google seems to be an umbrella under which you can do whatever you want and get rid of your OS. Anyhow, the integration of all of these appears to be LOW. Some thinks that they should turn this into a portal with an unique ID (which is so true). As for me, I was thinking about another kind of application different than a browser that should incorporate all those services in one piece of software... sth like safari+ecto+netnewswire+iphoto+mail+... (well it's too mac-oriented here but you get the point). Apart from that, I am wondering whether google is a leader or a follower for all those apps...

Getting back to this google map, the guys from Monkey Method elaborated on this concept and came up with this potential layout.

About stigmergy

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Nicolaus just bring this concept to the surface:

Stigmergy describes coordination among individuals by communication via modifications of the environment. Here, positive feedback or triggering of behavior can be induced by a modification of the environment that was performed by
  1. The individual itself
  2. Another member of the swarm

Note that an environmental modification can also be due to perturbations of the environment.