Mapping the Campus (using locative technologies) - a sketch of a proposal

Using an iPhone, combine GPS and accelerometer data (standard in the iPhone) to trace in 4D the paths of people (graduate students in architecture) exploring main campus, taking photos (on the iPhone), sketching (on the iPad???), and writing about what they sense and what “senses” them. (Pick a couple of useful applications already in existence for blogging and photographing with geo-tagging (i've heard Breadcrumbs is a good start), and write a program in Processing (a software good for this sort of thing – interactive computer-mediated environments designed by artsy types) to collect the GPS and accelerometer info and map it (with a decay function built-in i.e., the lines disappear over time) – unless an application doing that already exists, too.

Data is streamed into a map-blog which plots the paths followed, and represents associated information (text, photos, sketches) as pins/links/banners. The spatial (locative) data must be formatted in such a way as to be able to be integrated into a sketchup model. (**for later: Including a pin indicating the map-blog reader's current position would permit that user to orient themselves and find any place that had already been visited and “posted.” A search mechanism would be necessary (something like google earth, in spatial organization (the zooming in-and-out), or mapquest but rather than searching for an address a keyword search (like evernote, searches text, tags, AND PICTURES) would be best.)

A field of beacons of some sort – pylons with a multicoloured/dimming light might do, maybe a screen, a touchscreen, an (iPad???) – could also re-present some/all of the data, disseminating collected info and advertising the available resource.

This could be a stand-alone project as research for the wayfinding system design (narrative, photographic (and possibly occupation) data and 3D modeled paths – with some degree of accuracy, not likely a perfect model, but one that offers a frame on which to hang more detailed models), or it could be incorporated into the final signage design and become a self-renewing wayfinding resource (a student would have to agree to broadcast their location and other privacy concerns would have to be addressed). Incorporation of this system into the final product would also potentially provide a platform for all sorts of spatial research in the School of Architecture and other faculties: students could write their own applications for the iPhone and advertise approved projects through the wayfinding system and/or draw data from the wayfinding website.

COMMENTS? IDEAS? i'd love to hear from you all about this

12 x 12: the city has arrived

the city came today to benchless...city councillor pam wolf and a friend dropped by the site after hearing about 12 x 12 from my good friends at the grand cafe. i have been waiting for word of 12 x 12 to leak to the city ever since it started...i tried to keep a low profile for the first few weeks to keep the project from getting shut down. i suspect the city will be concerned with the recording of public space, and with the chalk "graffiti", and maybe even with the planting of food in public spaces. councillor wolf asked about the project and the motivations for it. she spoke about her role in the city, her invlovement in issues of housing and social programs within the city as well as her connections with the school of architecture (she lives next to elizabeth english and works with jeff lederer and rick haldenby on various committees, not to mention that the school is in her ward). she also spoke about several grassroots groups in cambridge interested in improving the community (eg. lovecambridge, and jeff's downtown reviltalization for midsize cities). let us see what this last week will bring... unfortunately, my camera is still offline, so photos and anecdotes will have to do for now.

benchless - the site cleaner II

17.05.09 wateringcan IV et al. post-cleaners! this morning (while walking pogo) i ran into the cleaners again. they were having a smoke behind the TRIDENT corner store at around 7:40 am. "you're out early for a sunday" "mmhmm" "do you work for the city, or do you clean for the sake of it?" "we're outside contractors" "oh yeah?" "woof woof" pogo interrupts, and noticing their discomfort, i continue home "have a good day" "mmhmm" based on their accents, i wondered if the cleaners were portugese, so i asked the owner of baird's (portugese) supermarket about them. he said he sees them every sunday, but he didn't know anything else about them. i will try again next week...without pogo (sorry pogo!). baird's supermarket on ainslie street interestingly, the cleaners left the site intact today - the only thing they removed was the broken trowel. i have taped a "greening the granite block" poster to the water fountain, perhaps adding legitimacy to the project in the eyes of the cleaners? or perhaps my persistence has simply won them over (i am on wateringcan IV)... "greening the granite block" poster at benchless 16.05.09 a broken trowel (removed by the cleaners 17.05.09)

a conversation with mark tovey

carleton university PhD candidate mark tovey came to the school march 6, 2009 as a lecturer during the living large colloquium hosted by the 3a studio. his presentation, titled "many minds make might work: open source, mass collaboration, and social innovation", asked the audience to "look for areas to open up" proposing open-source architectural design as an addition to a whole slew of existing mass collaboration and open-source initiatives. i wonder if there is a possible role within the "application" part of my thesis for the concept of open-source architectural design? two possibilites occurred to me: 1. a brief business or project coordination proposal for the application of open-source architectural design, or 2. a projection into the future of an open-source-design-bsed architecture profession. after mark's talk i sat down with him to pick his brain...here are my notes on our conversation: the wisdom of crowds: what is the mechanism of the "wisdom of crowds"? (in sociology a mechanism is a set of rules designed to bring about a certain outcome) social movement laboratory: (derek lomas - UCSD) the social movement laboratory's social architectures course asks: how does the design of an architectural space affect social dynamics? can art stimulate social engagement and social movement? students in the course designed a mobile video tower with a 170˚ field of view for the recording of crowd movement, proposed social aggregators in order to activate social spaces, among other projects. also, through the social architectures website i learned about "the social life of small urban spaces" video and book. (a 1980s study of the plazas of new york) how do you navigate 3d environments: (david kirsh - distributed cognition) this is a paper on human-computer interaction...i haven't read it yet, but here are a couple of excerpts from the summary which i found interesting:

"design and support human computer interaction...understanding interactions between people and technologies" "whole environments: what we really do in them and how we coordinate our activity in them"

ethnography:

"a genre of writing that uses fieldwork to provide a descriptive study of human societies" (wikipedia, april 12, 2009, 5:12 pm)

*"a system's properties cannot necessarily be accurately understood independantly of each other" (dr. michelle addington, from arriscraft lecture during living large colloquium)

a vocabulary: 1. distributed cognition (david kirsh, ed hutchins): think about a navy ship as a cognitive system - no one person knows everything that needs to happen to dock a navy ship, but it happens. 2. situated action: ski -> tree -> avoid (no plan required) 3. ecological cognition (j.j. gibson, donald a. norman): affordances - the properties of an object afford actions (i'm currently reading "the psychology of everyday things" by donald a. norman) the oracle of delphi and affinity diagrams: mark suggested this as a method of drawing out "rules" 1. ask a question to a group and have each person write out an answer on a post-it 2. group similar answers according to semantic domains 3. summarize each group to one paragraph/post-it 4. group... 5. summarize... 6. repeat until only one post-it is left a method for feedback: the orbs from UCSD are a set of simple lamps which are set to glow or dim in response to the number of occupants/power levels/etc. in the building. the simple act of feeding back information to building occupants gives them the opportunity to respond by going for a walk to see who is around/turning off a light/etc. *(i couldn't find a reference for this...though i did plug "orb feedback building occupants" into google and found several articles on energy conservation and "using feedback to influence occupants"). a method of collaboration: barcamp

"BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants. The first BarCamps focused on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats. The format has also been used for a variety of other topics, including public transit, health care, and political organizing." (wikipedia, april 12, 2009, 8:57 pm)

a method of classification: the music genome project (see my soundtrack post) this method of classification (analysis of attributes/expert classification) is in contrast to a preference-based system such as iTune's genius function. pandora (which is only available in the u.s. at the moment) uses 30 musical analysts who analyze 400 distinct musical attributes, described by mark as the "primary colours" of music, with which they classify music - the goal is to expose a listener to music from a wide range of styles which have similar attributes to the user's stated preferences. an example of the attributes analyzed: the voice has 30 attributes - bravado, range, ornamentation, pitch, tamber... *i just found the pandora blog - curious that they have recently added more weight to user feedback to correct faults in the "genome" system... a (very important) question: ***can space respond differently to different people at the same time?*** (thanks mark...that's a brilliant question!) thalience: from sci-fi writer karl schroeder - entities are considered "thalient" if they succeed in developing their own categories for understanding the world. could architecture become thalient???

a conversation with dr. rupert soar

dr. rupert soar came to the school march 6, 2009 as an arriscraft lecturer during the living large colloquium hosted by the 3a studio. he presented a fantastic lecture on some of his recent work with the rapid manufacturing research group and project TERMES - the latter generated the most interest within the school, i think, because of its potential to revolutionize HVAC systems. (also, the termite mound casts are beautiful!) (very) basically: termite mounds are tuned to resonate with turbulent air movement in order to exchange heat energy and O2/CO2. not only are these structures tuned to turbulent air movement as opposed to prevailing winds (a constant as opposed to variable phenomenon), they exchange gasses and heat energy use the same three phase "gas exchange mode" as our own respiratory system. during the q&a after his lecture dr. soar mentioned very briefly that he was working with agent-based modeling, so i approached him later that day to pick his brain. he was very patient with my questions and incredibly generous with his time. agent based modeling: the agent-based modeling he mentioned is a part of an Army Research Organization funded development of nano-robots to construct shelters in warzones. the basic principles of the project are: continuous construction (construction that extends into maintenance), containment (a nano-robot 'dies' when it leaves the structure), and natural selection (a system must 'die' if it not fit). this system is inspired by and draws from the project TERMES research. the termite nest: a termite nest is an emergent system - "emergence: complex systems and patterns (which) arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions" (wikipedia, april 12, 2009). there are are only seven or eight "rules" which form this complex system: 1. random walk (no stimulus = walk) 2. response to local pheromone (#1) field: pick up material 3. response to decaying pheromone (#1) in local pheromone field: deposit material 4. response to local pheromone (#2) field: remove material 5. response to decaying pheromone (#2) in local pheromone field: deposit material (pheromone #2 is present in and drives the form of the "root ball") the result of rules 4 and 5 is that a balance in pheromone intensity = balance in O2/CO2 exchange whereas an imbalance in pheromone intensity = construction/deconstruction the nest until the nest is in tune. the mali mud mosque - deconstructing the concept of longevity: longevity: the mosque is trampelled down by the community and rebuilt yearly - if one were to ask the age of the mosque, the locals would answer "2500 years" - the umber of years the community has been celebrating this ritual. learning from termites: cooling cups on the roof of the mosque mimic the function of the structure of termite mounds found within the vicinity of this tribe. continuous construction: construction extends into maintenance. emergent form and material: (i'm a little fuzzy on the details of this argument...but i was intrigued by it so i have included the parts that i can remember here...) architectural style: gothic v. classical. the architectural style of the gothic era was that of a single material (stone) used in many forms (eg. the cathedral: stone as structure, finish, enclosure...). in contrast, during the classical period, form was defined by the material used. dr. soar suggested that the use of a single versatile material like stone (gothic) or gypsum (contemporary) is necessary in order to build an emergent structure. (termites, ants, etc. use soil).