I_O_I_english

Interaction Laboratory

THE SENSES OF MACHINES An exhibition of experimental design in relation to the use of technology

NEO-FUTURISM? We are living a very intense start of the century. In every sense: social, economic, natural and — of course — technological. The changes in this area have been taking place at a terrifying pace over the past twenty years. We are transforming (or witnessing transformations in) relational, industrial, political and social structures that developed over the course of the twentieth century.

The challenge is to try to make sure these are transformations for the better, something that objectively ought to occur. Technology improves our lives, but it also generates profound changes. And these changes are not always fair or just for all, given that technology is the outcome of research and knowledge, and tends to emerge in the more economically developed environments and not in the more depressed ones. Technology accentuates these differences, and the progress that comes with it is not equally available to all. It is also true that thanks to technologies like the Internet, disadvantaged areas have suddenly made contact with the twenty-first century, although it would be hard to say whether this is good or bad.

There is one thing that unites us with the start of the twentieth century, a hundred years ago now, and that is the fascination with our progress, our machines, our technology: tangible proof of humanity’s ability to progress and, as Futurists like Marinetti believed, of how beautiful and thrilling everything that we create can become. And hand in hand with this goes the hope that technology will be a means of leaving the old and obsolete behind, improving our lives and our world. I often think we are eager for far more change — perhaps because we believe it is necessary — than technology is actually capable of offering us. And perhaps the same fervour for progress drove the Futurists and drives us all now.

But undoubtedly that is an attribute that technology should offer.

And to start to analyse in depth its full potential is something that concerns us in Disseny Hub Barcelona, especially from the perspective of its relation to the design process.

We have been doing just that for a year now with the Fabrication Laboratory and all of the activities run in parallel with it, and we are continuing now with the Interaction Laboratory.

Quite simply, if technology is able to develop more capable machines, with more functions and more intelligence, our relationship with our machines must become richer and more complex day by day. Our dialogue will be more proactive, going beyond the action-response that has defined our interactions up till now and allowing us to move on to action-response-action, taking a further step towards producing more artificial intelligence in their artificial brains. Our machines are acquiring more senses and getting smarter. The list of their skills keeps growing and our ability to interact has grown enormously: the fact is that we really cannot begin to imagine what we may derive from our future exchanges with them. And that is what this exhibition is all about: examining and learning about and from a complex relationship that is increasingly hard to foresee, and the diversity of categories towards which interaction is leading us, to assess the behaviours and nuances that are produced in us as users of a new relational world into which we are inexorably drawn. In other words, to engage in a positive appreciation of the effect of this new reality as a step towards a world that is not only more complex and more contradictory, but also more effective and more stimulating. Or at least that is what we aspire to.

Ramon Prat DHUB general curator

An exhibition about new technologies?

No. An exhibition about uses of technology.

About interaction.

Interaction?

Yes. A didactic, experimental look at the relationship between humans and machines.

Technology/design?

Design/technology?

Design/interaction?

Interaction/technology? / /

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An exploration of new territories in which the design of interaction generates new disciplines and new experiences.

Right!

But... what is an exhibition called I/O/I all about?

I/O/I = input/output/input.

I/O = Input/output = a signal coming in and a signal going out = a reactive device or system.

I/O/I = input/output/input = a signal coming in and a signal going out and a signal coming in again = an interactive device or system.

Is thinking about a feedback system going a step beyond the merely reactive?

Maybe...

And... the senses of machines?

An analogy between the human senses and the way in which machines receive impulses and signals.

Nowadays we have systems that can perceive any human action by means of sensors and transducers.

Making an analogy between the mechanisms of human perception and the receiver devices of machines will, for example, show us the limits of human perception.

What about the machines’ limits of perception?

Yes, that too.

But... why an interaction laboratory?

Because this isn’t just an exhibition of finished pieces.

Because every interactive process is generative and constantly under construction.

Action is a constant.

So it’s like turning a museum into a place of work and development?

Yes, a place for interaction.

This show engages with interaction from different levels, on a scale ranging from very simple devices that demonstrate the transmission of energy and its conversion into gestures, signals and data to more complex systems in which identical machines interact with one another and generate behaviours in a community, in a swarm.

This scale, with its didactic load, forms the initial narrative of the exhibition.

So it’s a thoughtful look at technology, human beings and their environment?

Yes. At the extensions of our senses and our limbs.

At the effects we produce with the use of technology.

At the different scenarios in which interaction design is present.

At the development of interactive interfaces and their crucial role in the design of the future.

Over the past forty years, information technologies have brought about major changes in the way we relate to our environment.

Information, travelling along its new channels, has infiltrated every level of our day-to-day experience.

Have technology and the information society facilitated interaction between people?

Do we really think we are more connected?

What does it mean to be connected?

Symbiosis between the physical and the virtual is sought through the design of interfaces.

People are connected with things and with the environment.

A networked world is constructed.

People related to their surroundings by way of interfaces: objects, spaces, environments, networks, contents, limits...

An interface is an extension of the body?

Yes.

What happens when objects start to think?

If we add information to a physical object, we are ordering the component elements of its system in a certain way. If we also add connectivity, we endow it with functions that enhance its properties and make it easier to use. As a result, this object could potentially improve people’s lives...

Wouldn’t it be fundamental that objects should adapt to people, according to their information and function, and not vice versa?

The idea is that you don’t need additional interfaces to connect people and things, that the world is itself an interface.

Objects and environments, devices and systems are endowed with ever greater autonomy and processing capacity, so that they can even communicate with one another and generate behaviours that are almost social.

Is that the singularity?

Maybe...

Imagine a hypothetical point at which technological civilization experiences an acceleration of technical progress that leaves us unable to predict the results: machines that take decisions when it comes to making other machines and, especially, when it comes to defining their functions.

Are we designing the world for that future?

And what about the huge amount of data we are constantly generating?

Where does it all go?

How can it be used?

We live in the information age.

The world is an interconnected system in which everything appears to be linked to everything.

With this vast amount of data to manage and communicate, information design becomes essential.

If the data visualization does not help us understand the data, all we are doing is accumulating information and that would be a totally futile exercise.

And after data visualization...

What?

What is all this about emerging systems, colonies and swarms?

Ants create colonies, the inhabitants of a city create neighbourhoods, cells unite to form organisms, a simple pattern recognition programme learns how to recommend books.

In these systems, individuals on one scale start to produce behaviours that operate on a higher scale than their own.

The evolution from simple to complex rules is what we call emergence.

Is there such a thing as non-interactive design?

What there can be is a design that does not take into account its levels of use, and thus its level of interaction: bad design.

The fact that a device is more or less interactive is not a question of its complexity or simplicity — it depends on its potential to interact with the user.

And what’s happening about research into interaction design?

There is a space dedicated specifically to schools, universities and research centres, where you can see different lines of work through their ideas, projects, prototypes...

A laboratory in a museum?

Yes. An interaction laboratory in the design museum, a museum laboratory.

A hybrid space devoted to research, to teaching, to design, to solving problems...

An active laboratory linked to the exhibition.

Can we separate interactivity from the idea of the laboratory?

This exhibition is the product of a research process that has led us to show interaction as a variable in time, and not as a definitive presentation of interaction. Is it possible to say anything definitive about something that is part of a process?

The important thing is not always to present the heroes or the milestones in a particular discipline.

We could talk about interaction with reference to other artists, designers, researchers, programmers... Ultimately, the important thing is to explain interaction over and above a particular technology or designer or piece.

So, students and professionals, simple pieces and complex pieces, prototypes and finished products, all together in a space in which we explicitly set out to create a place of knowledge, of reflection, of active contemplation, of interaction.

Every element, simple or complex, has the potential to explain the universe.

Let’s reveal the tricks of the magic of technology!

Let’s make its processes public!

Let’s not generate tools that only encourage us to consume more technology!

Nuria Díaz and Carlos Gómez I/O/I curators

INFORMATION DESIGNERS/PIECES

Roger Ibars HWD corporation 099/029/045/048/099 2009 Karolina Sobecka i James George Sniff 2011 Whitevoid Polygon Playground 2011 Betoldi, Menks i Dalmazo Sensores y galvanรณmetros 2011 Shahar Zaks Steady State 2010 Kuan-Ju Wu Giffi: Gift for Future Inventor 2011 Jessica Floeh Hanky Pancreasโ ข 2011 Alexander Reeder Dream Jammies 2008 Paula Winograd, Fundaciรณn Musgo Lunchbox Stories 2009 Parul i Mooshir Vahanvati, Rayden Design Studio Maximus 2011

Cheng Xu SpeakerWire 2009

Karl D. D. Willis i Juncong Lin Spatial Sketch 2009

Starlab Enobio, portable wireless brain monitoring 2009

Julius Popp Bit.Flow 2004–2008

Yunsil Heo i Hyunwoo Bang Memoirs 2010

Aer Studio, Bestiario i Urbiótica Visualización de datos 2011

Yunsil Heo i Hyunwoo Bang Oasis 2010

Informationlab, Auke Touwslager i Ursula Lavrenčič Cell Phone Disco 2009

Elisabeth Fuller Life dress 2009

Jody Zellen The Unemployed 2009

Niklas Roy My little piece of Privacy 2010

Ferran Atzet Aurat 2011

Elim Chengz I need you to need me 2009

IDATBCN Jardí 2011

Joon Yong Moon Augmented Shadow 2010

Peter Anch and NoInteractionGroup Invisible maps 2011

Rafael Lozano–Hemmer Less Than Three 2008

Prof. Narcís Parés, Coordinator of CSIM Master Program ICTD

Alvaro Cassinelli i Daito Manabe, with technical contribution of Alexis Zerroug Score Light 2010

DESIGN HUB BARCELONA [DHUB] DHUB General Curator Ramon Prat DHUB Director of Museums: Marta Montmany EXHIBITION I/O/I Interaction Laboratory The Senses of Machines Curators Nuria Díaz and Carlos Gómez

Graphic design Pedro Hugo Carmo and Ana Gale

International consulting Mónica Bello, Ludovich Markopoulou and Carolina Vallejo

Illustration Jesús Pedro Pacheco

Coordination and production DHUB Àlex Armesto, Àngela Cuenca, Salva Ferrer and Anna Soler

Audio-visuals ON i ON Comunicació Special input Cristóbal Castilla, Hector Sánchez Victor Viña and Nidhi Shah

Documentation Catalina Pérez

Texts Nuria Díaz and Carlos Gómez

Design of the exhibition space Nuria Díaz and Carlos Gómez with Daniela Frogheri

I/O/I website Xavi González and 72 Estudi

Design of the exhibition elements Metamorfosi Arquitectes

Translation and correction of texts Montserrat Pérez and Graham Thomson

Lighting La Invisible

Production and montage Cultural Sense s.l.u.

DHUB whishes to thank IDATBCN, Prof. Narcís Parés, UPF, UPC, Bestiario, Aer Studio, Urbiótica, and Telefónica