How Emerging Technology ReConfigure Our Lives Curator: Philip Pongvarin Xuan Wu Arch 432 People Places and Culture USC School of Architecture Spring 2010
TABLEOFCONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
META -SPHERE Wu Xuan ABSTRACT
The virtual world comprised of multiple layers of digital data has long been set. Today they are being embeded into our physical daily life in a far more seamless and pervasive manner. In this way the boundary between real and virtual is blurred, or even, the boundary between human beings and machine is blurred if you think of how intuitive and intelligent the digital devices would be, and how a individual’ s activities, movements, and even emotions could be digitized and transfered in the digital world at real time. This digital world, in its most ideal situation, would be a sphere of coexistence, in Peter Sloterdijk’ s sense, a space in which we enjoy the augmented freedom, democracy, and reality. Think about some familiar and even routine scenarios of your everyday life: you get up in the morning, turn on your computer to read the news or emails while having a cup of coffee; at a short break during office hours, you chat with a friend in another side of the earth and she shows you the new dress she just bought; after a shower you go to bed togother with your blackberry, waiting for an important email from the colleague. All these seem to you are so banal that you would not think of them when you hear about the term technology – they just become as prosaic as a vase in your house or a cosmetic mirror in your purse. Then think about something more like to appear in the futuristic fiction: you hold your cell phone toward a city map, and the images of the streetscape appear on the screen; you pick up a pair of goggle from the bag and wear it, and then the webpage in your computer, or the image of your friend in Skype, come to be floating in the air in front of you; your lover send you a message and as a result, you feel a slight pressure coming from the T-shirt you wear which resemble a warm hug; you step into a city plaza, the scattered LED installation begin to emit sound or light according to your movement – they are interacting with you. Then what do all these suggest? Certainly the media installation that creates an additional layer of space is more than devices that tantalize people’ s sensations, and the Graphical User Interface of iphone that enables the immidiate tangibility is more than a metaphor of the substantialisation of intangible information. They do, anounce the coming of the new era marked by the revolutionary way we get, store, and interact with the digital information.
CURATOR’S WORDS
DIGITAL INTIMACY
IMPACT ON SOCIAL NETWORKING
In the first place, this ‘ meta-sphere’ renews the way in which we interact with both digital data and each other. With the explosion of the hyperlocal and hyper visual infomation cloud it is supposed that the intensity of social interaction would be amplified and multiplied, as well as the complexity of communication between non – humans – namely machines, data, animals, etc. – would be revealed and grasped. The consequence of its impact on social network will be complicated and controversial, as no one would predict that whether people would be encouraged to leave their isolated self to communicate with larger social group, or merely maintain their own cocoon sustained by the technology
MENTAL LANDSCAPE
IMPACT ON PUBLIC DOMAIN
It is for sure that the public domain, in its traditional sense, a place with reference to certain space and moment, would be eroded by a ‘ cyberspace’ in which every participant creates his own system of spatiotemporal reference that may or may not be shared with others. In this metasphere, as stated before, one comprised of hierachical layers of tactile interfaces, every one has the potential of being a interface himself in that every action taken on a micro level is itself new information which informs on a macro level what others see and sense. Thus the envelope of public domain is no longer defined by the place, event, or social group, but rather depicted by the computational programming you choose to construct your own itineraries and encounters in the vast mental landscape.
ENVIRONMENTAL EMBODIMENT BLENDED IN META-SPHERE
Perhaps it is less about the cliche of that whether technology, often rendered as potentially malign force, would lead to the domination of virtual over real, machinery over humanity. It is more about the body’ s capacity to proprioceptively map its own positions and displacements in the pervasive data field since it is already there. In his book Camouflage, Neil Leach states that we human being have the innate tendency to be blended and absorbe into the environment we inhabitate just as a smart chameleon does. It is through such course of self sacrifice that we identify and represent ourself, determine our coordinates in the infinite matrix. Maybe the principle pertains equally to the way we project ourself into the ambient data field through which we learn to mediate both space and moment. And moreover, the environment may begin to be animated as a chameleon that suits the desires of our own. It is said that all human tries to do is to recreate the warm and safe environment that they first experience in the womb. Again, the answer to the question that whether the meta sphere emerging now would better facilitate our effort of environmental blendness is complex and contraversial, depending highly on the personal pattern in which you see, sense and operate. Reference: 4dspace: Interactive Architecture (Architectural Design) by Lucy Bullivant Place: Networked Place, Kazys Varnelis & Anne Friedberg Iphone City: by Andrea Bettella Spheres I: by Peter Sloterdijk Camouflage: by Neil Leach
PROGRAMMED HUMAN INTERACTION Philip Pongvarin
New technologies have significant impact on human since the dawn of time, yet the past 10 years of technology have a larger impact than the period preceding. Population growth and available human knowledge power effects this, but it is the need for an effortless daily life that drives new technology. As human, we have gone from walking, to using human-powered carriages, to animal-drawn carriages, and finally to machinepowered means of transportation. Same can be said with communication, or any type of human interaction; there’s usually a mechanical device already invented to aid almost all human contacts. The most basic of human interactions involves at least two people within each other’s vicinity. The problem arises when the two people don’t live within walking distance. Other means of relaying messages must be invented, hence messengers using horse, ergo postal systems. Further, there’re telephones, which began as land lines, but that was deemed an inconvenient where land line was unavailable. Hence wireless phones for land lines are invented, which eventually paved way for cellular and satellite phones. Lastly is probably the most important technology of all, computing technology, which found its way into many devices and machines. The positive impacts of these technologies are immense, but the concerns of the sudden emergence of these technologies are the impacts they have on human on a social level. Cell phones have become that replacement of direct social interactions, lessening the needs to see acquaintances frequently. People often ask, why walk or drive long distances when he or she can simply call or text. The lessening of human interaction was taken a step further when social networking sites are created for the internet. Current social networking has already taken a drastic step with virtual realities, a place where people can lead a second life, hence the name of the game. Its actual existence and legitimacy are often questioned, yet obscured by certain aspects of the game such as interrelation of currency, where real world money translate directly into virtual money, and virtual money can be translated back to real world money. People in the virtual games can have a job, house, and even a second set of friends. If this “game” persist, human will began to question what is real and what is not, and perhaps creating a situation thought of in many media; one popular film came to mind: the Matrix. What do all these issues mean for the future of technology? Does it means that laptops will now have standard transparent-able screens so that students will have to turn their screens transparent in class, so that their professors see they’re taking notes and not playing games or browsing the internet? Would this mean that online classes through webcams will be the primary way of conducting classes, rendering physical lecture hall ancient, and the need to be at education institution reserved only for hands on learning such as laboratory experiments. The direction technology takes lies within human necessity. It is our responsibility to “vote” by usage, purchasing, etc. on which technology that will be beneficial rather than breaks down the essence of human, to keep that fine line between what is real and what is not.
CURATOR’S WORDS
References Boellstorff, Tom. Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Princeton University Press, 2008. Corn, Joseph J. Horrigan, Brian. Yesterday’s Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Dregni, John. Dregni, Eric. Follies of Science: 20th Century Visions of Our Fantastic Future. Golden, CO: Speck Press, 2006. Hayles, Katherine. How We Become Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernatics, Literatures, and Informatics. University of Chicago Press, 1999. Meadows, Mark. I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life. New Riders Press, 2008. Wilson, Daniel H. Where’s My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future that Never Arrived. New York, NY: Bloomsbury USA, 2007.
PUBLiC
DOMAiN
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Nolli Map Giambattista Nolli.1748 In the ichnographic plan of Rome, now universally known as the Nolli Map, Giambattista Nolli uses a figure-ground representation of built space with blocks and building shaded in a dark pochÊ. Enclosed public spaces such as the colonnades in St. Peter’s Square and the Pantheon as open civic spaces.
Phone + City: Software + Hardware Platform
PUBLIC DOMAIN
iPhone City, written by Andrea Bettella, is an interesting and insightful article which talks about how we properly theorise the digital at the scale of the city, and the city rendered as digital media. If the first function of the city is proximity – to people, goods, information, transportation, etc. – then the proliferation of information network as well as the smart digital handset such as iPhone condense the city into an extensible software + hardware platform, a meta – interface comprised of millions of smaller tacticle ones. Phone + City is a composite read – write medium, allowing for real time communication through multiple modes. It is the most important infrastructure of any emergent global democratic society. This is not only because it enables physical, communicative and thereby social mobility, but because it reinserts the specific location into digital space, and does so by ‘ making location gestural ’. According to this emerging scenario the author made his suggestion to architects, as he stated: “ One half of the architects and urbanists should stop designing new buildings and new developments altogether. Instead, they should invest the historical depth and intellectual nuance of their architectural imagination into the design and programming of new software that provides for the better use of the structures and systems we already have... “ It is true that space, in its traditional sense, a place with reference to certain structure and material, would be eroded by a ‘ cyberspace’ in which every participant creates his own system of spatiotemporal reference. Thus the term Space may be less defined by the architectural form, but rather depicted by the computational programming you choose to construct your own itineraries and encounters in the vast mental landscape.
iTravel
The screen of the smart handset such as iPhone is now tool for us to orient and navigate ourselves, altering the way we experience the city. With location-based technology, users can search for the best restaurants, bars, clubs, museums, shops and Design Hotels member hotels that are closest to their current location. There’s also no need to worry about expensive roaming fees because the content is accessible offline as well. The team of journalists are constantly researching and updating the listings and reviews to keep travellers current on happenings in the local scene.
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Smart Car
is an intelligent system designed by MIT Media Lab. Based on the interface of handset such as iPhone, the system is to facilitate the user experience of car rental. Currently people spend a good amount of time in picking up the car and returning it in designated location which may be far away from their destination. This system is designed to allow the users to pick up the car in a place nearest to his or her current location and drop it near the destination which in the most ideal situation would right be the pick up location of the next user. Since the process of car rental would be facilitated it is hoped that more and more people would use the rent car as transportation alternative thus the environmental impact of too much private vihicles would be alleviated.
Mr A pick up location 3111 Walton Ave. 11:20am
iDrive Network
iDrive Mr A drop off location
Ms B pick up location 3111 Walton Ave. 07:27pm
Every action taken on the micro level becomes new information which changes on the macro level how others are informed
PUBLIC DOMAIN
iFly
is a student project done by Xu, Xiaochang in the Architecture & Media studio, USC school of Architecture. It is also a nevigating system based on iPhone interface used in airport. Traveler landing on an airport which he is not familier with could use the phone to get all the related information such as 3D map to nevigate himself and more optically arrange his route and schedule. The sistem also allows the airport to locate individual traveler for better administration.
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Interactivity
Eco friendly
A virtual facade eliminates the need for usage of many material resources, helping reduce pollution during the construction process.
The facade can change according to the type of users, or any festivities of the time.
Cost saving
The projection system only uses electricity and programming. Instead of having to build and rebuild, the projection does all the work, reducing production cost.
Variety
There are limitless possiblilities of facades, only limited by the programer.
Virtual Facade: Would Architecture’ s Allignment With Multimedia Lead to More Attractive & Interactive Public Space?
Virtual Facade The integration of multimedia technology into architectural design in recent years changes the built environment. There is some obvious advantages, among which the most promising one would be to let the building facade directly communicate with people or their digital handset such as cell phone. It is connected to our daily physical experience in a most seamless manner, rendering the public space more attractive and interactive.
3D projections were used in these images to transform the facade into many different design language as
seen fit by the architect. An “automated� program can be written so that a building can visually change shape and texture, lessenning the importance of a physical space designer and demands for virtual space designer.
Public Domain: Networked & elsewhere
Recently, cafe’s have been become a meeting place for many people, whether it is for business purpose, education, or just leisure. What pushes cafes to this status of meeting place depends on the incentives offered at the cafe. People can go and get food and drinks, while being in a social environment, as they congregate and discuss any matters at hand.
Cafe’s provided a public space for people to engage in social behavior, such as conversations or debates. They also provide ambient background for those individuals who need to be in social environment in order to work. Cafe business owners have been looking for ways to improve the social settings already present by adding amenities for their customers and visitors. There are often thoughtful background music, comfortable furniture, and art decorations. The available amenities were pushed futher when free internet access were given to customers, as an incentives to keep people in the cafe for longer peroid of time, for better business. Many cafe franchise has taken onto this business regime, such as starbucks. This idea is one in which that individuals have the need to gather in social setting, even by themselves, was explored. This is the idea that we are not necessary alone even if we are not interacting with those in close proximity. It is the idea that just being in a social setting, connected to the internet, the virtual social world, means that we are not along.
SOCiAL
NETWORKiNG
Tele-Trust This page: Many of us wants privacy, yet at the same time wants to be noticed by others. The cloth on the images on this page is specially made to “hide� the wearer. However, it has the ability to monitor the wearer’s emotion so that as the user arrives at certain locations, the information will transfer from the cloth to the monitor, reflecting what is going on with the user. The emotion comes out for people to see, but the user remains hidden from public. Opposing page: Clothing technologically desgned based on Intimacy, the idea that the clothes change transparency according to the people the wearer encounters. Would this kind of technology let human reexamines the level of exposure and guard we have in the public domain, or even with aqquaintances?
Bibap With Bibap, an online virtual world was created with five different environments for the user to navigate through, each offering different possibilities for interacting with the application. (www.bibap.nl)
Body in Bits And Pieces, an online application that entices visitors to the BIBAP website to interact in an exciting virtual environment.
SOCIAL NETWORKING
Window Phone, transparent screen will change a window into a variety of weather, accordingly.
Transparent Windows Phone Imagine if your phone can change its appearance according to the weather or your emotion. Suddenly the phone can have different designs instead of one. Further, the phone in the present day, with the internet, allow the users to connect virtually to anyone on the planet. Wireless phone has become so advanced in recent days that many people spent as much time on a cell phone as a computer. Social networking through cell phone has lessen the normal face-to-face human interaction, and has paved way to virtual webcam interaction through phone’s cameras.
For about a week during the Ars Electronica Festival, Marienstraße, a side-street in downtown Linz, will undergo strategically orchestrated design interventions that will shift it out of the real cityscape and morph it into a zone of transition into virtuality.
“Tree”, four life size semi transparent Second Life trees on a construction site in Marienstrasse
“Missing Image”, the graphical error message from Second Life as a real life shirt
“Chat”, the real life interactive speech bubbles as a mobile installation / performance
“Are you social? T-shirts related to the top of privacy and Web2.0 service
?”, pic es
SOCIAL NETWORKING
In which form does this networkdataworld really manifest itself in our physical everyday-lifespace? What is being fed back into physical space from the “cyberspace” into which data has been fed for so long now? How do these digital innovations influence our actions in everyday life? Ars Electronica festival 2007 showcase many new technology for the virtual space. The festival took in an outdoor public space in the center of Linz, Austria. One of the exhibit was for “Second City,” a part of the festival situated in a deserted shopping street between other festival places like Ok-Center, the conference Forum and Pfarrplatz. The topic of virtual reality of Second Life was a subtopic because the festival was more focused on representing the virtual world, in a physical world in their outdoor public space. In an ironic exaggerated way the design of Marienstrasse picked up the main reason for Second Lifes success: money and shopping. In a typical akward Second Life style big shopping panels and default wood cubes were scattered along street. Visitors could choose objects from these billboards and order them at the Second City Shop. The Second City Shop was the center of Second Life. Virtual objects were delivered by the real life clerk, a physical lasered shape of the virtual object served as a receipt and represented the “real” object in Second Life. Visitors could later show each other what they got for their avatars and exchange these objects. Beside serveral pieces and presentations, five different workshops were offered at the Second City Shop: “Create and trade”, “Export to world”, “WoW”, “Handmade” and “Cut and paste” which allowed the import and export objects in all kinds of ways from the virtual world Second Life. (Second Life, Aram Bartholl).
“ Export to World ” seeks to comment ironically on the design and production of merchandise in virtual worlds. Retail space on Marienstraße will be temporarily converted into a shop like those found in Second Life. custom-made or purchased virtual objects that shoppers can buy at a price determined daily by the current Linden dollar/euro exchange rate. “Are you social?”, T-shirts related to the topic of privacy and Web2.0 services
SOCIAL NETWORKING
What if YOU can have a second life?
data-based world of digital networks has become an increasingly important SchizophrenicalThe part of everyday life. A diverse array of platforms, devices and services vie for attention. The acceleration of communication and networking in recent Livingour years has been considerable. The digital world can be extremely useful, or even indispensable if you will, but it remains arrested on a rectangle full of pixels. With each new communications service, people’s online habits change. Whereas big-city anonymity still prevails in everyday life in the public sphere, the most minute details of private life are being exhibitionistically put on display in the Internet.
Who are you? What do you do? Where are you? Who are your friends? The Internet services of so-called Web 2.0 trigger undreamt-of synergy effects for their users in the form of social networks;the price, however, is anonymity. But whoever doesn’t get into the swim doesn’t make a ripple in the networked world; they go unnoticed and go without access to the big data flow.Human beings themselves comprise the interface between the abstract, digital world and the material, analog one.We lead a sort of schizophrenic life between the rapidly moving, difficult-to-grasp world of communication and real life in space and time. It seems to be something regarded as completely normal to be chatting with someone in a café while simultaneously writing an SMS, but these are two fundamentally different worlds of communication.
We identify and represent ourself, determine our coordinates in the infinite matrix. Maybe
the principle pertains equally to the way we project ourself into the ambient data field through which we learn to mediate both space and moment. And moreover, the environment may begin to be animated as a chameleon that suits the desires of our own.
GLOSSARY OF
RELEVANT
TERMS
Digital World a space in which we
enjoy the augmented freedom, democracy, and reality
Meta-Sphere consciousness of the
seven “rays� of metaphysics: will, love, intelligent, harmony, knowledge, devotion, and order.
Digital the constant online conto social netIntimacy nection working sites
GLOSSARY OF RELEVANT TERMS
Mental the computational proyou choose Landscape gramming to construct your own
itineraries and encounters
Environmental the body’s capacity to Embodiment proprioceptively map its own positions
and displacements in the pervasive data field
Programmed the possible scenarios the digital world, Human in readily planned for any Interactions users.
Public openly available to evDomain eryone and for everyone
Social online community for the Networking people
4D Space 3D space with the addition of time and motion of the object only
Transparent the characteristic of be-
ing able to allow light to pass through
Envelope that which define something; a limit
GLOSSARY OF RELEVANT TERMS
Facade the front of a building; the sides
Technology a subject branch that
deals with the creation related to art and science, or similar
Communication the act of the inter-
change of thoughts,etc
Automate the method of control by a mechanical or electrical device
IMAGE & GENERAL INDEX
iMAGES &
GENERAL
iNDEX
IMAGE & GENERAL INDEX
Rome Map www. fonisol. com
Transparent Windows Phone Designer: Seunghan Song www.tuvie.com
“iPhone City� Benjamin Bratton
World Map www.bristolstories.org
Toyota Yaris www.toyota. com
Airport Terminal www.inhabitat.com
IMAGE & GENERAL INDEX
Leaf www.jykel03. wordpress. com
Piggy Bank www.51qite.cn
Variety www.gourmetdelight.com Intimacy www.v2.nl
Interactive Display www.fredericeyl.de
Tele-Trust www.v2.nl
Tangible Video Projection www.projectionsonbuildings.com
Images Selections www.datenform.de
IMAGE & GENERAL INDEX
BIBAP /www.bibap.nl
World Network www.visualcomplexity. com
The Cafe Terrace www.1st-art-gallery. com
Laptop User www.geekwithlaptop.com
Transparent Windows Phone Designer: Seunghan Song www.tuvie.com
The Bridge Project www.citrinitas.com
World Connection Density www.chrisharrison.net