In my class PublicSpaces 2.0 from the space & design strategies department we discussed the connections between social media and public spaces. Also some design theory aspects were included into the discussion. In my case I introduced the lifestyle of hermits. Hermits create a kind of subspaces in urban or nature environments. These subspaces have got their own system and rules. Our current culture is characterized by fast technical developments and accelerated lifestyles. That includes travelling over big distances, moving often, huge information perception via social media services, etc. In some life periods these circumstances are not healthy. They cause long-term stress symptoms, losing creativity and so on. In this case the lifestyle of hermits can give an inspiration for creating a subspace in our urban environment. A subspace, which minimize these aspects of acceleration and creating an appropriate environment for each individual. In my presentation and in my paper I don't say that the solitary lifestyle of the hermits is optimal. A good environment has to provide also a stable social enviromnent with friends and partners. I am just using the hermit lifestyle for some design approaches and for getting inspired.
Furthermore, I describe in my paper how people become unconsciously and consciously an hermit. Becoming unconsciously a hermit could lead to some conflicts in our society. The key aspects of Reduction and Filtering in designing Intertactive Media play an important role for solving this issues. More detailed explanations of my thoughts are written down in my PDF paper.
For exploring the JavaScript API in MAX / MSP / Jitter I decided to port the Harmony Web Application by Mr. Doob. I really fall in love with the different brush styles. MAX / MSP / Jitter is pretty cool for doing audio visual stuff, and I think the different brush style might be nice for this. Fortunately, Mr. Doob published the source code and the code is nice, too! Therefore, it was not so difficult to understand the code. During my porting process I had to consider four things: Read more...
Now I am almost studying Interactive Art for one year. Me, as a Flash and Flex Developer, like coding with audio-visual and interaction-based content. But if I am honest, in the last time I did not use Flash in my projects at all. I had to deal with some other powerful creative coding tools. Some of these tools provide me, as an artist, much more freedom than the Flash plattform can ever provide. For example, creating a visual output for multi-displays applications, programming on hardware (arduino), some real-time video tracking (face detection) experiments, using special Open-GL Renderer for 3D graphics and so on. But I also ran into problems, which I would never have with using Flash. Especially, when I worked together with unexperienced programmer. For this reason, I will describe some of these creative coding tools with their inherent advantages and disadvantages. After this article you should have a good overview about the available tools in creative coding.
I am skating since 1996 and I still enjoy it very much. I never was this big talented skater, who did every handrail in the town or who did high technical tricks. I am able to skate transition, gaps and rails on the same level. So I was and I am still a good allround skater. But there was one thing, which distungished me from my other friends... I had a different perspective on spots. When we went out for exploring new spots, I was not interested on perfect handrails, I was more interested in using the urban (public space) architecture in a new way. I did not do the best trick on the new spots I found, but everytime I shared my trick ideas withmy friends on which they never thought before. After that sharing process they evolved my ideas and in the most cases they did better tricks than me. Sharing inspiration and toughts are the reason why I wrote this article. Read more...
In the last months I worked with people from abroad or with big physical distances. The first time I thought, yeah that is not a problem. Everybody has got an internet connection and that is all what we need. In my old company the Liip AG - who I worked for - their whole project management and file management systems were almost accessible over an internet connection. For this reason I could work from everywhere I want. I thought, that would not change in my future time, because the internet has solutions for everything. Yeah, I have to say that is true. But it was not easy to find the right tools and services for exchanging ideas, files, time schedules and other stuff for free. My projects are not so big that it makes sense to implement this infrastructures by my own. I found some free or at least some cheap services which you can use for working together with friends or other small projects.
Idea Development and Sharing
Creating and developing ideas with people, who are not physical available, is not very easy. Maintaining and extending are also two not very minor problems. In the last time I found a very good workflow for me and my friends. We do a telephone conference via skype and in the same time we use the service Mindmeister (Online Mindmapping Tool) and the tool Balsamiq MockUp. At the moment our solution works good and it is totally free with some limitations. A more professional solution for idea development and exchange may be the Service ProtoShare. Unfortunately, there is no real free pricing model available, therefore I never tested this service. Read more...
Vom 2. bis zum 7. Februar fand das Medienfestival Transmediale in Berlin statt. Das Festival stand ganz unter dem Motto "Futurity Now", sprich was ist und wie gestalten wir unsere Zukunft. Gemäß aller Vorträge und Diskussionsrunden soll dabei das Internet und die kreative Klasse die wichtigsten Rollen für unsere Zukunft übernehmen. Vom meinem subjektiven Gefühl her stammten die meisten Besucher auch aus dieser sogenannten kreativen Klasse. An sich eine gute Sache, nur wandelte sich genau dieses Publikum in einigen Diskussionsrunden zu einer wahren Selbstbeweihräucherung, wie toll und kreativ und innovativ man doch sei. Besonders negativ ist mir die Diskussion am Ende zum Thema Creativity as an Economic Resource aufgefallen. Nun gut davon wollte ich mich mir freilich nicht die Stimmung vermiesen lassen und besuchte die Transmediale Ausstellung. Viele Kunstwerke gab es zwar nicht zu sehen, aber das war für mich schon O.K., denn das A Parallel Image, die Paparazzi Bots und der Artvertiser haben mich ziemlich überzeugt und waren sicherlich auch einer der Highlights der Austellung.
During my master studies at the Interface Culture department of the University in Linz I visited the great lecture SENSEWARE - How to Create the Experience's Architecture by Hide Ogawa. In this lecture we learnt and discussed how we can integrate and reproduce emotions + experiences in our technical-based environment. Furthermore, we discussed the roles of the different interactive design disciplines - e.g. Product Designer, Industrial Designer, Interaction Designer, Visual Designer, Experience Designer etc. - and how they work together in the domain of SenseWare products.
For a better understanding how SenseWare is implemented in each culture, we had got the task to give a 5min overview of SenseWare in our country. In my presentation I mentioned mainly the religion background of SenseWare in Germany. Nowadays I think delivering experiences in Germany is mostly driven by media institutions. See my slides here:
