Grounding Research: Rethinking communications..

Stumbled across this beautiful paper as part of the University of California - Irvine project "Digital Voices" the other day... It's talking about the pervasiveness of digital communications in this day and age, and about the beauty (or lack of) that is contained in these transmissions (remember the old-school acoustic modems?).

The pertinent idea presented here is that the digital transmissions (especially in Ubiquitous Computing applications) need not be aesthetically displeasing; and in fact could be quite musical with the relevant information encoded within.  Some example schemes for audible-range encoding are presented within the paper...

The beauty here is that no new technology or hardware is required, many devices around the home already have the required speaker/mic for audible range transmissions.

An interesting fundamental component of this 'acoustic modem' idea is that there is inherently a trade-off between data rate and aesthetic - the faster the transfer the more likely the sounds are to be 'annoying'...

Perhaps most interesting though, is the opening of the data-communications fields to sound designers, composers and HCi developers, creating a new form of art and expression. Quite possibly, the digital communications could be encoded in a form that also, as the authors suggest, 'leaks' some of the information to people - allowing a two way communication channel to develop with our machines....

Grounding Research: Beautiful Interactions pt. II...

OMG.

this is The Greatest Thing In The World!  Check this out.....

So this is a beautiful integration of all the things i love... robotics, autonomy, sampling, drums, music, interactions, open source.... The little machine is sooooo human, especially with the little moving rangefinder... and the ability to find the tempo after a few foot-stamps and join in.... well... it's simple stuff, but the interactive fun would be endless!

Love the aesthetic too, the hot-glue-and-recycled-junk ethos....

Most of all though, i love that its open source.... for around $120US...

here's the step-by-step instructions for all your robotic drumming glory!

Grounding Research: conceptual considerations...

On the conceptual side, again practicalities and simple necessities should dictate the first steps.  If the esky idea is followed through, initial conceptual experiments (after the platform is prototyped) should involve:

• beginning with sensor integration / data acquisition / smoothing
• basic autonomy of movement / obstacle detection / avoidance
• voice recognition and control (including experiments into different algorithms / computational load vs accuracy and background noise rejection)

Once the engineering side is under control, it's time to move onto the most important studies: the interactions of the device with the intended users / audience..

• the excitement of technology / autonomy
• ubiquitous computing / technology that is 'under the hood'
• explorations of interface: familiarity, intuitiveness, comfort, simplicity vs features / control vs autonomy
• analogy: the idea of an esky/dog as companion
• humour ('sit', 'heel', 'stay')
• empathy (wagging tail, movement of sensors mimic human actions, cuteness)

Which then leads into such questions as:

• can it detect a users needs and console him / her like a real dog?
• better than a real dog?
• what if it is too quiet, should it 'bark'? or if the esky hasn't been opened in a while, should it act 'playful'? flap the lid? restless??

Other considerations that are pertinent include how to handle the intended 'party' situation... noise, crowds, curiosity, children...

And after ongoing discussion with Andy, issues such as machine learning are extremely pertinent: taking the device out of the realms of programmed, and into the real meaning of autonomy... Further discussion is definately promised here, but later.....

Grounding Research: Technical considerations...

So, thinking about the imminent project for the Device Lab, due in three weeks:

• needs to be practical: a solution to a clear statement of brief and intentions
• guided by a necessity for a stable development platform for the conceptual explorations (Device Studio)

This leads me to the thoughts of creating a high payload, rugged mobility platform with all-terrain capabilities.  In the case of the mobile esky idea, this would mean all mechanics, power, drive train *and* a case of beer / ice...

It needs to have the capacity to integrate various (future) sensors and actuators, but perhaps for now could be remote controlled (to allow me to focus on the important mechanical / engineering concepts).  

If time allows, various refinements could be made to efficiency, speed and mobility.  A rudimentary safety mechanism (based on proximity sensor) could be developed as part of the software.

If the idea should change, the focus shall remain the same: efficiency, expandability/modularity and stability.

Grounding Research: Habitats for Humanity...

I Just got back from one of my many (necessary) weekends away... the friday to sunday hell-for-leather nature binge and purge that is known (to a growing sub-community) as doof.


It's a hard thing to explain to those who have not yet experienced it; and to those that have it is almost a religion, a cathartic experience with the family, deep in the Australian bush.  It's a playground for the mind and body, a symbiotic intertwining of technology+nature that feels as natural and homely to me as ... well ... being at home!

Rainbow Serpent (~17000 people)

• outdoor, (usually) generator-based gatherings celebrating the natural environment, art and culture
• there is an underlying ecological push, a fringe-dwelling intelligence and a generally technological-savvy audience
• pushing the boundaries of sound, light, system design, control & automation... interactive environments is starting to become a big theme also
• it is a great networking opportunity, especially with people outside their normal work environs: a level playing field
• it is nice to sometimes have a 'focal' or talking point to make new introductions & new opportunities
• there is an eclipse gathering in Nov 2012 in Cairns - i envisage this to be almost a global summit of the modern cyberpunk... it would be nice to take part in some small way, many great opportunities could arise out of this..

Bush Week - a week of ingenuity, good people and good times

So as i was wandering around, admiring all the doofer's quirk, individuality and creativity - getting inspired and the like... it came to me that this is the perfect place for my device to live.  I want to create a practical device that belongs out here, in the bush, with my friends...

Chillen' with some cold brews (finally)...

It struck me immediately after, as i noticed my friends swapping arms with the esky (chully-bun, if you are a brother from New Zealand) they shared, that we need not to carry the load anymore, we have the technology!

You can see here how far it is to sometimes carry a full esky :(

-why not build an esky, that can follow me around wherever i go? it could be like a little puppy, a battery-powered buddy for the long haul....

..... Over all terrains

of course he would need to be semi-autonomous ('cos sometimes i'm useless, and forget stuff on the dance-floor :), and preferably respond to simple voice commands like 'heel', 'stay', roll over.... hmm, maybe not that one !

This brings the next considerations: How to program a device to know when you are thirsty...

Grounding Research: initial ideas and personal considerations..

Well, expanding a little on the grounding process, i have set myself a personal brief on top of the school outlines:

• budgetary constraints necessitate the Device Lab project leading on to the Device Studio (the Device Lab will be a technical exploration leading to a key working element in the Studio - a stable experimental platform)
• i want to create something for minimal money that is re-useable: an ecological, entertaining and functional piece of embedded design & technology
• looking to create a stable and reliable platform for future developments and experiments in robotics / autonomy / automation programming
• the capacity & payload of the device (if appropriate) needs to be adequate for any future projects

My budget for the entire project runs at less than 50$au per week, so as much as possible parts will need to be recycled / appropriated from other devices / machines etc...

The timeline i am working to is dictated partly by the schedule of assessments from school: the technical side of the project needs to be finished in 3 weeks, then there is another 4 weeks for the design, testing and implementation of a conceptual interactive device.  This conceptual device should explore the very nature of interactions, but in my eyes needs to have a practical grounding - i.e something that will be inherently useful to me now, and in the future...

Grounding Research: Inter<>face

So, i've been avoiding this topic so far, it's a big passion of mine.  Sure my closest friends are sick of hearing this rant, but think it's time to touch on it now..

The act of interacting with our devices (whatever they may be) is a constant learning experience - usually on the part of the user.  Rarely will a device adapt it's behaviour for you (though this is beginning to change with advances in artificial intelligence and neural networking).  My problem, in this case, is that sometimes the language of interaction we are forced to learn may not be (these days) the best alternative - just the one that has been taken as standard through time.

Take my passion - music, for example.  For so many thousands of years it was a strictly kinaesthetic playing & learning experience, then it was refined into a written communication language (by the church).  The written language makes sense, however, with pitch going vertical, and time horizontal - providing a lot of data in a compact and visual system.

John Cage example score

This persisted (probably due to the reach of the church, if nothing else) for many many years until the advent of modernism and visionaries like John Cage - whose revolutionary music required an equally revolutionary way of scoring it.  The conventional system just does not provide the correct 'words' to describe the ideas he wished to convey, and thus he set about re-imagining it.

Then along came computer music, and soon after, the need to sequence sound in time and pitch.  Advances in computing power allowed for the text based representations of audio in early tracker programs to be replaced by the ubiquitous MIDI piano roll - again a simple, grid based pitch/up time/forward system, and this time even more constricted to the grid.  Amplitude and pitch are sorely restricted with this system also, with a maximum of 128 discrete steps being recorded by even the best midi device.

Cycle forwards to 2011, today, and we are still fighting our 30 year old interface for the creation of music...this piano roll that has all of a sudden become the de-facto standard of computer music needs to be scrapped, rethought and reinterpreted.

Gestural input interfaces have been around for a while - Leon Theremin's device as far back as the early 1900's was probably a little before the time of its intended audience however.  Roland introduced the D-beam controller into its devices in 1998, Korg's Kaoss Pad a year later, in 1999.... these devices still only manipulated more parameters of the grid however.  

The time for the reinterpretation of interface has come just now, with consumer electronics coupled with open design and community interest.  Johnny Lee with the seminal wiimote hack provided low cost sensory input device, paving the way for much dance-controlled music and movement-based composition.  The plethora of sensors and actuators are available now, and cheap to procure for custom designed interfaces to the world of computer music.

Andy Huntington is one of the new visionaries, taptap and beatbox are a great example of musically interacting with machines...

But surely the nicest re-imagining of the musical interface so far has to be the reactable - what a beautiful, creative and collaborative way to make music! and how intuitive and non-linear these interactions can be - removing all the non-essential functions certainly streamlines the interface in this case, and makes the interaction more inspiring and rewarding.  This, in turn feeds back into itself, allowing the user to enjoy the creative process more.... 

...which is what i dream of, when i sit down in front of the drab, utilitarian grey of the Logic Desktop!

</rant>

   -&c

Grounding Research: the 'Listening Post'

Sitting in the coffee shop today i am reminded of the way things were only a decade ago... the incessant murmur of conversations, communications, ideas being transmitted between humans in a form that has been around for as long as humans themselves...

Surrounded by this beautiful, primitive communication, i reach out through my laptop's screen and keyboard to the unimaginable database beyond, in search of a beautiful interactive installation i remember reading about a few years ago...  Mark Hansen & Ben Rubin's "Listening Post".

In essence, the installation, seen to the right, is scanning online chat rooms for certain phrases and converting them to algorithmic music.  The beauty is in the immediacy, and the scope of the data, with every word in the system being typed only seconds before by someone, somewhere in the world.

In their own words - "Anyone who types a message in a chat room and hits 'send' is calling out for a response - Listening Post is our response [...] a sensual encounter with that data, rendered at the human scale."

There is for me a very warm, comforting atmosphere generated by the piece (even though it is a purely digital dynamic composition): similar to the reason i hang out in this coffee shop for the anonymous presence of others - there is a certain pleasure in the company of other humans.  I wonder if this is how dogs might feel with regards to their owners?

On that note, i think i would like the major project to be like my little pet, a little puppy....

Grounding Research: Embedding Personality

After Andy's 'cute' lecture, I began to remember as a kid seeing faces in things (which today i learned is termed "pareidolia"); and forming (completely ridiculous) attachments with junk that was ...well... just cute!

As this iDevice revolution continues to gather steam, and we continue to find more and more ways to integrate technology with our lifestyles, there is this relationship developing: almost an interdependency with our toys (does anyone else out there think iPhones are just tamagotchi for the older generation?)

When we switch our computer on, we are greeted by a smiley, happy face to let us know all is well in the land of silicon, and the analogies are extended to a saccharin-sweet excess when you try to install, trash or do something that is not allowed -"yes, i really DO want to trash that file that i dragged into the trash!...

But don't get me wrong... I love personality in a device. Hey, I learnt to drive and repair cars on an old '67 IIa Landrover, and this thing had personality... Anyone else out there used to driving these old buckets-of-baling-twine-and-hope will know what i mean - there's something about a system of integrated parts that has worn itself into a rhythm... [or that temperamental pile of old silicon switches on your desk that only works when you hit it the right way....] that we get to know and love - in effect, by the natural modifications of our actions to eke the most out of a system, we become another part of that system!

<&----------------<<

Thinking about embedding personality in devices, really the personality traits i require in my toys today are dependability, speediness, efficiency, intuition... the tools to get the job done... it's all in the interface...


...let's leave all the ghost-in-the-machine stuff for those who need friends ;)
-&c.

Grounding Research: Learning from others

Wow... what an interesting case study... I even found myself trolling through all the comments to see all the suggestions and improvements and discussions the huge community has made...

It's basically a very detailed case study of the diagnosis and repair (rebuild) of a led controlled light-harp, installed for kids in a museum called the "World of Wonder".

Some of the simplest things can save the greatest time, like just leaving adequate documentation with the install (for the next tech); using labels and polarised connectors for easy visibility and circuit tracing; and most of all, by following the golden rule of K.I.S.S... the more parts & control in there, the more to go wrong!

Another important issue the author brings up is of the tolerance / timing of parts (in these timing-critical situations).  Interestingly, it is actually the design he uses that could be improved, as established later in the discussions... It just goes to show that there are many ways to approach a problem, all with their different pro's and cons.  Good design is really an iterative solution to a problem, and many heads are indeed better than one.

Long live Open Design! let's learn to learn from others; and let's make the effort to share both those solutions that work, and those that don't, so we may further understand why!

... More info, and a description of the design problems-solutions, along with some very lively discussion also:

http://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/282

Grounding Research: ...not so beautiful interactions

On the flipside, heres a few things that annoy me:

• wires! the extensive network of copper that connects just about everything on this earth. Tesla was a genius well before his time...
• you are on hold! the all pervasiveness (and patronising tone) of the first half hour of any call to any government agency, telephone company and pizza shop. iinet have the simple solution... if the estimated wait time is more than one minute you can press a button to request a callback ... other telco's please take note!
• traffic jams and urban sprawl - check the visionary work of Jan Gehl in planning for people in public spaces, and his many simple suggestions for the improvement of quality of life in the shared urban space.

It is such a shame sometimes that the most elegant solutions can be overturned or shadowed by cost-cutting, greed, or the necessity to appeal to a wide consumer audience.  The patent scheme, and the desire to restrict certain information from others has led to a stagnant and under-developed society in many facets, and will ultimately destroy the common pool of knowledge for the wealth of a select few.

enough rant though, come on people this is a call to arms for the people... take the knowledge that is rightfully ours, assimilate it, expand it and re-format it, re-purpose it, re-contextualise it; just (in the interests of all humanity) please don't re-SELL IT!!!

LONG LIVE THE PUBLIC DOMAIN! 

-&c

Grounding Research: beautiful interactions...

There are few interactions so beautiful and secure as the unspoken bond between mother and daughter; the delicate, sensual touch of lovers; or the faithful loyalty of a man and his dog.

There is something special about these magic relationships: the way we act around people who completely understand us is so fluid, open, comfortable, impulsive, exciting and unreservedly free.

The lack of inhibitions, the opening of all communication channels, the free and easy transfer of ideas and motions is the basis for the ideas behind this project.  To dissolve the current human-computer-device-interaction methods into intuitive, user-centric and context aware ubiquitous computing devices would be a dream come true!

Grounding Research: response to the Brief

In creating an object or device that has the capability of 'exploring user interactions', it will be necessary to first establish the various understood methods with which users or an audience can interact with a system.

This is especially of importance as the digital revolution gathers steam, and the paradigms of ubiquitous and all-pervasive computing begin to take hold to the greater society.  Automation is a reality, the power is at our fingertips, but often (currently) it is the interface which is the problem - the methods of interaction are not designed / optimised for the user or the task at hand, too obscure, and often too complex to be useful...

It is this idea of simplification, the reduction of all complexities leading towards the instant access of all key functionalities of the device that drives the process of practical interface design.

However, as humans we naturally enjoy communication and often engage in acts of pure playfulness just for enjoyment, and it is this that defines our nature and should define the nature of our interactions also... Boring devices are just ... well .... boring!

Grounding Research: the Brief

In short, the project brief and context can be summarised by the terms 'Open Innovation' - the process of making oneself permeable to the flow of knowledge from all sources.  It is to be an exploration of the thought patterns, intentions and considerations involved in the creative design process.

The idea is to build a device to 'solve an everyday issue' or a more abstract device that does something interesting (such as the audio shaker created by Mark Hauenstein and Tom Jenkins); with the focus being on exploring abstract user interactions.

This project is submission for the IDEA 9201/2 course at the University of Sydney Architecture faculty.

Hello World

Hi, and welcome to the blog.  This is intended to be documentation and a kind-of process diary for myself whilst completing the major work for the M.IDEA Device Studio and Device Lab ( IDEA 9201 / 9202 ) under the supervision of Elmar Trefz, Andy Dong and Rob Saunders.

It is hoped the site will offer an insight into the creative processes, ideation, design and construction of the device: an Automated Tracked Beverage Cooling Device (the ATBCD)...

Questions, comments, suggestions and dialogue are invited, and all correspondence may be directed to kerfoffle@gmail.com

I hope you enjoy the ride....
-&c