Applying human-centered design to emerging technologies // Ideo
slide from Experiments in Augmented Reality course.
more on reading soon ❤
Becca's ITP Sketchbook
slide from Experiments in Augmented Reality course.
more on reading soon ❤
The Environment is Not a System by Tega Brain. // Notes on reading soon ❤
More on Reading soon ❤
More on reading soon ❤
More on reading soon ❤
Critical Thinking
“The ecological crisis we face is so obvious that it becomes easy — for some, strangely or frighteningly easy — to join the dots and see that everything is interconnected. This is the ecological thought. And the more we consider it, the more our world opens up.”
What would an ecololgical society look like? What would an ecological mind think? What kind of art would an ecologically minded person enjoy? All these questions have one thing in common: the ecological thought.
Could think of it as a prequel to his previous book, ecology without nature
“RE-THINGIFYING THE INTERNET OF THINGS”
Selected quotes // Notes from Reading
“Things, within the Internet of Things, are the curious creatures to which I turn my attention in this chapter…
“Alongside theorists like Lisa Parks and Matthew Fuller, I have argued for a consideration of what lies beyond the screen, of how hardware unfolds into wider ecologies of media devices, and of how electronic waste may evidence the complex ways in which media are material and environmental, despite our tendency to overlook these interconnected infrastructures, supports, and resources.”
“What are these things within the Internet of Things and how do they influence, challenge, disrupt, or reroute discussions of materiality within media studies? What consequences do these things have for thinking about the environmental effects and relations generated through the Internet of Things?”
“The Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive of the European Commission documents a bewildering array of items—from laptops to toasters—for treatment as a special category of this hazardous waste.”Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics // Jennifer Gabrys ”
“the things within the Internet of Things consist of a growing list of intelligent devices that would augment, optimize, and interconnect every aspect of our daily lives. To what extent might this expanding array of digital things generate different modalities, materialities, and environments of computation?”
“The Internet of Things is just as often referred to as the Internet of Everything, since networked and programmed capabilities are meant to inform products, bodies, environments, and systems, where the world is connected through sensors, networks, and a steady flow of data.”
“The number of devices connected to the Internet is currently estimated to be approximately one and a half to two billion. By 2020, however, this number is forecast to grow to up to fifty billion devices, with many more set to follow.8”
“the Internet of Things as a concept is often dated to Mark Weiser’s work on ubiquitous computing at Xerox Parc in the 1980s and 1990s,9 and as an actual term is dated to 1999,10 another pivotal moment in the concept’s elaboration is 2008, the year when Internet-based machine-to-machine connectivity surpassed that of human-to-human connectivity.1”
Connected toaster exaple:
“Cerf opines, but he draws a further connection to how such a “feedback loop is going to be important from an environmental point of view, because I would say that we don’t always understand the consequences of our actions.” He concludes, “this kind of feedback loop may actually help us do a better job of managing our response to environmental problems including global warming.”
Thingification as Enabling and Ennobling Technology
“electronic environmentalism,”
MIT Trash Track project from Sensable Cities Lab
Keywords: technomateriality, e-waste, sensor actuated
Summary of the game/experience you are making For my final I would like to continue tuning my hw#7 sketch creating an explorative experience of storytelling through objects. I recently used an artec spider through NYU Tandon and think it could be fun to scan objects in / clean them up for a more realistic feel?
An explanation of how this links up to the concept of games (or playful experiences) and your intended flavor of joy:
How does this connect to my intended flavor of joy? As first explored in the start of the semester through our manifesto activity. Creating something slow and meditative is at the core of what I was thinking in Skipping the Speedrun to watch the Clouds. Something that simulates the enjoyable experience of a closer look. How can environmental storytelling create a stronger narrative? Thinking of film production what does mise-en-scene or the art direction of set and props help lay the foundation for
Thinking about what are the things we collect? and what are the stories they tell. What are the objects we leave behind and the stories they tell? This box is a personal one but how interesting is it for the viewed to navigate through it? Often we talk about how history is not linear but constellation of impactful moments all informing one another. Exploring a personal history as a nonlinear playful experience makes sense to me.
A general breakdown of the big milestones you plan to accomplish each week.
Class 12: Initial Final Presentations / Final Week1
Class 13: Testable Prototype
Class 14: Final Presentations
An initial prototype of your core mechanic (this week, your prototype can be digital or paper)
Will focus in on Boolean logic of mouse clicked or mouse drag ❤
In class some great thinking point were mentioned:
Adding Juice For this week we were to add a level of polish / juice to a previous assignment. I thought this week it could be fun to give the Mr Trash Wheel simulation assignment another design pass. In office hours Jane mentioned a couple things to look into in addition to prefabs of the different objects. One was how to make a mechanic that actually communicate that its water with objects in it as well as how to convey the “current” controller. Instead of getting deep into fluid dynamic papers Jane mentioned looking into Perlin noise and add force functions to help transfer motion when objects are hit. A lot of water physics and object buoyancy videos tutorial were centered around the law of the Archimedes Principle
.
Perlin Nosie & Buoyancy When searching around for tutorials I eventually landed tutorial playlist to help with floating objects in water using Perlin noise (Ken Perlin was a guest speaker in Applications class and also teaches at NYU / Future Reality Lab). There was a small road bump in the actual tutorial code. They used ‘Dimension’ singular as a declared global variable but then referenced it as ‘Dimensions’ plural throughout the rest of the code. (easy to do!) After combing through a couple times I caught the discrepancy and decided to set both to ‘Dimensions’ and to get the first steps working.
Creating the mesh triangulation layer in a script (timecode: 5:16)
My mesh triangulation executed in Unity
However the tutorial code kept breaking after this point, maybe due to a Unity update? Or to an accidental grammar error on my part (will sift back through again later) So went on to try this tutorial out instead
Tutorial: Make a realistic boat in Unity with C#
in this tutorial Erik focuses on the idea of buoyancy. He referenced an article as an inspiration and that “The basic summary of the Gamasutra article is that you have to find out which parts of the boat is below the water. Then you should add a buoyancy force to those parts” . He mentions the fact that everything is built with triangles, and that even our cube gameObject is built out of triangles, 2 on each face. He also then broke down further how each triangle had 3 vertices:
“In Unity you have to deal with at least 2 arrays to control the triangles. One triangle consists of 3 so-called vertices that each has a coordinate in 3d-space like x,y,z. A vertice is a corner in the triangle. One array will store these. The other array will store in which order the vertices form a triangle. When you build a triangle in Unity you have to store the position of the vertices in the array so they form a clockwise loop through all the corners. If you happen to store them counter-clockwise the triangle will be inside out and you will not see it (you will see it if you move to the other side of the triangle).”
Important take aways:
2 arrays:
Summary:
With just the BoatPhysics script on cube
This week for assignment #7 we were to create an interactive game or experience with the with context of an element from our Flavor of Joy Manifesto. Being newer to different game making platforms I decided to stick with the Unity engine we’ve been working on in class and start to think about mouse input, specifically how to get the cursor to interact with objects via Drag Mouse or Raycasts.
My Manifesto was partially inspired by exploratory games like Gone Home, What Remains of Edith Finch, Firewatch ( as well as thinking about objects like in Assemble With Care) where you can explore objects with a simple click and at your own pace. I was also inspired by the game we played in class during last week’s lecture, Packing Up the Rest of Your Stuff on the Last Day at Your Old Apartment.
I tried for a similar feel with a box of objects I keep at home. I didn’t recreate all of contents but tried to include some variety of materials and objects like postcards, photos, pins, map and my childhood walkman. I think this sketch connects with the manifesto by underscoring the idea of everyday objects as possible portals for storytelling, as well as the possible slowness and range of speed of “chose your own pace”of exploration.
It makes sense that the camera angle and the rate at which an object is examined (and dropped) could affect the tone of the exploration. I tried experimenting with a more zoomed in and zoomed out framing. With my current Unity knowledge I think I like the Medium shot more in that it’s easier to place the objects back into the box. However, the more zoomed in intimacy it is nice in the closeup version, and makes it easier for exploring objects.
Exploring objects in the original games
Gone Home (Fulbright)
What Remains of Edit Finch (Giant Sparrow)
Fire Watch (Campo Santo)
PUTROYSOTLDAYOA [Packing Up the Rest of Your Stuff on the Last Day at Your Old Apartment]
Click Objects Tutorials
For this week in thesis I decided to try out IDM’s prethesis brainstorming exercise:
Stage 1:
Some Inspirational Projects / would like to revisit once digging deeper
Stage 2: Why?