ICS Materials. Towards a re-Interpretation of material qualities through interactive, connected, and smart materials.

The domain of materials for design is changing under the influence of an increased technological advancement, miniaturization and democratization. Materials are becoming connected, augmented, computational, interactive, active, responsive, and dynamic. These are ICS Materials, an acronym that stands for Interactive, Connected and Smart. While labs around the world are experimenting with these new materials, there is the need to reflect on their potentials and impact on design. This paper is a first step in this direction: to interpret and describe the qualities of ICS materials, considering their experiential pattern, their expressive sensorial dimension, and their aesthetic of interaction. Through case studies, we analyse and classify these emerging ICS Materials and identified common characteristics, and challenges, e.g. the ability to change over time or their programmability by the designers and users. On that basis, we argue there is the need to reframe and redesign existing models to describe ICS materials, making their qualities emerge

Disembodiment: Reproduction, Transcription, And Trace

This article poses the question, what is so great about the body? Recent scholarship has emphasized the concept of an embodied cognition and reminded us of the significance of embodiment in musical performance. Yet, vital as these observations may be, they offer only a limited view of what ‘touch’ can mean. Following the semiotic notion of the index as a sign with a real connection to its object, writers and artists such as Friedrich Kittler, Ai Weiwei, Kenneth Goldsmith and Nicolas Donin have reflected on how the reproductions of the gramophone needle, the calligrapher's brush, the blogger's keyboard, and the programmer's code can trace meaningful points of contact. Examples from my own practice illustrate some of the many possible ways that digital traces can be touching

System upgrade: realising the vision for UK education

A report summarising the findings of the TEL programme in the wider context of technology-enhanced learning and offering recommendations for future strategy in the area was launched on 13th June at the House of Lords to a group of policymakers, technologists and practitioners chaired by Lord Knight. The report – a major outcome of the programme – is written by TEL director Professor Richard Noss and a team of experts in various fields of technology-enhanced learning. The report features the programme’s 12 recommendations for using technology-enhanced learning to upgrade UK education

Uncovering everyday learning and teaching within the quilting community of Aotearoa New Zealand : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Arts at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

This thesis explores the social and cultural phenomenon of everyday learning and teaching within the communal activity of quiltmaking. Home-sewn quilts are rarely associated with the needleworkers’ high level of knowledge and skill; yet, the quilters’ act of knowing is practical, inherently social, and intentional. This research study examines the collaborative processes of “quilting together” to understand cultural patterns of participation; and investigates the participants’ meaning-making experiences to facilitate an analysis of collective knowledge practices. Using an ethnographic methodology, this research investigated the lived experiences of quilters within the situated context of two quilting groups, located in Aotearoa New Zealand. Observations were made of participants’ engagement in quilting activities as they interacted with each other, material artefacts and quilting tools. These observations took place during regular quilting sessions and special events. Interviews were conducted with founding members to gain an understanding of cultural-historical processes, as well as a purposively selected sample of ten participants who shared their personal quilting experiences. Observation notes, conversation commentaries and interview transcripts were analysed in relation to the research question and two guiding questions. Key findings are related to a variety of contextual issues surrounding the process of informal learning and teaching as it materialised through the quilters’ engagement in idiosyncratic community practices: the practices of which are generative of quilting knowledge and vice-versa. Firstly, through social integration quilters developed a sense of belonging and responsibility. Secondly, cultural patterns of social interaction consisted of multi-directional learning with quilters having complementary roles. Thirdly, due to the tacit nature of quilting knowledge, embodied experiences and material mediations were essential for thinking and communicating with others. Fourthly, a constellation of knowledge practices co-existed in the quilting community. Finally, the quilters’ informal learning was organised and supported within the community. The study contributes to a body of locally-based and international research concerned with informal learning and teaching theory, situated in a quilting community-based setting. The emerging conceptual framework, “Apprenticeship Model of Craft Community Learning”, develops and extends participation-based approaches to learning. In addition, the quilters’ collaborative designing process of inquiry advances understanding of knowledge creation within craft maker cultures

Symbol Emergence in Robotics: A Survey

Humans can learn the use of language through physical interaction with their environment and semiotic communication with other people. It is very important to obtain a computational understanding of how humans can form a symbol system and obtain semiotic skills through their autonomous mental development. Recently, many studies have been conducted on the construction of robotic systems and machine-learning methods that can learn the use of language through embodied multimodal interaction with their environment and other systems. Understanding human social interactions and developing a robot that can smoothly communicate with human users in the long term, requires an understanding of the dynamics of symbol systems and is crucially important. The embodied cognition and social interaction of participants gradually change a symbol system in a constructive manner. In this paper, we introduce a field of research called symbol emergence in robotics (SER). SER is a constructive approach towards an emergent symbol system. The emergent symbol system is socially self-organized through both semiotic communications and physical interactions with autonomous cognitive developmental agents, i.e., humans and developmental robots. Specifically, we describe some state-of-art research topics concerning SER, e.g., multimodal categorization, word discovery, and a double articulation analysis, that enable a robot to obtain words and their embodied meanings from raw sensory--motor information, including visual information, haptic information, auditory information, and acoustic speech signals, in a totally unsupervised manner. Finally, we suggest future directions of research in SER.Comment: submitted to Advanced Robotic

Community Participation in Festivals : An Appreciative Inquiry Approach to Research

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