Hybrid Playful Experiences : Playing between Material and Digital - Hybridex Project, Final Report

Some of the future’s most important product innovations will be made at the borderline of physical and immaterial realities. New technologies enable development where immaterial products become materialized in novel ways, while material products and environment will be augmented with digital services. In this evolution immaterial, digital services will form multifaceted value networks with material products. The creative and playful design solutions and user cultures will form the basis for the utilization of these novel potentials in design of innovative and engaging experiences

Your Trash, My Treasure: An assessment of the value of souvenirs

The importance of the object as a means of understanding the human world is an area of enquiry in Academic and Arts Practice. It spans a range of disciplines, particularly the new cross disciplinary area of Material Culture Studies, which reflects the increasing interest in the object and its role in our lives. The aim of this study is to identify the qualities of the souvenir that give it value, in order to add to the discourse surrounding the role of objects in understanding our world. This thesis considers the qualities of souvenirs in the light of critical theory, case studies, my Fine Art practice and exhibitions, and contemporary Fine Artists. I posit that the souvenir is an object with particular distinguishing features and that these distinct qualities are what give it its value. I will argue that the ‘narrative of origins’ of souvenirs (Stewart, 2007) is what gives them their value and I use the term ‘value’ in relation to their emotional, material, cultural and personal currency. The souvenir is often regarded as a ‘fallen object’ (MacCannell, 1976), but I will argue that in terms of personal narrative and social resonance the souvenir is a neglected area of study that enters value systems at every level. My practice comprises painting and film making, and through this I have investigated and articulated my relationship with my own souvenirs. During the case study interviews I devised the terms Object Plus, Souvenir Moment and Souvenir Dynamic to encode our relationship to souvenirs. These are important new terms which help to articulate the unique qualities of souvenirs. The study of the souvenir, as an object in its own right, has mainly been confined to its relationship with tourism and fictional writing and, with the exception of Susan Stewart’s work, has been largely neglected. This thesis argues that souvenirs, despite their associations with cheapness, ubiquity and kitsch, are our most potent objects and are therefore deserving of greater attention

Compact and kinetic projected augmented reality interface

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 143-150).For quite some time, researchers and designers in the field of human computer interaction have strived to better integrate information interfaces into our physical environment. They envisioned a future where computing and interface components would be integrated into the physical environment, creating a seamless experience that uses all our senses. One possible approach to this problem employs projected augmented reality. Such systems project digital information and interfaces onto the physical world and are typically implemented using interactive projector-camera systems. This thesis work is centered on design and implementation of a new form factor for computing, a system we call LuminAR. LuminAR is a compact and kinetic projected augmented reality interface embodied in familiar everyday objects, namely a light bulb and a task light. It allows users to dynamically augment physical surfaces and objects with superimposed digital information using gestural and multi-touch interfaces. This thesis documents LuminAR's design process, hardware and software implementation and interaction techniques. The work is motivated through a set of applications that explore scenarios for interactive and kinetic projected augmented reality interfaces. It also opens the door for further explorations of kinetic interaction and promotes the adoption of projected augmented reality as a commonplace user interface modality. This thesis work was partially supported by a research grant from Intel Corporation.Supported by a research grant from Intel Corporationby Natan Linder.S.M

Chemical sense marks - Expanding the boundaries of registrability frequent concerns when applying for registration at the office for harmonisation in the internal market (trade marks and designs) (OHIM)

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University on 14/10/2010.The harmonisation of the European Trade Mark laws and the introduction of unconventional marks under this regime have encouraged interested parties to seek registration of chemical senses (scent and taste) as trade marks. This thesis studies the current state of affairs of these types of marks. It discusses in general, the panorama that these types of marks have when registrability is at issue. The purpose of this research is therefore to scrutinise the trade mark legal system, including a discussion of the origins and rationale underlying it, to try to understand the burdens presented when registering chemical sense marks. The starting point of this thesis is that the European Regulation and the Directive of the Trade Mark law open the door to the protection of chemical senses under the Trade Mark law regime. Yet, despite some early successful registration, their fate is still burdened with uncertainty and therefore the rationale for this study is to try to find whether chemical sense marks are truly marks and therefore protectable under the trade mark system. The approach chosen addresses the examination of all requirements for a sign to be protected under the trade mark system. The reason is that protection of chemical senses might be granted if such marks are recognised as signs, are graphically represented and are capable of distinguishing products of one undertaking from those of another undertaking. By examining the aforementioned requirements, the study reveals that while chemical senses marks might be seen as marks, they find that registration is not quite feasible. The thesis emphasises that graphic representation is only one of the many issues that chemical sense marks are confronted with. Issues such as distinctiveness, the need to keep free and functionality remain problematic. Moreover, the scope of protection afforded to chemical sense marks are yet untested. Case law will ascertain that the intent behind the trade mark regime to grant registration to chemical senses is unresolved. Still, the significant interest in chemical senses as trade marks appears to be not softening by this notion

Praxis: Connecting knowing and doing through designing and making.

The purpose of this research project is to explore how we learn and to design an experiential, studio-based learning framework based on designing and making that incorporates these findings. Research indicates that people learn best when they follow their own interests and curiosity; through perseverance and trial and error; in a mixedage, facilitated, exploratory environment; pursuing project-based investigations with authentic context. Creativity is fundamental to innovation and problem solving and is nurtured by interdisciplinary learning, a playful mindset, and one’s intrinsic motivation. Design provides a systematic process to deeply understand, ideate about, prototype, and test a proposed solution or intervention to a problem. Making is an opportunity for learners to more deeply understand their ideas and thinking through tangible representations and to foster a sense of empowerment and agency over their world. A systems perspective allows learners to see the connections and relationships between the parts and processes they consider. By developing ecological literacy and incorporating resilience into their designs, learners create sustainable and adaptive solutions. The proposed design-make framework is an adaptive, studio-based alternative learning system. Through service-oriented, project-based investigations, learners use the multiple resources in the design-make studio to deeply understand the problem in question and their ideas around that problem through iterative prototyping and presenting their findings to their mentors and peers for reflection and feedback

Movement Acts in Breakdown Situations : How a Robot’s Recovery Procedure Affects Participants’ Opinions

Funding Information: Funding information : This research was partly funded by the Research Council of Norway as part of the Multimodal Elderly Care Systems (MECS) project, under grant agreement 247697. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Trenton Schulz et al., published by De Gruyter.Recovery procedures are targeted at correcting issues encountered by robots. What are people’s opinions of a robot during these recovery procedures? During an experiment that examined how a mobile robot moved, the robot would unexpectedly pause or rotate itself to recover from a navigation problem. The serendipity of the recovery procedure and people’s understanding of it became a case study to examine how future study designs could consider breakdowns better and look at suggestions for better robot behaviors in such situations. We present the original experiment with the recovery procedure. We then examine the responses from the participants in this experiment qualitatively to see how they interpreted the breakdown situation when it occurred. Responses could be grouped into themes of sentience, competence, and the robot’s forms. The themes indicate that the robot’s movement communicated different information to different participants. This leads us to introduce the concept of movement acts to help examine the explicit and implicit parts of communication in movement. Given that we developed the concept looking at an unexpected breakdown, we suggest that researchers should plan for the possibility of breakdowns in experiments and examine and report people’s experience around a robot breakdown to further explore unintended robot communication.Peer reviewe

Interactive Technologies for the Public Sphere Toward a Theory of Critical Creative Technology

Digital media cultural practices continue to address the social, cultural and aesthetic contexts of the global information economy, perhaps better called ecology, by inventing new methods and genres that encourage interactive engagement, collaboration, exploration and learning. The theoretical framework for creative critical technology evolved from the confluence of the arts, human computer interaction, and critical theories of technology. Molding this nascent theoretical framework from these seemingly disparate disciplines was a reflexive process where the influence of each component on each other spiraled into the theory and practice as illustrated through the Constructed Narratives project. Research that evolves from an arts perspective encourages experimental processes of making as a method for defining research principles. The traditional reductionist approach to research requires that all confounding variables are eliminated or silenced using methods of statistics. However, that noise in the data, those confounding variables provide the rich context, media, and processes by which creative practices thrive. As research in the arts gains recognition for its contributions of new knowledge, the traditional reductive practice in search of general principles will be respectfully joined by methodologies for defining living principles that celebrate and build from the confounding variables, the data noise. The movement to develop research methodologies from the noisy edges of human interaction have been explored in the research and practices of ludic design and ambiguity (Gaver, 2003); affective gap (Sengers et al., 2005b; 2006); embodied interaction (Dourish, 2001); the felt life (McCarthy & Wright, 2004); and reflective HCI (Dourish, et al., 2004). The theory of critical creative technology examines the relationships between critical theories of technology, society and aesthetics, information technologies and contemporary practices in interaction design and creative digital media. The theory of critical creative technology is aligned with theories and practices in social navigation (Dourish, 1999) and community-based interactive systems (Stathis, 1999) in the development of smart appliances and network systems that support people in engaging in social activities, promoting communication and enhancing the potential for learning in a community-based environment. The theory of critical creative technology amends these community-based and collaborative design theories by emphasizing methods to facilitate face-to-face dialogical interaction when the exchange of ideas, observations, dreams, concerns, and celebrations may be silenced by societal norms about how to engage others in public spaces. The Constructed Narratives project is an experiment in the design of a critical creative technology that emphasizes the collaborative construction of new knowledge about one's lived world through computer-supported collaborative play (CSCP). To construct is to creatively invent one's world by engaging in creative decision-making, problem solving and acts of negotiation. The metaphor of construction is used to demonstrate how a simple artefact - a building block - can provide an interactive platform to support discourse between collaborating participants. The technical goal for this project was the development of a software and hardware platform for the design of critical creative technology applications that can process a dynamic flow of logistical and profile data from multiple users to be used in applications that facilitate dialogue between people in a real-time playful interactive experience

Nothing Matters: Answering the Question ‘Where’s the Art?’ through Ma and Gen

This research explores the ontology of Gen, or the being of a ‘non-being’, through an examination into the Japanese concept of Ma. Ma is a Japanese word and concept whose English equivalent does not exist but is usually translated as the ‘conscious void/interval’, while Gen (variants: Jen/Zjen/Xen/Zen) describes the experience of becoming such an interval. Using conceptual art as the core method of investigation and cultural pluralism as its philosophical framework, the practice was documented as a series of essays on relevant ideas, beginning with the absolute, aestheticism, authenticity, authorship, and autonomy. The paper builds on the current research on the manifestation and function of Ma by introducing relevant and necessary terms into the discourse, including: Gen, Mu, Ba, Ta, Self/Culture, cognitive (dis)equilibrium, conceptual tipping-point, ontological comfort trap, and self-obliteration. As the concept of Ma has often been associated with ascetic reduction, manifested as simplicity and silence, the paper begins with a study into the use of nothingness and the void in minimalist artworks. It also builds on my MA research and Sachiyo Goda’s study into the intercultural understanding of Ma as an intersubjective phenomenon, by introducing a new concept, Gen, which leads to an enquiry into what it means to become a Ma, a nonbeing. In contrast to the minimalist approach, the study will show that such state of emptiness can be achieved through an alternate method of ‘production’ (as opposed to re-duction) by using an authentically embodied methodology of ‘becoming’ the observed, rather than through mere documentation or representation of the phenomena. The study yields insights of potential interest to artists, philosophers, social theorists, empirical researchers, and indeed any English reader. The paper forms practical and theoretical contributions to the debates on the nature of art by: - enhancing our knowledge of Ma and its function in contemporary art; - introducing such explicitly implicit ontology as Gen; - extending our knowledge of the complex nature of Ma through an investigation into Gen; - offering a new strategy i.e. self-obliteration, in discerning such notions as an alternate to the minimalistic ascetic reduction method; - developing the language of such notions, contextualizing and bridging the Western and Eastern understanding and use of such ontology; - offering a new understanding of research with its interdisciplinary mode of practice and through a multidisciplinary body of work presented in and beyond the exhibition space, shifting away from the cerebral mode of comprehension by drawing out a primarily experiential conception of the relationship between art and Gen