Social Navigation in a Location-Based Information System

Much of contextaware application research has dealt with the technical aspects of context capturing and how to interpret the context of a user. Little effort has been spent on the experience and usage of these systems. This thesis will present the general aspects of social awareness and present an example on how these concepts can be implemented into a location-based information system to help users navigate a potential information overload. This thesis also states that giving the users an experience of not being alone in the system increases the pleasure of using such a system. However this implies a decrease in privacy. To demonstrate these ideas I will describe a locationbased information system, GeoNotes, built by a group of researchers at SICS, the Swedish Institute of Computer Science. I will state a set of interaction requirements for how to extend the GeoNotes system with functionality for social awareness. Furthermore I will set up functional requirements for those interaction requirements to after implementation be able to conclude which interaction requirements I have been able to implement for. I will also give suggestions on how to position users in a WLAN. The deliverable from this project is a locationbased information system with functionality for social awareness. However, it was not within this project to test the system on true users. Therefore the statement that this functionality can help users to navigate a potential information overload is still just a hypothesis. To retrieve the position of a user in a W-LAN a packet is sent to all base stations in the network. In the first returning packet the mac address of contacting base station is extracted. Each base station is therefore a unique position. Triangulation was discarded due to its sensitivity to noise and weather circumstances, although a system that uses triangulation would have offered a much higher granularity

Compositional structures in mural design : towards a site-specific deconstructive mural methodology

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)Murals have been the formal visual interpretation of the cultural, social and political life of all ages. Throughout they have been consistently combined with their architectural setting, for example, in ancient Egyptian tombs, in Renaissance churches and on the external walls of buildings in Mexico in the twentieth century. This is a central feature of mural painting. However many contemporary murals do not integrate with their architectural settings, in other words, do not fulfil the site-specificity of the architectural spaces for which they were made. This means that the most important aspect that distinguishes murals from other types of painting is absent. I studied and analysed a number of murals produced in the Italian Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo as this particular period is considered to be not only one of the most significant in the history of art but also a period in which painting and architecture were very closely allied as practices. In particular the radical developments in painting of pictorial space took place along side the developments in architecture. I argue that Renaissance murals could be described, using the terminology of contemporary art, as site-specific art. By identifying the relationship between pictorial space, architectural space and compositional structure I was able to test, through my own practice, the importance of these relationships in understanding the site-specificity of the compositional structure of murals. To address the issue of sitespecificity in murals, I investigated and developed a set of compositional structures through my mural practice that could be applied in the design, execution, and teaching of contemporary mural design. I have developed the notion of a deconstructive method of mural design in which the illusory space of the mural derives its compositional structure from the architectural space in which it sited. I have applied it, tested it and refined it through the execution of a number of hypothetical and live mural commissions. I believe that the approach to the study and practice of mural design I have developed from the perspective of a practice lead researcher contributes to the furtherance of mural design as both a profession and field of study. In particular the identification of compositional structures in mural design and the proposal of a deconstructive method contributes to our understanding of what a mural is as well as current notions of site-specificity in contemporary art

GeoNotes: A Location-based Information System for Public Spaces

The basic idea behind location-based information systems is to connect information pieces to positions in outdoor or indoor space. Through position technologies such as Global Positioning System (GPS), GSM positioning, Wireless LAN positioning o

Chicana/o Artivism: Judy Baca's Digital Work with Youth of Color

Part of the Volume on Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital Media Astounding digital murals have emerged from the minds and souls of Chicana artist Judy Baca and the youth of color who have collaborated with her over the past ten years. Their workspace is SPARC, the Social and Public Art Resource Center, founded by Baca in 1996 and dedicated to the creation and support of community and public art in Southern California. But the digital art they produce is not only located in SPARC -- it can be found in virtual installations globally, as well as on the walls of Los Angeles barrio housing projects and in the hybrid spaces of the Internet. We call their activity "digital artivism," a word that is itself a convergence between "activism" and digital "artistic" production. The digital artivism we find expressed through SPARC, we argue, is symptomatic of a Chicana/o twenty-first century digital arts movement. This digital artivist movement also advances the expression of a mode of liberatory consciousness that Chicana feminist philosopher Gloria Anzaldua calls la conciencia de la mestiza, i.e. the radical consciousness of a mixed race peoples. Chela Sandoval and Guisela Latorre call attention to this mode of digital artivism enacted by Baca and young people who are vested in the convergences between creative expression, social activism, and self-empowerment

Youth Activism and Public Space in Egypt

Examines youth activists' use of virtual and physical public spaces before, during, and after the January 25 Revolution. Profiles three organizations and analyzes the power and limitations of social media to spur civic action, as well as the role of art

Urban encounters: juxtapositions of difference and the communicative interface of global cities

This article explores the communicative interface of global cities, especially as it is shaped in the juxtapositions of difference in culturally diverse urban neighbourhoods. These urban zones present powerful examples, where different groups live cheek by jowl, in close proximity and in intimate interaction — desired or unavoidable. In these urban locations, the need to manage difference is synonymous to making them liveable and one's own. In seeking (and sometimes finding) a location in the city and a location in the world, urban dwellers shape their communication practices as forms of everyday, mundane and bottom-up tactics for the management of diversity. The article looks at three particular areas where cultural diversity and urban communication practices come together into meaningful political and cultural relations for a sustainable cosmopolitan life: citizenship, imagination and identity

The existence of Roma in youth justice discourses

Critical scholars have repeatedly emphasised the importance of how various categories become constructed. This paper discusses the ‘existence’ of ‘the other’ in youth justice discourses. Drawing on qualitative analysis of police, prosecution, youth court and social services discourses, this paper discusses the positioning of migrant youths, referred to youth court on suspicion of having committed an offence. The talk particularly focuses on Czech and Slovak Roma in two legal departments in Belgium. I discuss in what types of cases and discourses the case of Roma (i.e. references to ethnicity and popular images of the ‘Roma culture’) exists and in what instances it seizes to exist. Particular attention is directed to the constitutions, circularity and contexts of ethnicising discourses throughout youth justice trajectories, as well as their performative nature

(Global) Hip Hop Studies Bibliography

This bibliography documents Hip Hop scholarship outside of America, including scholarly works that may be US centric, yet expands its analysis to other parts of the world. Hip Hop Studies outside the boundaries of the United States stretches as far and wide as Hip Hop itself. This scholarship started in 1984, and the amount of scholarship beyond American boundaries has continued to grow up through present day. The first wave, before Mitchell\u27s Global Noise (2001), includes a wider range of scholarly works such as conference presentations and books written by journalists, in addition to traditional academic sources such as books and journal articles. I included the variety of scholarly works in the first wave that I do not include in the second wave because the earlier works can function as primary sources and document how the field has grown